CHAPTER XXIII - Buildings of the Domestic Revival and Later
In 1899 Halsey Ricardo published an article in
The Magazine of Art in which he remarked
that formerly 'for a man who was intending
to build himself a house in town, the choice was
between something striking by the hand of an
architect, and something humdrum by the unaided
hand of the builder. The east side of Queen's
Gate a dozen years ago was a very good instance
of the case.' (ref. 1) Whether Victorian houses of the
type reviewed in the previous chapter were often
the work of builders quite 'unaided' by any
architect is doubtful. But in any event the revolt
against them is well illustrated in the area of this
volume by houses strikingly 'architect-designed'. (fn. a)
In one part, the north-east end of Queen's Gate
referred to by Ricardo, the slow proceedings of
the ground landlords meant that (until recently)
the brick-building of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century was well represented (Plate
107c, 107d), and the area of this volume still contains
both early and mature examples of the 'domestic
revival'. They show the hunger for an animated
façade and an 'interesting' plan; and equally the
unaltered arrangement of the house between
family and servants. The latter still slept in the
basement if male and in the roof if female, and
used a staircase sometimes more ingeniously
segregated than before. The area also contains
some early and admired blocks of flats where the
usual English arrangement for the servant to
sleep in the apartment was observed, in contrast
to the French practice of a quite separate servants'
floor. Apart from Albert Hall Mansions, discussed
below, Alexandra Court at Nos. 171–176
Queen's Gate, built to Paul Hoffmann's designs
in 1898, was well regarded for its planning (Plate
113a; fig. 86). (ref. 2) Two other blocks of flats in
Queen's Gate built on smaller sites at the same
period, and now demolished, were No. 177
(architect Arthur Young, builders Patman and
Fotheringham, Plate 111c) (ref. 3) and Nos. 181–183
(architect Delissa Joseph, builder H. Lovatt of
Wolverhampton and London, Plate 107d). (ref. 4)
The buildings of the 'revival' and its aftermath
were individualistic and call for separate treatment.
It may be noted, however, that a transition
towards the new approach to house-building is
observable in Palace Gate (see Chapter III),
where about 1870 the firm of Cubitt's, who were
there the freeholders, turned from terrace-housebuilding
to the provision of sites for big, detached
architect-built houses, although most of these
were not in the 'advanced' mode. The work of
the 'revival' in this area is most plentifully
represented by houses of Richard Norman
Shaw's designing. The earliest of these, at No. 18
Hyde Park Gate (1871), where, however, his
hand may not be fully expressed, has already been
discussed (see page 36). So, too, has No. 8 Palace
Gate of 1873, by J. J. Stevenson, where the new
style is more completely developed (see page 46).
Significantly, the owner-occupier of that house,
H. F. Makins, was a youngish man, aged about
thirty-one, and another wealthy man of about the
same age, J. P. Heseltine, quickly followed him
in Queen's Gate.
The manner of designing with which we are
now concerned never aspired to a rigid syntax,
and although most commonly labelled Domestic
Revival or Queen Anne, contained elements
frequently drawn from other periods and other
countries. The architect of No. 8 Palace Gate,
J. J. Stevenson, was the leading publicist of the
style and preferred the term Free Classic, but,
although perhaps more accurately descriptive, this
was never generally adopted. The buildings influenced
by the new movement were almost
invariably constructed in brick—usually red—and
were characterized by architectural detailing
derived from English and Flemish houses of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Early
examples were notable for a carefully contrived
irregularity in their elevational design, but in
many cases this was superseded by the simple
symmetry epitomized in Shaw's design for No.
170 Queen's Gate. Gables, which had been
virtually absent from the London street house
since the Great Fire, reappeared and became a
prominent feature of the style. Often elaborately
shaped, they were usually crowned with a small
pediment. Their picturesque effect was frequently
emphasized by the disposition and form of the
other elements in the façade, such as bay and oriel
windows, massive chimney-stacks, and cut-brick
decoration often with a floral motif. Even at the
north-east end of Queen's Gate, where the houses
were structurally attached to their neighbours,
they made no architectural concessions, but rather
announced their deliberate reaction against the
houses which Stevenson disparaged as 'swathed in
the dead-clothes of stucco'. (ref. 5)
Figure 86:
Alexandra Court, Nos. 171–176 Queen's Gate, floor plan of five flats, c. 1905
It was not simply in the treatment of their
elevations that the architects of the 'Queen Anne'
style broke with the traditions of street architecture
in London. The planning of their houses, too,
was characterized by a similar spirit of freedom
from precedent, with rooms disposed according to
their use or with an eye to spatial effect rather than
in conformity with the established arrangements
familiar in the London house for over two
centuries. Some technical advances were also
made in the specifications and fittings. Cavity
walls were used by Stevenson at No. 8 Palace
Gate, and Shaw favoured the use of iron in his
floor construction. Lifts were incorporated in
several of the houses, and the number of bathrooms
and water closets bore a more suitable
relationship to the size of the household.
Figure 87:
Nos. 195–197 Queen's Gate, ground-floor plans of
three adjacent houses built 1874–7
Figure 88:
No. 189 Queen's Gate, ground-floor plan of a
builder's corner house of 1880. Compare figs. 92–94 for
corner houses of 1885, 1888 and 1891–2
In championing the 'Queen Anne' style,
Stevenson felt that it was 'the natural outcome of
London materials and modes of work', and that it
was a style that 'adapts itself to every modern
necessity and convenience'. (ref. 6) He also emphasized
its cheapness of construction, pointing out that 'a
flat arch of red cut bricks is the cheapest mode of
forming the window head' and that 'as the gables
rise above the roofs it costs nothing, and gives
interest and character to the building, to mould
them into curves and sweeps'. (ref. 5) However, it is
unlikely that economy was ever a reason for the
adoption of the style in this part of Kensington in
the last decades of the nineteenth century.
The antecedents of the style can be sought in
the houses that Philip Webb designed in 1864 for
Val Prinsep in Holland Park Road and in 1867
for George Howard in Palace Green. J. J.
Stevenson's own house in the Bayswater Road,
built in 1871, and his work with E. R. Robson
for the London School Board in the early years
of that decade, are important stages in the
acceptance of Queen Anne, but there can be no
doubt that the most influential practitioner of the
style was Richard Norman Shaw. Apart from the
slightly problematic No. 18 Hyde Park Gate
his first work in this part of Kensington was
Lowther Lodge of 1873.
Lowther Lodge (Royal Geographical Society)
Plates 96, 97; fig. 18 on page 53, plans a, b between pages
54–5, and figs. 89, 90
In 1870 William Lowther of Park Street, Mayfair
(1821–1912), a Member of Parliament and
nephew of Lord Lonsdale, bought from Lord
Auckland a property fronting on Kensington
Gore and near the newly building Albert Hall,
together with the house called Eden Lodge. (ref. 7) The
price is unknown, but his father had just asked
£36,210 from another prospective purchaser. (ref. 8)
Lowther's wife, a daughter of Lord Wensleydale,
was of artistic inclinations, and by May 1872 the
papers of Norman Shaw show that various plans
(not necessarily all of his devising) were in
existence for the redevelopment of the site. Eden
Lodge was to be replaced by another house nearer
the road, and in one plan the disposal of part of the
garden for speculative building was foreshadowed
by a scheme to place three or more adroitly sited
houses on Exhibition Road, where William
Lowther obtained a strip of frontage for £13,500
from the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners. (ref. 9) In
the event, Shaw's contribution was limited to one
big house for the Lowthers' occupation. The
contract drawings are dated July 1873. (ref. 10) Shaw's
perspective view was exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1874 when The Building News, a
periodical well disposed to his work, hailed him
as 'an artist' and the house as displaying 'the most
uncompromising Queen Anne character', whereas
The Builder thought it '"Queen Anne" with
the edge taken off—blunted a little into Gothicism',
and liked only the simple-seeming, convenient
planning. The house, unfinished internally,
was visited by the Architectural Association
early in 1875 (ref. 11) and was probably completed later
that year.
