CHAPTER VII - The Brompton Hospital Estate
This chapter describes the buildings of Brompton Hospital itself, and the area immediately to the west which was
purchased by the governors of the hospital from the fifth
Earl of Harrington in 1853 and on which Nos. 80–108
(even) Fulham Road, Nos. 9–17 (consec.) Onslow
Gardens and the houses in Foulis Terrace, Neville Street
and Neville Terrace were erected.
Brompton Hospital
The initiative for the foundation of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest came from a young
solicitor, Philip Rose. Apparently a clerk in Rose's firm
had fallen ill with tuberculosis but could not obtain admission to any of the general hospitals in London which,
because of the long-lasting and frequently terminal nature
of the illness, invariably had rules specifically excluding
patients suffering from consumption. Accordingly, in
January 1841 Rose, who was then only twenty-four years
old, wrote a number of letters to friends and associates
urging the need to remedy this situation. His brother-in-law. Dr. William Harcourt Ranking, who was physician to
the Suffolk General Hospital, helped to draw up a prospectus, and at a meeting held in Rose's house in Hans
Place in March of that year a resolution was passed to
establish a special hospital for consumptive patients. (ref. 1)
The first hospital to cater largely for sufferers from
tuberculosis and other chest illnesses was the Royal
Sea-Bathing Hospital at Margate (originally the Margate
Infirmary), which was founded in 1791 In London, however, the only special hospital for diseases of the lungs was
the Infirmary for Asthma. Consumption and other Diseases of the Lungs (later the Royal Chest Hospital), which
had been established in Spitalfields in 1814, but by the
1840's even this solitary institution had ceased for a while
to admit in-patients. (ref. 2)
There was thus a prima facie need for a hospital for the
treatment of a disease which was becoming increasingly
widespread as the population of the metropolis increased,
and at a public meeting held in May 1841 and attended by
several prominent members of the medical profession
Rose's venture was given enthusiastic support. Appeals to
the Victorian philanthropic conscience proved successful
and by March 1842 funds were sufficient to allow an
out-patients' department to be opened in Great Marlborough Street, Westminster. Later in that year a ten-year
lease was taken of a detached house in Smith Street,
Chelsea, called the Manor House, which was adapted to
receive the first in-patients by September 1842. (ref. 3)
Most admissions were made on the basis of letters of
recommendation from governors or subscribers, but the
medical staff were able to choose a small number of
in-patients from among the out-patients being treated by
them. The administration of the hospital was vested in a
court of governors which met quarterly, a committee of
management which met weekly and a number of specialist
committees, especially the influential medical commitee.
Rose was honorary secretary from the hospital's foundation in 1841 to his death in 1883. He was a personal
friend and financial adviser to Disraeli, and, largely
through the latter's influence, he was created a baronet in
1874. (ref. 4)
In 1843 the committee of management decided to enlarge the Manor House and held a competition for a
suitable design. The competitors’ instructions included
directions from the medical staff that the wards were to be
varied in size but should not contain more than eight beds,
that they should open into corridors about nine feet wide
and that they should be capable of being heated and
ventilated without the use of open fires. (ref. 5)
A building committee was formed, but its early records
have not survived and the precise sequence of events is
unclear. The competition was advertised for September
1843 (ref. 6) and the award of a prize of thirty guineas to an
unnamed winner was recorded in the annual accounts. (ref. 7)
This was evidently Frederick John Francis, the eventual
architect of Brompton Hospital, who was later said to have
been chosen ‘out of above thirty competitors’. (ref. 8) By November, however, the building committee had decided that it
was impracticable to extend the Manor House and, having
resolved to seek a better site for a new building, asked ‘Mr
Francis…to enquire at the Office of Woods and Forests
whether any suitable plot of Crown land might be obtained
for building’ (ref. 9)
The site eventually acquired 'after much difficulty’ was
