CHAPTER VI - The Smith's Charity Estate
The Smith's Charity estate, which was formed in the
seventeenth century, originally consisted of eighty-five and
a half acres of land in the parishes of Kensington, Chelsea
and St. Margaret's, Westminster. In 1853 a further small
plot of former manorial waste on the north side of Fulham
Road was purchased, and in 1856 the part of the estate in
St. Margaret's parish known as the Carpet Ground, which
was detached from the rest, was conveyed to the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 in exchange for a slightly
larger parcel of ground in Kensington. (ref. 1) Since then, apart
from the sale of some plots for ecclesiastical and institutional purposes or for railway construction and road widening, the estate has remained intact. The detailed account
of building developments in this volume is confined to
Kensington and excludes the fourteen and a half acres in
the former parish of Chelsea, but in the calculations of
total rental and income the estate is considered as a whole.
Henry Smith, a City merchant and alderman of a highly
charitable disposition, was born at Wandsworth in 1548,
acquired a considerable amount of property during his
lifetime, and from 1620 onwards set up a succession of
trusts to dispose of the rents and profits of his lands for
charitable uses, making gifts to several towns in Surrey for
the relief of the poor. (ref. 2) He died in 1628 and by his will
decreed that £1,000 should be used to purchase land
producing at least £60 per annum, which was to be applied
for the relief and ransom of ‘the poore Captives being
slaves under the Turkish pirates’, and that a further
£1,000 was to be spent in purchasing more land of equivalent value, the income from which was to be used for the
relief of the poorest of his kindred who were unable to
work for their living. (ref. 3) The dangers to English seamen
posed by the Barbary pirates were real enough in the early
seventeenth century, but the need for this charity diminished and in 1772, when no claims had been made for
many years, the income under this heading was merged
with that providing relief to Smith's descendants. (ref. 4)
It has always been assumed that the estate in Kensington was acquired under these two dispositions of Henry
Smith's will and the charity has been maintained on this
basis ever since, although its scope has now been considerably widened to take in much more than payments to
Smith's descendants. There is, however, no documentary
evidence about the original purchase; no conveyance has
come to light. The first reference to an estate in Kensington
and adjacent parishes belonging to the charity occurs in a
deed establishing new trustees in 1658, (fn. a) when the estate
was described as being in the tenure of Robert Sewell or
Seywell, (ref. 6) and the first full description is in a lease of 1664. (ref. 7)
At that time part of the land appears to have been copyhold
of the manor of Earl's Court, but by 1675 it was described as
entirely freehold. (ref. 8)
The lease of 1664 was to Christopher Blake for seventy
years at a rent of £130 per annum in consideration of £500
to be laid out by Blake in new buildings and improvements
and of the release by Blake of ‘his claim to several of the
lands’. (ref. 7) This second stipulation perhaps indicates that the
acquisition of the land by the Smith's Charity trustees had
not been a straightforward affair. Blake was the grandson of
Sir William Blake, who had amassed a very large estate in
Kensington, Knightsbridge and Chelsea during the reign of
James I, (ref. 9) and who was both a trustee appointed by Henry
Smith and one of the executors of his will. The lands which
make up the Smith's Charity estate had undoubtedly been
part of Blake's holding and were probably conveyed to the
trustees by Blake's descendants after his death in 1630.