Figure 89:
Lowther Lodge, Kensington Gore, and extension of 1928–30 for the Royal Geographical Society
Figure 90:
(facing page). Lowther Lodge, Kensington Gore, details
The house is a very lively composition in red
brick with rendered coved eaves, seeming to bear
the influence of Shaw's early partner, W. E.
Nesfield (Plate 96). Its comfortably spread-out
plan is set off by a strongly vertical emphasis in its
architectural features, with long narrow fenestration,
tall pedimented gables, and towering
panelled chimney-stacks. Despite the irregular
appearance given to the principal front by the
attached stable block the complex projections and
recessions in the elevations of the house itself
produce a deliberately balanced effect. The thin
pilaster-strips and floral motifs which decorate the
entrance front were to become a recurrent theme
in Shaw's subsequent houses. Considerable ingenuity
was shown in the internal planning of the
house. The kitchen and service rooms were in the
basement, with the scullery located beneath the
coach-house. On the ground floor the understated
entrance in the west wing led through an
entrance hall into a spacious centrally placed inner
hall from which the principal staircase and
reception rooms were entered: the subsidiary
apartments off this hall included a 'flower room'.
The main bedrooms were on the first floor, as
were the stables, which were placed above the
coach-house and reached by an inclined ramp.
The nursery and the bedrooms for the female
servants were on the second floor. Some of the
interior fittings and decorations survive.
The builder was W. H. Lascelles of Finsbury.
The brickwork is an early instance in London of
the return to the use of narrow facing-bricks, here
supplied by Messrs. Gibbons of Ipswich. The
roof-tiles came from G. W. Lewis of Broseley,
Shropshire. (ref. 12)
The contract drawings were witnessed on
Shaw's behalf by Ernest Newton. (ref. 10)
The house was given some publicity by The
Building News, which thought it 'an excellent
specimen of plain, substantial, and unaffected
workmanship'. In fact, 'a six miles' walk, and
half an hour's thoughtful attention' would be well
repaid by Shaw's new house here and his other at
No. 196 Queen's Gate on the 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners' estate. (ref. 12) Indeed, the Commissioners,
particularly in the persons of Lord
Spencer and their surveyor, (Sir) Henry Hunt,
had evidently been favourably impressed by
Lowther Lodge and it was followed by five other
buildings of Shaw's designing on their estate. A
quarter of a century later Muthesius recognized
its strong influence on contemporaries (compared
with the less publicized work of Philip Webb).
He also noted its character half-way between a
town and country house, retaining the location of
domestic offices and servants' quarters in a basement
storey but eliminating main living rooms
from the first floor. (ref. 13)
For many years the house was screened from
Kensington Gore by a high brick wall. At the
back the garden was very soon dominated on the
west by the towering blank walls of Shaw's own
Albert Hall Mansions. William Lowther, however,
retained the house until his death in 1912,
when his son James Lowther (Speaker of the
House of Commons) sold the house for £100,000
to the Royal Geographical Society under its
President, Lord Curzon. (ref. 14) In 1927 funds became
available to the Society when a building lease was
granted of part of the garden for the erection of a
block of flats, Princes Gate Court, facing
Exhibition Road (architects T. P. Bennett and
Son), (ref. 15) and in 1928–30 Lowther Lodge was
altered and extended to the designs of the architects
G. L. Kennedy and F. B. Nightingale (Plate
114a). The thoughtfully designed new work
included a lecture theatre. (ref. 16) The external wall,
largely windowless for acoustic reasons, has
masonry niches containing a statue of Shackleton
by C. Sargeant Jagger unveiled in 1932, and of
Livingstone by T. B. Huxley-Jones unveiled in
1953. (ref. 17)
Long before, William Lowther had disposed
of the southernmost part of his garden, and here
Stevenson built the two houses known as Lowther
Gardens.
Lowther Gardens
In September 1875, as Lowther Lodge was being
finished, William Lowther made an agreement
with a builder, Matthew Scott of Earl's Court
Gardens. This was to lease to him the southern
part of the garden, about ninety-three feet deep,
when Scott had built a house on the land to the
satisfaction of Lowther's surveyor, F. J. Clark. (ref. 18)
Architecturally, the important requirement was,
it seems, the use of red brick. (ref. 19) In the following
summer of 1876 a design was exhibited at the
Royal Academy of two houses, not one, to be
built on the site. It was dated March, and was by
the architect William Young. In September The
Building News illustrated Young's design and
said the work was about up to ground level. (ref. 20) But
the slow progress in fact betokened a change of
architect that had already taken place. In May
Matthew Scott had assigned his interest in the
building agreement, together with the work done
by him on the site, to Colonel W. T. Makins, a
Member of Parliament holding important City
directorships, who was then living in 1860-ish
stucco at No. 34 Holland Park. (ref. 21) Colonel
Makins's brother had just built himself No. 8
Palace Gate in the fashionable style of its architect
J. J. Stevenson, and Colonel Makins, abandoning
the Scott-Young scheme, turned to Stevenson for
a pair of houses in a rather more advanced style
than Young's. In the month of the Building News
feature Stevenson was discussing with Makins the
design and cost of the houses, called Nos. 1 and 2
Lowther Gardens. In contrast to Young's houses,
each would have light and ventilation on all four
sides, but he considered that there was less 'work
squeezed into the space' than at the Palace Gate
house and that the cost per cubic foot—1s. or
perhaps less—would not be so high as there.
Stevenson thought No. 1 would cost £10,571
and No. 2 £7,991. (ref. 22) The houses were sufficiently
finished by the summer of 1877 to win the
favourable attention of the 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners' board-chairman, Lord Spencer. (ref. 23)
In December 1877 Lowther leased the site to
Makins, (ref. 24) and by September 1878, when The
Building News illustrated the houses, the latter
was in residence at No. 1 and had sold No. 2 to
another occupant. The Building News named the
architects as J. J. Stevenson and his partner A. J.
Adams. (ref. 25) Elevational drawings are, however,
signed by Stevenson alone. (ref. 26)
Both houses are excellent examples of the
'Queen Anne' style, profusely decorated in cutbrick,
and with a sense of vigorous movement
imparted to their elevations by the polygonal bay
windows and irregularly disposed balconies
(Plate 101a). Although both houses have open
pediments to their upper-floor windows, and their
principal windows are framed with superimposed
pilasters, simple differences in decoration and the
careful symmetry of the entrance front to No. 1
emphasize their division into separate establishments.
The principal reception rooms of No. 1
were situated on the ground floor, but the drawing-room
of No. 2 was on the first floor.
The south front of No. 1 originally looked on
to the north-east entrance of the 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners' exhibition galleries and the
Horticultural Society's garden across a new roadway
that was intended to approach the Albert
Hall round the back of the garden's crescent
arcades. It was more than ten years before the
roadway was extended, straight westward, as
Prince Consort Road. No. 2 faces Exhibition
Road and was renumbered 29 in that road in
1966.
In 1920 the Commissioners bought No. 1
Lowther Gardens for £18,000, (ref. 27) and have since
occupied it as their offices.
When the Lowther Gardens houses were
beginning, the first of Norman Shaw's street
houses in Queen's Gate was nearing completion.
The four that he designed in Queen's Gate may
conveniently be discussed together.