some three acres of land on the north side of the Fulham
Road belonging to the Smith's Charity estate. It had
formerly been part of the large nursery of William Malcolm and Company and was chosen partly because
Brompton was considered to be one of the most salubrious
neighbourhoods in the vicinity of the metropolis. The
charity's trustees agreed to let the ground at a rent of £170
per annum with the understanding that they would sell the
freehold to the hospital when its funds allowed. (fn. *) The
trustees insisted that their architect and surveyor, George
Basevi, should not only approve the elevation and specifications of the hospital but also have the final word about
the precise location of the building. He duly imposed a
cordon sanitaire, about one hundred feet wide, between the
eastern wing of the hospital and the boundary of the site on
that side, thereby pushing the whole building over towards
the western edge of its plot where the adjoining land did
not belong to the Smith's Charity estate (see fig. 37). The
hospital's governors later acknowledged that ‘from the
position of the ground and other circumstances, the Building was almost necessarily placed at one extremity of it…
Although this step seemed at the time to be a matter of
necessity more than of choice, it was not done without
deliberation.’ The acquisition of the land to the west,
which formed part of the Harrington-Villars estate,
thereafter became a major objective of the governors. (ref. 10)
Figure 37:
The Brompton Hospital estate. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1862–72. The broken line marks the division between the
areas purchased from the trustees of Smith's Charity (right) and the fifth Earl of Harrington
After these negotiations with Basevi (for which he was
paid a fee of £36 15s. (ref. 11) ), Francis's design was ready by 1
February 1844, when collectors’ cards bearing an illustration of the proposed building were issued. (ref. 12) What
relationship the final design (Plate 62a) bore to the
scheme which had won the competition is not known, but
the differences between the new site in Brompton and the
old one in Chelsea suggest that substantial changes must
have been made. The H-shaped plan which Francis adopted
was a conventional one for hospitals erected on relatively
restricted sites, and the Tudor style which he employed was
also a familiar idiom for such institutions, and one moreover
with which he had had some experience as a pupil of Thomas
Hopper, the architect of a number of Tudor Gothic country
houses. (ref. 13) Basevi also used Tudor Gothic for almshouses and
similar buildings, but whether he had any influence on the
appearance of Brompton Hospital must be conjectural.
Francis, who, like Rose, was only in his mid-twenties at the
time of this, his first major commission, went on to develop an
extensive and successful practice in partnership with his
younger brother Horace. (ref. 14)
The hospital had to be erected in stages as funds became
available, and the first part to be built was the west wing and
half of the central linking block, including the main entrance.
A formal building agreement with the Smith's Charity
trustees was drawn up, and a contract was made with the
builders George and William Bird of Hammersmith to
complete the initial phase of the building programme for
£11,290. The foundation stone was laid by the Prince
Consort amid elaborate ceremony on 11 June 1844. (ref. 15)
The west wing was completed in 1846 and the first
patients were admitted in that year. A small gabled porter's
lodge was built to Francis's designs in the south-west
corner of the grounds in the following year, (ref. 16) and in
1849–50 a chapel was erected to the north of the hospital, to
which it was joined by a long corridor (see St. Luke's
Chapel below). An Act of Parliament (passed in 1849) was
needed to enable the chapel to be built, and the opportunity
was taken to establish the hospital as a corporate body and
obtain powers for it to buy land and grant long leases (ref. 17)
The benefactor who paid for the chapel, the Reverend
Sir Henry Foulis, baronet, thereafter played a major role in
the affairs of the hospital. He was appointed a vicepresident in 1849 and held the influential position of
chairman of the committee of management from 1850 to 1875.
Probably through his influence, his chosen architect for the
chapel, Edward Buckton Lamb, was retained as architect
for the completion of the main building in collaboration
with Francis.