At the time of the lease to Christopher Blake the estate
consisted of a number of fields or closes, one substantial
house which had been built by Robert Sewell, and about a
dozen smaller houses and cottages. Blake died in 1672 and
by his will his leasehold lands passed first to his sister Maria
Dorney and then to her son by her first marriage, John
Harris. (ref. 10) The latter assigned the lease to Richard Calloway
of Knightsbridge, innkeeper, (ref. 11) and at the time of its expiry
in 1734 the leaseholder was Francis Calloway. (ref. 12)
Calloway had reached an agreement with the trustees for
a new lease at a rent of £250, but this contract was set aside
and the trustees agreed to reduce the rent to £200 for a
twenty-one-year term. No lease was actually executed even
though Calloway remained in possession of the land, and he
was soon owing the trustees arrears of rent. Eventually in
1749 he relinquished his interest to William Bucknall, a
doctor, in return for an annuity of £30. (ref. 12) Bucknall had
recently purchased Brompton Hall, a mansion which stood
on the north side of Old Brompton Road at its eastern end,
opposite the Smith's Charity lands. (ref. 13)
In 1750 the trustees granted Bucknall a twenty-one-year
lease at an annual rent of £170 for ten years and £200 for
the remainder. He, too, soon fell behind in his rent,
however, and by 1759 owed over £800. In return for the
payment of most these arrears, the trustees agreed to
grant a new lease for the same length of time as that to
Christopher Blake, namely seventy years, at a rent of £151
per annum. Accordingly in 1760 a new seventy-year lease
at that rent was made out in the name of Samuel Bucknall,
Dr Bucknall's son. (ref. 14)
Figure 23:
The Smith's Charity estate in Kensington Based on the Ordnance Survey
William Bucknall died in 1763 and Samuel Bucknall in
1770, when the benefit of the lease passed to the liner's
two sisters and eventually to their husbands, the Reverend
Joseph Griffith, who succeeded the Bucknall family in
Brompton Hall, and Morgan Rice of Tooting. (ref. 15)
Novosielski and Michael's Place
Of the first building development on the estate, which took
place on the south side of Brompton Road in the vicinity of
the streets now called Egerton Gardens. Egerton Place
and Egerton Terrace, not a house now remains, Here in
I785 Morgan Rice and the Reverend Joseph Griffith let
fourteen acres on building leases to Michael Novosielski,
architect, for forty-five years plus another sixteen years if
they could obtain a renewal of their lease from the Smith's
Charity trustees. The ultimate rent, payable in full after
five years, was £140 per annum. (ref. 16)
Novosielski, who was of Polish descent, was born in
Rome in 1750 and came to London as a young man. He is
reputed to have assisted James Wyatt at the Pantheon in
1770–2. but was working as a scene-painter when he was
invited to remodel the King's Theatre in the Haymarket in
1782. He was later architect for the rebuilding of the
theatre in 1790–1 after it had been destroyed by fire, and
this was to be his most notable work. (ref. 17)
At Kensington he was heavily involved as a speculator
from the start, apparently paying for the first houses to be
erected and supplying mortgages to builders to whom he
granted sub-leases of other houses. (ref. 18) To finance this and
other smaller-scale speculations, primarily in Piccadilly
and St. Marylebone, he had himself to borrow on a large
scale, to the extent of £11,000 from the Honourable Mary
Bridget Mostyn and at least £16,000 from the bankers
Ransom, Morland and Hammersley of Pall Mall. (ref. 19)
Novosielski's enterprise was essentially a continuation of
the kind of ribbon development which had spread along
Brompton Road from Knightsbridge since the 1760's, and
his major activities were concentrated on the frontage of
that road (Plates 2a, 3). Here, immediately to the west of
Yeoman's Row, which formed the eastern boundary of the
Smith's Charity estate, he proposed to begin by erecting a
uniform terrace of fifteen houses set back a little way from
the road with a plantation in front. (ref. 20) A square was also
projected for the hinterland behind the frontage to
Brompton Road. (ref. 21) Neither the square nor the uniform
terrace finally took shape as such, but the house which was
intended to form the centre of the terrace was distinguished by a canted bay rising through three storeys. (ref. 22)
(fn. b)
Michael's Place, as Novosielski eponymously named the
terrace along Brompton Road, eventually consisted of
forty-four houses and was completed by about 1795. (ref. 23)
There is little evidence of its general appearance, but a
drawing depicting two of the houses shows that these had
four storeys with relatively plain late-Georgian elevations
embellished by simple mouldings with a hint of Greek
severity. (ref. 24) After the initial range, which appears to have
been built under contract, most of the houses were erected
under sub-leases granted to Allen Burton of Brompton,
bricklayer, and James Clark of Crutched Friars in the City,
carpenter. (ref. 25) In 1790 Clark was declared bankrupt, the
first of several builders on the estate to suffer this misfortune. (ref. 26) One of his assignees was James Turner of Whitechapel Road, a timber merchant and surveyor, who was
also much involved in Burton's speculations. (ref. 27) Other
builders who worked on the houses in Michael's Place
were Henry Adams of Chelsea, carpenter; Thomas Justice
of Brompton, carpenter; Benjamin Leathers of Finsbury,
plasterer; and William Smart of St. James's, carpenter. (ref. 28)
Most of the houses had narrow frontages and cost about
£350 to,£450 to buy, (ref. 29) but there were two ‘double ’
houses, Nos. 16 and 33, the latter ‘a very Urge handsome
and well finished messuage’ which was built by Burton and
briefly occupied by him. In 1792 both were purchased by
James Billington and his wife Elizabeth, the celebrated
singer. They lived at No. 16 in 1792– 3, before selling that
house for 900 guineas, and Elizabeth Billington later lived
at No. 33 from approximately 1804 to 1807. (ref. 30)
(fn. c)
Between Nos. 11 and 12 Michael's Place Novosielski
laid out a new road called Michael's Grove (now Egerton
Terrace), which originally extended only for some 135
yards south– eastwards from Brompton Road. On the
north– east side of the new road a terrace was erected
eventually consisting of ten houses although some were
not built until after Novosielski's death in 1795. (ref. 23) The
terrace stood approximately on the site of Egerton Place
and the houses were set well back from the road with long
front gardens. They also had gardens extending as far as
Yeoman's Row at the rear.