No. 196 Queen's Gate
Almost all the east side of Queen's Gate northwards
of Prince Consort Road that was offered
by the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners on building
lease in 1873 was developed more or less
within the established stylistic range of South
Kensington. The sole and striking exception was
No. 196. By May 1874 it had been agreed to
let this wide site to J. P. Heseltine, aged about
thirty-one, a resident in Onslow Gardens and
member of a firm of stockbrokers. (ref. 28) On the
other side of the newly built Albert Hall the
picturesquely composed mansion, Lowther Lodge,
was rising to Norman Shaw's design, and probably
Heseltine already proposed to employ Shaw to
build him a house that would bring a similar
individuality of design to the street architecture
of the neighbourhood, as the conditions of the
lease were modified to permit the erection of a
'detached' house. (ref. 29) As built, however, the detachment
was chiefly stylistic.
Heseltine intended the house for his own
occupation. He soon became an early member of
the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildngs,
established a notable reputation as a collector
and connoisseur of art and was for many years a
Trustee of the National Gallery (for a time acting
as co-director). (ref. 30) Though himself a talented
etcher Heseltine was a wholly appropriate owner
of one of the first of the 'artistic' street-houses
built in an area where, unlike Holland Park or
Hampstead, they were designed rather for the
purchasers than the producers of art. (fn. b)
In September 1874 the contract for building
by W. H. Lascelles was concluded, although the
drawings show differences from the house as it
was actually erected, especially in the elevation. (ref. 31)
In 1875 while the building was in progress
Shaw's design for the street front modified close
to the executed version was exhibited at the
Royal Academy and was reproduced in The
Building News, which noticed that its best
features 'are those which will be near the eye'. It
found the design 'characteristic, picturesque and
refreshing, and a few dozen more houses of the
same unique class, though not necessarily of the
same style—as Mr. Shaw is not bound hand and
foot to one style—would make London vastly
less monotonous, and more worthy of being the
British metropolis and the chief city in the world'.
The more conservative Builder was less welcoming
and judged the design to be 'largely made up of
mere corruptions of architectural detail'. (ref. 32)
Shaw was still contriving his staircase in
August 1875. (ref. 33) By October 1876 the house was
sufficiently complete for the Commissioners to
grant a ninety-nine-year lease at £220 per annum
to Heseltine, who bought the freehold at thirtythree-years'
purchase (£7,260) in 1877. (ref. 34) In that
year he first appears as occupant in the Post
Office Directory where he was one of the only two
residents on the east side of Queen's Gate north
of Cromwell Road: for many years the olderfashioned
stucco houses adjacent southward stood
empty.
The importance of this house has long been
recognized, and its contrast with its Italianate
neighbours remains as fresh today as ever. The
street elevation in red rubbed brick of the highest
quality made no concessions to existing storey
heights and massing (Plate 98a). It rises from a
loggia through five storeys to a crowning curved
and pedimented gable decorated with sunflowers.
Superimposed pilasters draw the eye upwards past
windows based on Sparrow's House, Ipswich, and
previously used by Shaw in a more elaborate form
in New Zealand Chambers in the City. The
overall effect of the façade is more Flemish than
English Queen Anne, even though the cut-brick
decoration in the ground-floor pilasters and the
panels beneath the first-floor windows were
derived from Jacobean Renaissance forms. The
house was originally entered through a porch at
the southern end, but later, following its conversion
into flats, the entrance was moved to its
present position behind the northern arch of the
loggia and some changes made in the windowopenings.
With a site of unusual breadth at his disposal
Shaw departed from terrace-house convention in
the plan as well as the façade, notably in the
positioning of a large central staircase compartment,
which allowed the rear rooms to occupy the
full width of the house (fig. 87 on page 327 and
fig. 91). The main staircase is situated against the
northern wall of this compartment, and the
secondary stair is ingeniously contrived within it.
The same basic plan was to be repeated when
Shaw later came to design No. 180 Queen's Gate.
Heseltine had celebrated his house-warming
with a children's dance in period costume, (ref. 35) for
which the house as fitted and furnished made a
suitable setting (Plates 98c, 99). The closelywrought
decorative patterning of the wallpapers,
furnishing stuffs and leaded windows, together
with the lighting arrangements, gave (so far as
can be judged from photographs) an effect both
homely and picturesque, helped by what seem to
be some old imported chimneypieces.
The Commissioners' surveyor, Sir Henry
Hunt, was pleased with the house, (ref. 36) and when
Muthesius came to comment on it in 1900 he
dwelt on the daintiness of the façade-design
realized by bricklayers' work of unusual skill. (ref. 37)
We learn from him that this sunflower-decorated
house had various corners for the display of
flowers, and indeed Shaw's Royal Academy
drawing had shown a vase of blooms in an open
attic window. Unlike the designers of the established
house-types of South Kensington, Shaw
left Heseltine space for a garden at the back. He
also gave him a small studio at the top of his
house. In 1884 he designed an addition to
Heseltine's country house, Walhampton House
in Hampshire. (ref. 38)
Figure 91:
No. 196 Queen's Gate
B - bedroom; D - dressing-room; G - gallery; Hk - housekeeper; N - nursery; a - area or light-well; b - balcony; c - coals; h - hoist.
Heseltine remained here until 1925 when
(conjecturally because of the changing character
of the area) he removed for the last years of his
life to a large stuccoed house in Eaton Square. No.
196 was then converted into flats. (ref. 39)
No. 180 Queen's Gate
Demolished
In 1883 the eastern frontage of Queen's Gate
west of the Horticultural Society's garden and
south of the present line of Prince Consort Road
had been on offer to builders for some seven years.
A decline in the speculative-building market
combined with the 1851 Commissioners' insistence
on architectural distinction had prevented
development of this 'Western annexe' site, where
the north-western limb of the 1862 Exhibition
had stood (plans a, b, c between pages 54–5).
They were therefore pleased when the ice was
broken by H. F. Makins, a forty-two-year-old
barrister already living in a recently built house
of the 'domestic revival' at No. 8 Palace Gate.
His offer to take a building site for a new house
for his own occupation was accepted with the
greater readiness because he proposed to give
Queen's Gate its second house designed by
Norman Shaw, who had already been making
sketch-plans for him for this site at the beginning
of the year. As Makins said in his formal application
to Hunt for a lease in November: 'It will be
my intention to erect a House of ornamental
design in Mr Norman Shaw's justly appreciated
style of architecture in red brick and I trust that
being a corner site the example of such a Building
may be an inducement, not only to the Commissioners
to accept my offer, but may further
prove an example that others who may hereafter
intend to build upon adjoining land will be induced
to emulate, and thus improve the general appearance
of Queen's Gate so unfortunately heretofore,
to some extent, marred by so many hideous
great stucco erections.' (ref. 40)
New plans were made by Shaw that month,
and again in May 1884 for the building contract.
This was concluded with William Cubitt and
Company, who had previously built Makins's
house in Palace Gate and also the Alliance
Assurance building to Shaw's design in St.
James's Street. (fn. c)
(ref. 41)
The contract drawings were a little different
from the house as built. In March 1885 the house
was sufficiently complete for a ninety-nine-year
lease to be granted to Makins, from Christmas
1883, at £240 per annum (or £6 per foot of
frontage). (ref. 42) The Commissioners undertook to
make a road on the south side of the house to give
access to a mews at the back, (ref. 43) but Makins and
other occupants on this side of Queen's Gate
preferred to have their stables elsewhere, (ref. 44) the
mews was abandoned and the approach road south
of No. 180 remained a cul-de-sac until its
obliteration by the recent redevelopment of the
area.
In 1886 Makins exercised his option to buy the
freehold at thirty-three years' purchase (that is,
for £7,920) (ref. 45) and in the same year appeared as
occupant in the Post Office Directory on his
removal from Palace Gate. It was five years
before he had a 'neighbour' across the road to the
south and sixteen before a block of flats was built
and occupied on his north side. (ref. 46) His family
retained the house in its occupation until recently
(Plates 102c, 103a, 103b).