Plans for the east wing and the remaining half of the
linking block were submitted by Francis and Lamb in 1850,
but work was not begun until the following year when a
contract to build the carcase of the extension at a
cost of £5,500 was concluded with H. W. Cooper, builder,
of St. Pancras (ref. 18) Cooper completed the contract in 1853
but his tender for fitting out the building was too high and
another builder, John Glenn of Liverpool Road, Islington,
carried out this work for £4,854. (ref. 19) A kitchen and other
offices were added at the rear of the linking block, and
when the whole hospital was finally completed in 1854 it
could accommodate 220 in-patients. (ref. 20)
In the building of the eastern half of the hospital Francis's design of 1844 was faithfully adhered to on the south
front where the principal architectural effect was naturally
concentrated (Plate 62a). Here the facade of red brick
with blue-brick diapering is enlivened by prominent buttresses, a crenellated roofline and the plentiful use of Caen
stone dressings in quoins, stringcourses, hood-moulds
and, more extensively, in the three oriel windows which
decorate the ends of the wings and the entrance tower in
the centre of the linking block. The tower, which appears
to have been modelled on the founder's Tower at Magdalen College. Oxford, had a broad flight of stone steps
leading up to the principal entrance at first-floor level. The
steps have recently been removed, however, for the erection of a sun lounge which projects in front of the former
main entrance. The picturesque asymmetrical turret with a
squat crocketed spire on the west side of the tower contains a spiral staircase which originally provided access to
the medical officers’ rooms.
The east-facing facade of the later wing differs from the
facade of the west wing in detail. The latter, which is now
partly clad with Virginia creeper, has a narrow entrance
bay flanked by octagonal piers, while the east wing has a
wide projecting centre with a canted bay on each side of the
entrance. The most prominent feature of the later wing,
however, is a tower which was designed to house a ventilating shaft It is treated with marked architectural effect and
decorated with small-scale battlements and finials at the top
and blind windows on its sides, those on the upper stages
filled with caned heraldic shields. The latter were
favourite sculptural devices of Lamb, whose experience
with towers at his many churches probably led to his
assumption of the principal role in designing this one.
The planning of the hospital reflects the wishes of its
medical staff as expressed in the instructions to competitors in 1843 (fig. 38). The low ground storey was originally
occupied by the administrative offices, laboratory, dispensary and museum, and by the waiting- and consulting-rooms for out-patients. The first and second floors, both
fourteen feet high, contained the wards for female and
male patients respectively. These wards, though varying in
size, were intended to hold no more than eight beds, and
open on to long corridors or galleries, ten feet wide, which
can be used as day rooms. To protect the wards from cold
winds the corridors are arranged so that they occupy the
east side of each wing and the north side of the central
block. Dormitories for nurses and servants were provided
in attic rooms on the north side of the hospital, Francis and
Lamb having been specifically ordered to construct a
servants’ staircase from which there would be no direct
access to the ward floors. (ref. 21)
Much thought was given to the methods of heating and
ventilating the wards and corridors so that an even temperature and constant supply of fresh air could be provided by
artificial means, even though the wards were furnished
with fireplaces. In the west wing the system used was one
developed by Dr. Neil Arnott, a well-known physician and
expert on heating and ventilation, whereby air warmed in a
basement heating plant passed through openings in the
walls and was eventually carried up to the roof. Difficulties
in maintaining an even temperature were encountered,
however, and when the cast wing was built Messrs. Haden
of Trowbridge were called in to provide the necessary
equipment. Their method required the erection of a ventilating shaft rising some twenty-five feet above the roof,
and it was the need to accommodate this shaft which led to
the erection of the distinctive tower above the east wing. (ref. 22)
Victorian mechanical ingenuity extended beyond the
provision of a flow of warm air to the wards, for a description of the hospital in the annual report for 1856 described
enthusiastically how, 'The steam, which heats the water
both in the Kitchen and the Baths attached to the wards,
turns the spit, grinds the coffee, and raises the lift which
takes up the Patients’ meals hot from the Kitchen, as well
as other necessaries; it also raises a lift for conveying those
Patients to and from the galleries for whom exercise in the
grounds is desirable.’
Inside the hospital there is understandably little in the
way of decoration, Francis and Lamb having been specifically instructed in 1850 that there should be ‘no cornice or
moulding or any expensive decoration of any sort’. (ref. 23)
Nevertheless the main open-well staircase behind the
former entrance hall has a balustrade and plain columns of
stone and a vaulted ceiling of stained and varnished wood
with large carved angels on the bosses. The board room at
the north end of the east wing has deep wooden beams
with Gothic tracery and a simple stone chimneypiece.