At the south end of Yeoman's Row Novosielski built a
large house with extensive grounds to the south– west for
his own occupation. The house, which was called Brompton
Grange, was completed by 1787 (ref. 23) but there is no
record of its appearance.
The final item in Novosielski's enterprise was a shallow
crescent of houses opposite to the site now occupied
by Egerton Crescent. He planned to call it Novosielski
Street, but after his death the name was changed to Brompton
Crescent. The crescent was originally intended to
consist of twenty– five houses, but the seven easternmost
ones were never built, their place being taken by three
larger houses erected in 1805– 7 and a group of coach-houses and stables. The original houses were thus rather
confusingly known as Nos. 8– 25 (consec.) Brompton
Crescent. They were built under sub– leases granted in
1792 to Thomas Hewson of St. George's, Bloomsbury,
surveyor, but it was over ten years before the terrace was
completed. (ref. 31) The quintessentially South Kensingtonian
architect Charles James Richardson lived at No. 22
from 1842 to 1850. (ref. 23) At the western end of Brompton
Crescent, where it joined Fulham Road, a larger house was
built on the site now occupied by Mortimer House.
Called Crescent House, it was completed in 1801. (ref. 32)
Novosielski died on 8 April 1795 at a time when the
building industry in general was encountering severe difficulties.
At Brompton he left a number of houses which
remained unfinished for many years, (ref. 22) and at Sidmouth
in Devon, where he had another speculation, there was
also an uncompleted crescent which still exists today in
truncated form as Fortfield Terrace. (ref. 33)
In his will, which was made very shortly before his
death, Novosielski stated that his estate was subject to
mortgages and other incumbrances and that ‘on account of
the present times it is impossible to ascertain what the
amount or surplus of the same may be after paying off such
incumbrances’. (ref. 34) His debts proved to be very extensive
and his widow had to sell Brompton Grange and move to
No. 13 Michael's Place. (ref. 35) The leases to Novosielski from
Rice and Griffith were assigned to Ransom, Morland and
Hammersley's bank. (ref. 36)
The purchaser of Brompton Grange was John Willett
Payne, a captain (later rear– admiral) in the navy and
private secretary to the Prince of Wales. (ref. 37) Payne lived
there until 1801 and two years later sold the house for
£3,800. (ref. 38) In 1830 it reverted to the Smith's Charity
trustees on the expiry of the original lease, and it was
occupied from then until 1842 by the famous singer John
Braham at a rent of £250 per annum. Braham invested
his large fortune in two unsuccessful theatrical ventures at
the Colosseum at Regent's Park and the St. James's
Theatre. In 1842, when he was heavily in debt, his
furniture was seized and the Smith's Charity trustees took
possession of the Grange. (ref. 39) It was demolished in the
following year and the houses in Egerton Crescent, Crescent
Place and the southern end of Egerton Terrace,
together with others now demolished at the south end of
Yeoman's Row, were erected in its stead. This development
is described in more detail below.
The Early Nineteenth Century
An important change in the disposition of the Smith's
Charity estate took place at the beginning of the nineteenth
century when the lease granted to Samuel Bucknall in
1760 was set aside. It had become increasingly clear that
the rent of £151 which was payable under that lease
represented only a fraction of the real value of the land
now that building development had progressed so far
westwards, and in 1801 the Attorney General, acting on
behalf of the recipients of the charity, instituted a suit in
Chancery against the current holders of the lease, the
Reverend Joseph Griffith and John Morgan Rice, the
grandson of Morgan Rice, and against the charity's trustees. The latter were probably friendly parties and offered
no defence, merely agreeing to abide by the decision of the
court. The Attorney General asked for the lease to be
declared void, claiming that under the terms of the trusts
set up by Henry Smith the trustees had not had the power
in 1760 to grant a lease for such a long term, that the lease
had only been executed by seven of the trustees, and that
even in 1760 the rent had not been the best that could have
been obtained for the land. (ref. 40)
The Reverend Joseph Griffith died in 1803, leaving his
second wife Harriet as his legatee, and the suit had to be
revived. (ref. 41) Eventually in 1807 the Lord Chancellor delivered
his verdict and not only set aside the lease but
ordered that the rents and profits received by the lessees
since the inception of the case in 1801 should be forfeited
and invested for the benefit of the recipients of the charity.