A collector and connoisseur (particularly of the
works of his former neighbour in Palace Gate,
Millais), Makins had carefully chosen furniture,
and Morris wallpaper. A challenging, if impractical,
comment by Morris on Shaw's irongirder
construction here has, however, been
recorded by Christopher Hussey: 'If you will
have railway architecture, why don't you show
it?' (ref. 47)
The two principal façades of the house faced
south on to the cul-de-sac and west on to Queen's
Gate, with the entrance at the south-west corner
contrived within a recessed porch carried on squat
pillars and surmounted by a superimposed order
of pilasters (Plate 102a, 102b). The plain brick walls
were enlivened by an irregular disposition of the
mullioned-and-transomed windows with leaded
lights. The west elevation had a three-storeyed
canted bay, and was crowned by a tall gable which
rose from prominent and unusual scroll motifs
and was capped with a shaped pediment. The
south front was dominated by two enormous
chimney-breasts flanking a two-storeyed arched
recess, rather as at Philip Webb's No. 1 Palace
Green. The plan of the house (fig. 92) was
remarkable for its almost exact similarity to that
of Shaw's earlier house at No. 196, although the
two houses are so different in siting and façade
treatment.
Figure 92:
No. 180 Queen's Gate
In 1900 Muthesius thought the house, with
No. 185, the fruit of Shaw's ripest creative
period. He noticed the ingenious arrangement,
following that at No. 196, of the main and secondary
stairs, the very spacious first-floor landing,
and, with particular approval, the 'cosy and
comfortable' impression given to both internal and
external views by the leaded lights. (ref. 48) In 1908
he returned to the theme and based upon the two
houses, Nos. 180 and 185, a reading of Shaw's
achievement in terms of social qualities that
Muthesius evidently admired in the English
upper class. He found in these houses an ideal
marriage of functionalism and monumentality,
an unexampled combination of reticence and
distinction. They embodied the spirit of 'the best
kind of rich Englishman'—in no sense a parvenu,
but modest and reserved. He saw them as the
foundation-stones of a new architecture, straightforward,
functional and 'bürgerlich'. (ref. 49)
In 1957 the London County Council consented
to the demolition of the house for the
expansion of Imperial College. Nevertheless in
1969 the Greater London Council tried to find
means to preserve it within the College's development
plan, then approaching its last stages, but
this proving impracticable the house was demolished
in 1971.
No. 170 Queen's Gate
Following his houses designed for a stockbroker
and a barrister, Norman Shaw's third and in some
respects most notable house here was built for a
cement manufacturer of Swanscombe, Kent
(with an office in the City), Frederick Anthony
White. Of about the same age as Heseltine and
Makins, he was a lifelong friend of the former
and like him was a member of the Society for the
Protection of Ancient Buildings. In 1887, when
he was forty-five, White was living at No. 178
Cromwell Road, but was making sketch-designs
for a new house in Queen's Gate, on the site later
occupied by No. 167. His drawings for that and,
soon after, for the actual site show a strong
predilection for ornately historicist 'Queen Anne',
and would not in themselves suggest his professed
admiration for the architecture of Philip
Webb (Plate 104b). (ref. 50) Nevertheless, as he later
told W. R. Lethaby, he sought to enrol himself as
Webb's client. 'I told him the sort of house I had
in mind, and listened to him as he expounded at
length his views as to the relations between
architect and client and the supreme importance
of quality in work. Though he must have seen
how I appreciated his genius and my own ignorance,
I suppose I managed to excite his suspicion
that as I was to live in the house, I, too, might
have a view or two now and then, and might
here and there want a voice which might be
dissonant from his own, for he bid me reflect that
he was very despotic, that he would never make a
concession he might think unwise to economy,
nor please his client at the expense of his conscience.
Had I not better think twice before
committing my self to one who might become my
taskmaster? I hope I was not presumptuous, after
the meditation I promised him upon our colloquy,
in coming to the conclusion that I would take no
decision until I had had a second conference with
Mr Norman Shaw. You know the result.' (ref. 51)
By February 1888 the intended site had shifted
to the north corner of the new Imperial Institute
Road, (ref. 52) and by March Shaw was making designs
quite close to what was built. One exception was
the doorcase, which White pronounced 'open to
criticism' and which was replaced by a more
traditional design closer to White's own suggestion
(Plate 104a, 104c). As his reminiscences indicate,
White was active in settling at least details of the
work: his part in originating the design was openly
acknowledged: (ref. 53) and unlike most of Shaw's
clients it was he, not the architect, who retained
the drawings for the house. (ref. 54)
One result of White's participation was the use
of historicist or imported elements, collected by
him, in the finishing of the house (Plates 105,
106a, 106c). The drawing-room ceiling was modelled
on that of the Ashburnham House staircase, a
marble floor at Squerryes Court, Westerham, was
copied in the entrance hall, and chimneypieces,
woodwork and marble inlays were brought from
premises in Millbank Street (latterly No. 23)
occupied by White's firm, from Halstead Place,
Kent, a house in the City and elsewhere. (ref. 55) (Few
of these 'importations' seem to remain.)
White's acquaintance with Shaw developed,
and some six years later Shaw was to design him a
neo-Perpendicular church at Swanscombe. It was
the work on No. 170 that also occasioned White's
friendship with Lethaby, who witnessed the
builder's signature to the contract drawings. (ref. 56)
The contract, dated August 1888, was made
with William Downs of Walworth. Particularly
in the inner hall the plans (fig. 93) differed somewhat
from the executed design.
The door of the billiard-room at least was
provided by W. H. Lascelles and Company, and
much of the wood-carving was done by Messrs.
Wicks, a firm of builders at Wells, Somerset. (ref. 57)
The ironwork was by Crittall's, (ref. 58) and the green
louvred shutters were of Italian make. (ref. 59) The
quoins and fine cornice are, appropriately, of
cement. (ref. 60)
This is perhaps the most masterly in its
restraint of all Shaw's house-designs, relying on
the symmetrical disposition of its elements, the
quality of its materials, and the high standards of
its workmanship for its restful architectural effect.
Despite its subsequent fame and influence, however,
much of its authentically Queen-Anne
manner was anticipated in Bolney House of
1883–4 in Ennismore Gardens nearby, which
Shaw had designed for A. H. Huth. (ref. 61)
The house is built of brick with contrasting
cement quoins, and rises for three storeys above a
semi-basement. The bold modillion cornice is
surmounted by a hipped roof with segmental
pedimented dormer windows and two prominent
axial chimney-stacks with corner pilasters. The
principal front faces south on to Imperial Institute
Road. It is seven windows wide with a central
entrance doorway. The windows are double-hung
wooden sashes with thick glazing bars, and they
are all provided with louvred wooden shutters.
There are delicate aprons beneath the first- and
second-floor windows, and keystones in rubbed
brick to the flat heads of the ground-floor windows.
A shaped gable incorporating a quasiVenetian
window rises in the centre of the roof
and sits rather uncomfortably between the flanking
pairs of dormer windows. The side elevation
to Queen's Gate is simply composed of three rows
of four sash windows, similarly shuttered, and
surmounted by two dormer windows above the
cornice. The simplicity of the design and the
confident arrangement of its proportions were to
have an influence which lasted well into the
present century (and were to be repeated by Shaw
in a more ambitious form in the country house
which he designed for Lord Portman at Bryanston,
Dorset, in 1890). Inside, the English
classical manner is sustained without notable
stylistic idiosyncrasies.