In 1853 the governors purchased four acres of land on
the west side of the hospital from the trustees of Lord
Harrington. Most of this land was used for speculative
house-building, which will be described below, but, as
indicated earlier, a major reason for its acquisition had
been the desire to provide extra space on the west side of
the hospital. Accordingly half an acre was added to the
hospital's grounds, which were laid out to Lamb's designs
in 1854. (ref. 24)
In 1863 a report on the hospitals of the United Kingdom
was submitted to the Medical Officer of the Privy Council
by Dr. John Syer Bristowe, a physician at St. Thomas's
Hospital, and Timothy Holmes, a surgeon on the staff of
St. George's. Although the report generally favoured
larger wards and natural ventilation in accordance with
contemporary ideas on hospital design, its authors found
much to praise at the Brompton Consumption Hospital,
where ‘the small wards and heating of the air seemed to us
to be well adapted for the class of cases’. They praised the
‘handsome’ building and the ample grounds in which
patients could take exercise, and were impressed with the
general management and arrangement of the institution.
The specialist nature of the hospital generally kept it
immune from the changing currents of thought on hospital
planning; the small wards were retained and it was not
until the very end of the nineteenth century that fresh air
from open windows was considered to be more beneficial
than artificial ventilation. (ref. 25)
Few changes were made to the original building during
the nineteenth century. In 1855 Arthur E. Robinson was
appointed surveyor to the fabric, but the office was soon
allowed to lapse. (ref. 26) The decay of the external stonework
began to cause problems, however, and in the late 1860's
David Brandon was consulted on such matters. In 1871
the stone chimneys on the west wing proved so defective
that they had to be replaced with terracotta ones in an
Elizabethan style, and the need to obtain proper estimates
for such work prompted the committee of management to
appoint a permanent architect. The post was offered to
George Pownall, who had acted as the hospital's surveyor
during building operations on its estate to the west, but he
declined and recommended his son-in-law, Henry Arthur
Hunt junior, who was duly engaged at an annual salary of
twenty-five guineas. (ref. 27)
During his tenure as architect and surveyor, which
lasted until 1881 when he resigned and was replaced by
Lewis Karslake, (ref. 28) Hunt carried out a number of small
works. In 1872 a subway was constructed under Fulham
Road to link the main hospital building with a group of
houses on the south side of the road (in the parish of
Chelsea) which the governors had purchased; John Aird
and Sons were the contractors at a price of £1,150. (ref. 29) Two
years later the porter's lodge was rebuilt on a larger scale to
Hunt's design in red brick with Portland stone dressings;
the builder, whose tender was for £1,691, was the hospital's former surveyor, Arthur E. Robinson. (ref. 30) In 1876
Messrs. Haden were called in to improve the heating
and ventilation of the west wing and they recommended the
construction of an extraction shaft similar to that on the cast
wing. In order to save costs, however. Hunt was asked to
design a smaller and less decorative tower, and the resulting
unobtrusive addition was built in that year. (ref. 31)
A substantial bequest was made to the hospital in the
early 1870's, and this enabled the governors to replace the
houses on the south side of Fulham Road with one large
building. In 1877 Hunt was asked to supply outline plans
for the new building, but it was made clear to him that he
would not necessarily be appointed as its architect. The
committee of management was eventually asked to choose
between three candidates, Hunt, Arthur Graham, who was
recommended by Florence Nightingale, and Thomas
Henry Wyatt. The choice fell on the last, no doubt because
of his extensive experience in hospital design throughout
the country. (ref. 32)
The instructions issued to Wyatt by the medical committee
reflected the successful planning of the main hospital
building, for he was asked to provide small wards,
ideally holding five or six beds, and wide corridors, which,
in the event, were similarly situated on the north and east
sides of each ward. He was also given the general direction
that ‘The Style of Architecture should be not inharmonious with that of the existing Hospital, carried out with
due regard to economy in material and construction’. He
responded by submitting sketch elevations in both Elizabethan
and Queen Anne styles and the latter was chosen; a
narrow preference for terracotta over Mansfield stone for
the dressings was also expressed. Higgs and Hill were the
contractors and the foundation stone was laid by the
Prince of Wales on 17 July 1879. T. H. Wyatt died in
August 1880 and his son, Matthew Wyatt, who had already
largely taken over his lather's practice, replaced him as
architect. The new building, or south block, was opened by
the hospital's president, the fifteenth Earl of Derby, on 13
June 1882. The cost of the building was some £60,000. (ref. 33)
The south block of Brompton Hospital was originally an
E-shaped building with its main front to Fulham Road and
has a basement, four main storeys with an additional
mezzanine floor in part of the tall ground storey., and extra
floors within the roof. The style adopted by the Wyatts is a
conventional Queen Anne in red brick with terracotta
bands and dressings, sporting shaped gables at each end
and a Dutch gable in the centre. Two octagonal turrets at
the angles of the projecting centre bay, with two others at
the rear, perform the same function as the towers on the
earlier building in housing ventilating shafts. When
opened the south block accommodated 137 in-patients,
making Brompton Hospital, with over three hundred beds,
by far the largest tuberculosis hospital in the country. (ref. 34)
In 1898–9 a nurses’ home was erected behind the south
block, facing Chelsea Square, to the designs of Edwin T.