The sub-leases which had been granted to Novosielski and
others were, however, confirmed. (ref. 42) The income from
them was thenceforth received by the trustees and amounted to £773 per annum in 1807. By 1825 the rental had
been increased to £l,023. (ref. 42)
At around this time much of the undeveloped part of the
estate was occupied by a number of nurseries. There had
been nursery grounds at Brompton since the end of the
seventeenth century, the most famous being the Brompton
Park Nursery, founded in 1681. By 1825 the largest of
those located on the Smith's Charity estate belonged to
William Malcolm and Company. It consisted of seven and
a half acres approximately on the site now occupied by
Brompton Hospital and the western part of Onslow
Square, and of the fourteen and a half acres of the estate in
Chelsea. Malcolm also had another fifteen acres of nursery
ground on the sites now occupied by De Vere Gardens and
Queen's Gate Terrace and Elvaston Place. (ref. 43)
The site now covered by Pelham Crescent, Pelham
Place and Pelham Street formed part of the nursery of
Samuel Harrison, which comprised eight and a half acres
on the Smith's Charity estate and a further thirteen and a
hall acres on the Alexander estate immediately to the
north. Harrison, who had acquired the ground on the
Smith's Charity estate in 1815, was latterly in partnership
with William Bristow. (ref. 44)
The nursery of Thomas Gibbs occupied five and a half
acres immediately to the west of Harrison's ground. Gibbs,
who had established his nursery on the estate in 1800, (ref. 47)
used it both for horticultural purposes and for experiments
to produce improved crop seed. He grew specimens of all
known kinds of cereal and vegetables used in farming and
several kinds of grasses. There were a number of buildings
on the premises, including a substantial house which had
been erected in 1792, and a small cottage built of pise, a
form of dry-earth construction. Pisé had been popularized
by a Frenchman, Francois Cointcreaux, who wrote a
number of booklets on the subject and whose ideas
enjoyed widespread currency in England. He came to
London in 1815 and in the following year built the cottage
on Gibbs's nursery at the invitation of the Board of
Agriculture. The cottage was still in good condition when
Faulkner wrote his History and Antiquities of Kensington in
1820. (ref. 46) All of the buildings on the nursery were grouped
together at the northern end on part of the site now
occupied by Melton Court; the last of them was demolished
in 1850.
Eighteen and a half acres at the extreme western edge of
the estate, known historically as Brompton Heath and at
this time still detached from the main part of the estate,
were occupied by a Mr. Street, who was also described as a
nurseryman, but Starling's map of 1822 appears to show
most of his land in use as market gardens. Street was
succeeded in 1830 by William Joyce and, although the land
was then called Joyce's nursery, it was described as market
gardens in the tithe apportionment survey of 1843. (ref. 47)
Between Malcolm's and Gibbs's nurseries lay the
grounds of Cowper House (Plate 52d). This large house,
named after Henry Cowper, its occupant at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, stood on the south side of Old
Brompton Road on a site now occupied by the western part
of Melton Court. It can be identified with the house built
by Robert Sewell in the early seventeenth century and said
to have been rebuilt by Samuel Bucknall in the eighteenth
century. (ref. 48) From 1829 until its demolition in 1850 it was
used as a private lunatic asylum. (ref. 49) A conspicuous feature
of the grounds was a long avenue of elms stretching to the
Fulham Road, the line of which is preserved in the double
row of trees in the eastern part of Onslow Square gardens
and the single row in Sydney Close; the present trees are,
however, replantings. (ref. 50)
Another smaller house stood in an acre of grounds on
the site of Sussex Mansions. To its east was a terrace of
half a dozen very small houses which had been erected
under a building lease granted by Griffith and Rice to
Charles Bevan in 1793. (ref. 48) The occupants of the houses
were invariably poor and the difficulty had great difficulty in
collecting even the low rates assessed on them. (ref. 23) The
terrace was demolished in 1852–3. (ref. 51)