Figure 93:
No. 170 Queen's Gate,
a - area; D - dressing room; h - hoist; L - lift
The house, bearing the date 1888, was built in
1888–9, (ref. 58) and White first appears here in the
Post Office Directory in 1890. The house was
illustrated in The Architect in 1891. (ref. 62)
One periodical commented on Shaw's skill in
bringing his chimney-flues up to central chimneystacks. (ref. 60)
It seems, however, that his ingenuity
may have overreached itself in that respect:
alterations supervised by White himself were
made about 1905, when friendly correspondence
with Shaw suggests that some of the work was
undertaken in connexion with a 'flue' (ref. 63) and by
1910 the house had suffered an unsightly eruption
of chimney-cowls. (ref. 64) Chimney-sweeping still presents
problems.
Muthesius, writing in 1900, was appreciative
of the friendly, reticent dignity of the design,
enlivened by the green shutters: he approved the
bigness of scale given to the exterior by the lack of
horizontal subdivisions in the smooth façades of
small-sized bricks. Within, he (like others)
admired the planning of the staircase, which
expressed Shaw's principle of gradual disclosure,
whereby the ascent was made interesting and less
laborious-seeming. (ref. 65)
It was some seven years before a block of flats
was occupied on the opposite side of Imperial
Institute Road (a development against which
White protested to his ground landlords, the 1851
Commissioners (ref. 66) ) and eleven before other flats
were occupied on the north side. (ref. 46) White had
bought the freehold in 1905 (ref. 67) and remained here
until 1926 when he followed his friend Heseltine
to Belgravia. (ref. 46) The house is now occupied as the
Rector's residence and Common Rooms of
Imperial College.
No. 185 Queen's Gate
Demolished
The fourth and last house to be designed here by
Norman Shaw was built under a lease that the
1851 Commissioners agreed late in 1889 to grant
for £258 per annum to William Vivian, a stockbroker
then living in De Vere Gardens. Again it
was a corner site, with its long side to the new
Prince Consort Road. Shaw's drawings, not quite
identical with the executed design, are dated
January 1890, and the contract was made in
March with John Grover and Son—the builders
of Shaw's New Scotland Yard and the fourth firm
to be employed on the four houses. (ref. 68) William
Vivian took up occupation in 1892. (ref. 46) The new
house was promptly illustrated in periodicals. (ref. 69)
The British Architect did not wait for its completion
before celebrating it as 'a very knock-down
blow to the heavy row of Philistinism opposite'.
Inside, the same periodical gloried in the elliptical
ceiling of the morning-room, 'all cut and chiselled
on the spot—one of the finest pieces, if not the
very finest piece, of work of its kind in London'
(Plate IIIa).
Like Shaw's other Queen's Gate houses it later
attracted the attention of Muthesius, who noted
the characteristic management of the staircase and
the attractive lighting of the morning-room,
where Vivian's eighteenth-century furniture
occasioned a comment on the 'modern' taste for
period furnishings. The leaded lights also were 'a
romantic element in the otherwise wholly modern
character of the house'. (ref. 70) But plain wall surfaces
assisted the sober mood that prevailed in other
rooms (Plate 110b, 110c).
Shaw had nevertheless returned here some way
towards the elevational style of No. 180, though
with a less easy-going and more provocative
composition of his two façades, on either side of a
clean-cut corner of smooth brickwork that
excited The British Architect by its lack of
modelling (Plate 110a). The fenestration of the
north front in particular was very precisely
patterned, with a greater disparity between the
seeming importance and practical function of the
windows than in the earlier Queen's Gate houses.
Apart from some of the minor windows, this, like
the Queen's Gate front, was symmetrical. The
arched entrance doorway was centrally placed, and
the roofline was elegantly broken by two carefully
positioned panelled chimney-stacks which embraced
two small curved gables with segmental
pediments. Similar chimney-stacks were placed on
the south side, so that the end view of both sets of
chimney-stacks effectively framed the prominent
gables of the east and west fronts. The west
elevation, facing Queen's Gate, had two large
canted oriel windows to the first and second
floors, and three windows above, set within
engaged arches. The gable rose from three steps
to terminate in a broken segmental pediment. The
house was characterized by a greater use of contrasting
stone dressings than in Shaw's earlier
houses in Queen's Gate. Internally, the most
notable feature of the plan was the large top-lit
inner hall rising through two full storeys, and
containing an upper landing supported on two
columns (fig. 94). On the ground floor this rather
solemn Roman hall divided the morning-room
at the west side of the house from the diningroom
at the east, and on the first floor it separated
the principal bedroom suite at the rear from the
L-shaped drawing-room that looked out over
Queen's Gate. By 1904 this drawing-room had
been 'reconstructed and decorated' in an Arts-and-Crafts
style by (Sir) W. Reynolds-Stephens. (ref. 71)
Figure 94:
No. 185 Queen's Gate. Letter a denotes area
William Vivian was succeeded here by his
widow until 1919. The house was then occupied
as the Maison de l'Institut de France (Fondation
Rothschild) until its destruction by enemy
action during the war of 1939–45. (ref. 46)
No.167 Queen's Gate
Meanwhile the work of another architect, of
choice and individual taste and one of Shaw's
former pupils, had risen immediately north of the
grounds of the Natural History Museum. The
site where F. A. White had thought of building
was leased for £210 per annum by the 1851
Commissioners, for a term commencing in 1888,
to a fifty-five-year-old resident at No. 132
Queen's Gate, G. W. Davidson, who had recently
retired from partnership in a mercantile firm in
Mauritius. (ref. 72) At No. 167 he had a house designed
by (Sir) Mervyn Macartney, aged about thirtyfive
and thus a generation younger than Shaw
(and his client). The house was built about the
same time as No. 170, in 1888–9, by John
Mowlem and Company, and was first occupied
in 1890. (ref. 73) The design was exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1889 when it was praised by The
British Architect and The Architect, and the house
was illustrated by the latter in 1891. (ref. 74) Davidson
bought the site, at thirty years' purchase (£6,300),
in 1897 and died in 1911 (being then a director of
the Bank of Mauritius), and his widow lived here
until she sold the house in 1919 to the Republic
of Estonia. (ref. 75) Since then it has been occupied as a
legation.
Externally the house is notable for its curious
eclecticism (Plate 106b). A markedly classical
two-storeyed stone portico, flanked by a threestoreyed
bay window in stone, is applied to the
façade of a 'Queen Anne' revival house of the type
of No. 196, built in finely laid red brick and
decorated in the familiar vocabulary of an
asymmetrical pedimented gable, pilaster strips,
and an Ipswich window. Visually, there appears
to be only the most tenuous architectural relationship
between the stone and brick elements of the
elevation. Internally a generally classical manner
is predominant, but again there is a disparity of
styles, with chimneypieces and panelling inspired
by a variety of sources in the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (Plate 107a, 107b). The
most striking feature is a top-lit 'Jacobean' staircase
of imposing grandeur (figs. 95, 96). The
house has not been greatly altered and is a fine
survival of a Shaw-style town house.
Figure 95:
No. 167 Queen's Gate, plans (hatched areas not surveyed)
Figure 96:
No. 167 Queen's Gate, part-section and detail
Nos. 178 and 179 Queen's Gate
Demolished
At about the same time as No. 167, in 1888–9,
No. 179 was being built by Messrs. Higgs and Hill
for G. W. Allen at a cost of £14,886 (Plates 108a,
c, d, 109). The site and new house were leased to
Allen by the 1851 Commissioners in 1889 and he
was in occupation by 1891. He was then sixty,
and member of a firm of East India agents in the
City, but had behind him a career in India and is
best known as the founder of the Allahabad
Pioneer and the Civil and Military Gazette. This
doubtless explains the choice of architect, (Sir)
William Emerson (1843–1924), who had long
practised in India, and had designed Allhabad
Cathedral.
Allen did not stay long at No. 179 and died, as
Sir George Allen, in Princes Gardens in 1900.
He seems, in fact, to have moved out as soon as a
fellow Anglo-Indian with whom he had personal
and business connexions, moved into No. 178
next door. (ref. 76)
The Builder in 1891 noted the 'very elaborately
finished' interior of No. 179 with its panelling
in various woods, and this was indeed remarkable.
The cedar-lined billiard-room (Plate 109b) was
'worked by Mr. Nicholl, from the architect's
designs'; presumably, that is, by Thomas Nicholls
of Lambeth, sculptor. (ref. 77)
No. 178 was also designed by Emerson, and
was built in 1891–3 by Messrs. Bywaters for
(Sir) James Walker (Plate 108b). He received his
lease in 1893 (when he was forty-eight) and had
moved in from a house in Lancaster Gate by
1895. He was a son of a member of the Punjab
Police and had had a long career in India, first as a
banker and then as one of the proprietors of the
newspapers founded by (Sir) George Allen of No.
179. He remained here until 1901 when he
moved to a house in Grosvenor Street, Mayfair. (ref. 78)
Both houses were of red brick with red stone
dressings. Although clearly inspired by the 'Queen
Anne' character of the other houses in this part of
Queen's Gate, in common with Macartney's
contemporary design for No. 167 their appearance
indicated a broadening of the repertoire of the
revival. The detailing of No. 178 was of a late
Gothic nature, drawn from Franco-Flemish
forms, while No. 179 was clothed in Jacobean
dress. The houses were demolished for the
expansion of Imperial College in 1971.
No. 184 Queen's Gate
Demolished
This very large house demolished in 1971 was
built in 1894–5 by John Douglas of Exhibition
Road (Plate 107d). (ref. 79) The architect was
Theophilus Allen. (ref. 80) In 1898 the house appears in
the Post Office Directory in the occupation of the
owner, George M'Culloch, a fifty-year-old Scot
who had won his way to Queen's Gate via the
gold mines of Australia. He had been president of
the mining companies' association during the
miners' strike of 1892, and recorded his recreations
in Who's Who as collecting contemporary art,
cycling, cricket, angling, photography and coursing. (ref. 81) <In 1902 Morris & Company (Merton Abbey) made eight stained-glass windows for M'Culloch for No. 184 Queen's Gate. One of these, after a design by Burne-Jones, is now in the William Morris Gallery (see advert in The Art Quarterly, Autumn 1995).>
By the 1890's the 'red-brick' style was
sufficiently in the ascendant to require the refacing
and alteration of some of William Douglas's
houses in the neighbourhood of Norman Shaw's.
Nos. 190–192 and 194 were so treated, the
architect at Nos. 190–191 being F. G. Knight
(1891–2) and at No. 194 R. A. Briggs (1893).
The contractor at each was William Douglas's
son John (Plate 113b, 113c; fig. 62 on page 306). (ref. 82)
Earlier in date than most of these street-houses
is the famous 'Mansions' where Shaw's client was
not a private gentleman but, in rather complicated
circumstances, a building tradesman.
Albert Hall Mansions, Kensington Gore
The admiration generally given to this large threefold
group of apartments, built to Norman Shaw's
design in 1880–7, is usually tempered by disquiet
at his readiness to challenge the dimensions of the
Albert Hall and to overpower his own Lowther
Lodge of 1873–5. There had, however, been a
previous history of attempted development on the
site which indicates something of the difficult
background to the project.
In 1872–3 the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners,
whose direct sponsorship of public
buildings had involved them in some financial
embarrassment, decided to take advantage of a
buoyant market to lease parts of their estate for
private building. Their first attention was given
to the development of the north-east end of
Queen's Gate. Then in March 1875 their surveyor,
(Sir) Henry Hunt, recommended that
tenders should be invited for the lease of the site
fronting on Kensington Gore east of the new
Albert Hall. (The site was awkwardly shaped by
reason of the quadrant arcades of the Royal
Horticultural Society's garden on its south-west
side, plans a, b between pages 54–5.) He expected
that a lessee would build either six or seven large
houses or (as Hunt rather preferred) a block of
flats 'similar to the Belgrave Mansions on the
Duke of Westminster's Estate [Grosvenor
Gardens], which is a successful commercial
speculation'. (ref. 83) One interested party was the retired
director of the South Kensington Museum, Sir
Henry Cole, who thought of speculating in club
chambers here (perhaps of his own designing)
with his friend, the builder Charles Freake. Hunt
told Cole he wanted a rent of £3,500. (ref. 84) By
December, however, a tender had been accepted
from Thomas Hussey, builder, of Kensington
High Street, for a ninety-nine-year building lease
at £3,150 per annum: Hussey was to bear half
the cost of making the road that links the east side
of the Albert Hall to Exhibition Road, and the
Commissioners subsequently decided that they
had, at an opportune time, obtained 'very
advantageous' terms. (ref. 85)
Whatever the form of development intended by
Hussey at that time, by April 1876 it was to be a
row of large houses. (ref. 86) The chairman of the
Commissioners' Board of Management, the fifth
Earl Spencer, was evidently conscious of the need
for architectural control here: (ref. 87) Hussey's design
was rejected, and Hunt was instructed to prevail
upon him to execute an elevational design to be
provided at the Commissioners' expense by
Richard Norman Shaw. (ref. 88) This Hussey undertook
to do, in return for a slight easing of the financial
terms of his lease, and in July Hunt was promising
Shaw to try to protect his approved design from
vulgarization at the builder's hands. (ref. 89) Shaw had
presumably been selected by the Commissioners
because he was the architect of the adjacent and
recently completed Lowther Lodge, as well as
No. 196 Queen's Gate on their own estate.
Beyond the probability that the row was no less
than eighty feet high, (ref. 90) it is not known what
Shaw's elevation would have been like. (fn. d)
Hussey did not, however, begin work, and in
October came forward with a new project. It
was for a large block of flats designed by his own
architects, Driver and Rew of Victoria Street, and
intended to be built by a limited liability company,
of which he was to be a director. For the acceptance
of this he was prepared to give a half-year's
rent. The apparent success of Queen Anne's
Mansions at Victoria was bolstering the project:
prospectuses spoke of a return of 8 or 10 per cent
for shareholders. The Commissioners objected to
the height, which was appreciably more than one
hundred feet, and Driver and Rew therefore put in
a modified design, illustrated and described in The
Building News in March and April 1877 (Plate
100a). (ref. 92) Hunt and Lord Spencer quite liked it,
but opinion within the Commission was hardening
in favour of consulting 'some distinguished
architect' about all such private building enterprises.
The Commissioners formally committed
themselves to high architectural standards in July
1877 (ref. 93) and no doubt in consequence Shaw had by
October been brought back into the project by the
company as consultant to Driver and Rew.
Between them they produced a new design late in
1877 that he was willing to 'father' (Plate 100c).
He told the Commissioners' secretary, Henry
Scott, 'I have drawn it all myself and have taken
a good deal of pains with it. It is a ponderous
affair.' (ref. 94) Probably Shaw's contribution was chiefly
the exterior, and Driver and Rew's the planning.
Like their previous design, a single building
occupied all the frontages of the site, surrounding
an internal courtyard, but some of the elevational
features of the building Shaw was ultimately to
design already appear. A large dining-room for
residents was provided. The project was illustrated
in January 1878 in The Building News,
which remarked that Shaw's magnanimity in
facilitating Driver and Rew's continued participation
in the scheme was 'the subject of some talk
among the profession in London'. (ref. 95)
Figure 97:
Albert Hall Mansions, Kensington Gore, layout plan and contract plans and section
The design was accepted by the Commissioners
but 1878 again saw no progress made, despite
Hussey's obligation to build under the terms of
his agreement. The market for expensive flats or
houses had by then become depressed and many
new buildings in South Kensington were said to
be standing empty. Early in 1879 Shaw was
telling Hunt that 'the failure of Mr. Hankey's
houses' (by which he perhaps meant Queen
Anne's Mansions, which had a chequered early
history) had been 'simply fatal' to Hussey's latest
scheme. Hussey was, however, prepared to build
flats 'of moderate dimensions', which were still
letting well, and Shaw could report that 'the
matter has now been placed exclusively in my
hands'. (ref. 96) In what Hunt called 'these hard times'
the Commissioners were therefore glad to be able
in May 1879 to make a fresh agreement with
Hussey (concluded in October) on similar
financial terms as before. (ref. 97)
Within the limits that had thus been set by the
doubtful state of the market Shaw was now free to
provide his own design, both in plan and elevation,
for execution by Hussey. In July 1879 he and his
assistant, Ernest Newton, went to study flats in
Paris, (ref. 38) perhaps chiefly with an eye to their
arrangement.
No doubt partly to permit a cautious piecemeal
programme he abolished the internal courtyard
and built up the site in three separate blocks. The
residents' dining-room was omitted. His new plans
for the front block are dated December 1879
(fig. 97). They were submitted by the Commissioners
to Sir Frederic Leighton, President
of the Royal Academy, and approved in February
1880. (ref. 98) The block was built in red brick with
contrasting bands of gauged brickwork in the end
elevations. <The bricks were supplied by 'a famous Hammersmith firm' (see Philip D. Whiting, ed., A History of Hammersmith, 1965, p.185).> The front facing the Park is an impressive
exercise in ordered symmetry (Plate
100b). The two plain lower storeys act as a plinth
from which the three principal upper storeys rise
to be capped by a steeply pitched mansard roof
with a double row of dormers and tall panelled
chimney-stacks. Horizontal emphasis is provided
by delicate iron balconies supported on consoles,
and two double-arched loggias on both the third
and the fourth floors. The principal elements of
the fa¸ade are picturesquely completed by three
projecting bays, symmetrically disposed along the
front and crowned with two-storeyed shaped
gables. The controlled discipline of the design is
emphasized by the placing of the segmentalheaded
sash windows in strongly articulated
groups of three. The absence from the block as
built of even the rather meagre architectural
dressing proposed by Shaw for the east end
elevation raises the question whether Hussey
actually hoped to extend the block over the site
of the recently built Lowther Lodge.
In July 1881 The Building News was deploring
the size and praising the 'picturesqueness' of this
front block, which was leased to Hussey in
October by separate transactions for each of its
three self-contained parts. (ref. 99) An issue of The
Building News in that month contained a view of
the front block drawn by W. R. Lethaby, and
comment on the ingenious split-level arrangement,
partially in maisonettes, by which all the
reception-rooms were placed overlooking the
Park. (ref. 100) This feature of Shaw's plan received
some subsequent publicity. (ref. 101) His drawings for
the two southern blocks are dated 1882. (ref. 102) The
western of these, newly built, was leased to
Hussey in 1884, and was assessed for rates from
1884–5 (Plate 72b). The eastern block was begun
in 1885 and leased to Hussey and assessed for
rates in 1887. (ref. 103)
Between 1879 and 1890 Shaw received £3,310
10s. for work on the designs, which at 5 per cent
commission would imply a building cost of only
£66,205. It is, therefore, possible that some of the
work (presumably, in the interior) remained, after
all, in other hands—perhaps Driver and Rew's. (ref. 104)
In the period 1883–7 Hussey personally
mortgaged once or more all the five units of
property into which the three blocks were
divided. Some of the mortgagees may have been
groups of private individuals: others were the
Scottish Provident Institution, the Royal Exchange
Assurance, and the Metropolitan Life
Assurance Society. Three of his 'first mortgages'
(on the security of the two southern blocks and the
eastern part of the front block) raised £94,000. (ref. 105)
Queen Alexandra's House
The provision of students' accommodation at
South Kensington had been a concern of the
authorities in the early days of the Science and Art
Department, but practical action was long
neglected. The establishment of the National
Training School for Music in 1876 made the
question more pressing, and in 1880 Sir Henry
Cole was evidently hoping to obtain 'a building
to provide a Home for S. K. students' from
the Anglo-Australian merchant, Sir Daniel
Cooper. (ref. 106) This came to nothing but in 1883, the
year in which the National Training School was
replaced by the Royal College of Music under the
Prince of Wales's auspices, another benefactor
appeared whose munificence, combined with the
patronage of the Princess of Wales, created
(Queen) Alexandra House as a home for female
students. He was Francis Cook, son of the founder
of the firm of textile merchants in St. Paul's
Churchyard. His great wealth had enabled him to
build up a famous art collection, and in so doing
to become acquainted with the personnel of the
art department at South Kensington. One was the
Director of the Museum, Sir Philip CunliffeOwen,
through whom in 1883 he obtained the
promise of a site from the 1851 Exhibition
Commissioners. (ref. 107)
This was immediately adjacent to, indeed halfsurrounded,
the Royal College of Music (now the
Royal College of Organists), and in its main
south-easterly frontage conformed to the curve of
the then still-existing crescent arcades of the
Horticultural Society's garden. The Commissioners
made it a condition that Cook should
construct a forty-foot-wide road here that would
lead from the Albert Hall to Queen's Gate. (ref. 108)
(Valued at £10,000 by the Commissioners, the
site was leased to the Alexandra House Association
in December 1894 for 999 years at £5 per
annum. (ref. 109) )
A committee was formed in 1883 under the
Princess of Wales's presidency, (ref. 110) and the keeper
of the Indian collections at South Kensington,
C. Purdon Clarke, who was an architect, went to
America to view students' hostels there. (ref. 111) When
the building came to be opened it was stated,
evidently with authority, that 'the design for the
building was prepared by Mr. C. Purdon Clarke',
but that 'his plans were transferred to the late Mr.
Robert Down for execution: Mr. Clarke, as an
officer of the Science and Art Department, not
having time to attend to the work'. (ref. 110) Down—perhaps the 'Downe' who had been a draughtsman
in the Science and Art Department's drawing
office (see page 88)—was carrying on some
correspondence as the responsible architect in
April 1885. (ref. 112)
The foundation stone had been laid by the
Princess of Wales in June 1884. (ref. 113) Cook at about
the same time had Cunliffe-Owen approach the
Prince about a baronetcy for him. The Prince
was well-disposed and despite the conviction of
Gladstone's secretary that Cook's munificence
was 'really intended as a bribe' (ref. 114) the baronetcy
was eventually granted in March 1886.
An important feature of the building, a concert
hall, had been built by the end of 1884. (ref. 115)
Students took up residence in the autumn of
1886 (ref. 110) and the formal opening was performed by
the Prince and Princess of Wales in March 1887.
Periodicals noted that the building was intended
'for young lady students at the various schools of
art, music and science in London', (ref. 110) who, as the
1851 Commissioners rather glumly observed,
would be 'safely and comfortably provided for
both in health and in sickness'. There was
accommodation for one hundred students who
were charged £66 per annum each. (ref. 116) (In 1900
there were ninety-four students in residence, of
whom fifty were studying music and forty-four
art: of the latter, however, only four were
attending the South Kensington schools. (ref. 117) )
Pairs of students shared a sitting-room placed
between two bedrooms. The plans also included
the concert hall, practice rooms, a large diningroom,
a large drawing-room-cum-library, and a
gymnasium. (ref. 110)
At the opening it was noted that 'solidity of
construction has been the chief care of the
architect'. (ref. 118) The main entrance is through a giant
arch set in a projecting frontispiece which is
surmounted by a stepped gable. The chimneystacks
are ingeniously incorporated in similar
gables arrayed along the street front (Plate 101c).
The interior decoration, largely in the glazed ware
of Doulton and Company, was striking, if not
extensive. The entrance hall (Plate 101d) and the
drawing-room chimneypiece are remarkable, and
the dining-room contains a notable series of large
tile-pictures illustrating Music and Pottery
donated, like the chimneypiece, by Doulton's. (ref. 110)
These last were designed by J. Eyre and painted
by J. H. McLennan, W. J. W. Nunn and an
unnamed artist. (A similar sequence of Doultonware
pictures by some of the same artists can be
seen in the Café Royal, Edinburgh, and St.
Mungo Vintners, Glasgow.) The relief-figures in
the entrance were designed by 'Mr Ledward', (ref. 110)
presumably R. A. Ledward, the sculptor (1857–90).
The cost of the building was stated by the 1851
Commissioners in 1889 as £60,000 (ref. 116) and by
Cook's biographer in the Dictionary of National
Biography as about £80,000. Cook defrayed all
the cost. The main contractors were Lucas
Brothers, who did the work for him at cost
price: (ref. 119) in 1887 Thomas Lucas, too, became a
baronet.
Albert Court, Prince Consort Road
Although this building is without great architectural
interest the circumstances of its erection
deserve recital (Plate 111b). In 1888 the 1851
Exhibition Commissioners decided to lay out
Prince Consort Road, and their surveyor, H. A.
Hunt, planned to let four large sites for flats—two on the north side of the road, flanking an
approach to the Albert Hall, and two on the
south. In the autumn Hunt received an offer on
behalf of a William Sarl, then living at St. John's
in south-east London, who had extensive interests
in some of the big new buildings in Victoria
Street, Westminster. This offer was accepted
provisionally early in the next year. It had been
submitted on Sarl's behalf by the architect
Frederick Hemings (c. 1855–94). Sarl's lawyer
later said that he thought Hunt himself had
suggested 'young Hemings' as architect of the
proposed buildings and that the latter had provided
a design 'on "spec."': Hunt and Hemings were
certainly business acquaintances. A rent of
£5,000 per annum was to be paid for the two
northern sites with an option for the lessee to take
the two southern sites at £3,000 per annum.
Sarl gave as his references to the Commissioners
the building firm of Perry and Company. (ref. 120) A
building agreement respecting the four sites was
made with Sarl in October 1889, and the two
northern sites were being cleared for building in
November. (ref. 121) Later, Sarl's lawyer talked of Sarl's
expectation of making 'a quarter of a million out
of it' by building. (ref. 122) Already in May 1889,
however, Sarl and his lawyer, realizing that his
ground rent to the Commissioners was very much
less than some current estimates of the land's
value, had been looking for a quick profit by the
sale of his interest in the property. An intermediary
appeared in T. J. Steele, a land agent.
He put Sarl in touch with George Newman, a
surveyor in the City, who also ran a building firm,
and was backed by Jabez Balfour's Liberator
Building Society. In November 1889 Sarl made
over his interest in the building agreement to
Newman. For this Newman paid no less than
£16,000. Steele himself collected commission
from both parties totalling £2,000, or, as Mr.
Justice Hawkins later observed to Sarl's lawyer,
'he had £1,000 from you to sell the land as dearly
as possible and the other side gave him £1,000 to
get it as cheaply as possible'. (ref. 123) Sarl then died. (fn. e)
In December the Commissioners made a
building agreement, on the same terms, with
Newman, whose connexion with Jabez Balfour
was thought a recommendation. (ref. 124) Newman
promptly assigned the agreement to his alter ego,
George Newman and Company. (ref. 125) Hemings's
design was approved for the Commissioners by
Alfred Waterhouse, (ref. 126) building began in 1890, (ref. 79)
and by 1892 some £110,000-worth of building
had been erected on the property, or rather on the
north-eastern of the four sites. There the carcase
had reached a little above fourth-floor level. (ref. 127)
Unfortunately, in the autumn of that year the
Liberator Building Society, in common with
Jabez Balfour's other enterprises, collapsed;
George Newman and Company collapsed with it;
and building on the Commissioners' site ceased. (ref. 128)
Still more unfortunately, the Receiver for George
Newman and Company proceeded against Newman
for misapplication of the Company's funds,
and when the case eventually came before the
Court of Appeal in March 1895 it appeared that
Newman (who was by then in Wormwood
Scrubs (ref. 129) ) had received from the Company for
the assignment of his agreement with the Commissioners
not £16,000 but £26,000. The Court
accepted that his 'fellow directors' (in fact, other
members of his family) regarded most of the extra
£10,000 as reimbursement for bribes paid to the
Commissioners' officers in furtherance of the
assignment, and called for an investigation. (ref. 125) The
Commissioners naturally also wanted an enquiry,
and the resulting examination in the Chancery
Division of the High Court cleared all their
officers and agents. (ref. 130) It revealed, however, that
in the exuberant imagination of some speculators
the terms on which the Commissioners were
letting their building land were unexpectedly
favourable. The Commissioners held that they
had obtained the market price in 1889 and pointed
to their subsequent failure to get as good terms for
the land that had been thrown back on their
hands. (ref. 131)
They had annulled their agreement with
Newman and re-entered upon the land in July
1894. Hunt, and the Commissioners' solicitors,
advised them to retain the north-eastern site in
hand and spend the £125,000 estimated to be
necessary to finish the building to Hemings's
design: with a gross anticipated rental from the
flats of some £28,000 per annum this promised
to be the most profitable course. (ref. 132) But the
Commissioners were at that time becoming reluctant
to sink any more resources directly in bricks
and mortar, and eventually in November 1895,
to get the building finished, conceded 'a very good
bargain' to the Albert Court Syndicate, with
whom a building agreement (for this one site
only) was concluded at a rent of £2,750 per
annum. (ref. 133) One of the two directors was the
Kensington builder, Thomas Hussey, and the
other the architect R. J. Worley. Hemings had
died in 1894 and it was to Worley's economical
design that the building was slowly finished
between 1896 and 1900. The builders were
Messrs. Downs, at a contract price of £102,000. (ref. 134)
A formal ninety-nine-year lease was concluded in
1897 (ref. 135) and in 1898 the Syndicate bought the
freehold for £82,500. (ref. 136) The apartments, which
could be divided as maisonettes, let quite readily. (ref. 137)
As for the look of the building, the 'bankruptcy
line' above the fourth floor can be seen to this day.
Institut Français du Royaume-Uni,
Queensberry Way and Cromwell Road
Founded in 1910, the Institut was housed from
1920 to 1937 in Cromwell Gardens. In 1932 a
new building in Queensberry Place and Queensberry
Way to be designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens
was in prospect, but when the London County
Council approved plans for the block fronting to
Queensberry Way in 1934 the architect was
Lutyens's office manager, A. J. Thomas—a
circumstance that led to the latter's departure
from Lutyens's service. By the following year
the designing of the part at the south-west corner,
at the junction of Queensberry Place and Queensberry
Way, had been assumed by the French
Government architect, Patrice Bonnet. The
building was completed early in 1938 (Plate
114b).
In 1939 a newspaper reported that 'M.
Bonnet is under medium height, bearded, and
beams with genial French courtesy through his
spectacles. For all that he is a stalwart among
architects. When his British collaborator in the
Institute, Mr. A. J. Thomas, expressed grave
fears that the L. C. C. would never pass some of
his plans, M. Bonnet was undismayed. He came
to London and saw the authorities at County Hall.
Everything he had planned was passed. His
victory was the more notable as M. Bonnet does
not speak a word of English.' The chairman of a
committee of the Council told a questioner,
however, that there was no record of a visit from
the French architect to County Hall. (ref. 138)
The block on the site of the former Nos. 31–35
(odd) Cromwell Road was built in 1959 to
plans prepared in 1954 onwards by Jacques
Laurent, the French Government architect, in
conjunction with Corfiato, Thomson and Partners. (ref. 139)