Hall. A long, shallow building, originally four-storeyed with
additional rooms behind a large segmental gable in the
centre, it is in a transitional style between Queen Anne and
free classicism in red brick with Portland stone dressings
and bays The builder were Foster and Dicksee and the
cost some £32.000. (ref. 35)
Figure 38:
Brompton Hospital, plans in 1931
In the 1920's and 1930's some in-filling took place in
the courtyards on the north side of the original building,
but most additions were made on the south side of Fulham
Road including an extension at the western end of the
south block in a matching style and the construction of an
extra floor within the roof of the nurses’ home. The
hospital's architects during this period were Alfred Saxon
Snell and Phillips, who had a large hospital practice. (ref. 36)
When the National Health Service came into operation
in 1948 Brompton was placed in the category of teaching
hospitals and became the official centre in London for
instruction in diseases of the chest. Most of the extensive
building work which has taken place recently has been in
connexion with this teaching role. Initially a single-storey
building capable of enlargement was erected on the east
side of Foulis Terrace (thereby encroaching on the open
space which had been acquired at high cost in 1853) and
opened on 26 October 1949 as the Institute of Diseases
of the Chest (now the Cardiothoracic Institute) of the
University of London. (ref. 37) In 1958 a four-storey laboratory
building was erected for the Institute at the northern end
of this range. (ref. 38)
These building schemes were the work of Saxon Snell
and Phillips, who also drew up designs for a further
extension to the west of the south block in 1963, but in
March 1964 the ill-health of the sole remaining partner,
P. R. Rees Phillips, led to his resignation and the appointment of Adams, Holden and Pearson as architects to the
hospital. (ref. 39) The latter completed the south block extension
and undertook several additions to the Institute in phases
during the 1960's. The work involved the addition of a
second store) to the existing range along Foulis Terrace
and the extension of the range to the south which necessi
tated the demolition of Hunt's lodge. (fn. *) In 1966 Adams,
Holden and Pearson also designed the obtrusive projecting
sun lounge which was added to the centre of the main
front at first-floor level, to the considerable detriment of
Francis's original elevation. (ref. 41)
Further structures, generally of prefabricated materials,
have been erected in various parts of the grounds in a
manner now common in older hospitals, and at the time of
writing (1982) the proposed construction of a new chest
and heart hospital in Chelsea which would absorb Brompton
Hospital makes the future of the building uncertain.
St. Luke's Chapel
The chapel attached to Brompton Hospital (Plates 62b. 62c.
63. figs. 39–40) was built in 1849–50 to the designs of
Edward Buckton Lamb and enlarged in 1891–2 by the
architect William White.
When Frederick Francis drew up plans for the hospital
which was to be built on the new site at Brompton in 1844
he set aside a plot at the north end of the east wing for a
chapel and made a drawing of his proposed design. (ref. 42) The
building of the cast wing had to be delayed because of lack
of funds, however, and a ward in the west wing was fined
up as a temporary chapel, thereby depriving the hospital of
much-needed bed space and making the provision of a
permanent structure an urgent necessity.
The problem was resolved in 1849 when a new benefactor appeared in the person of the Reverend Sir Henry
Foulis, ninth baronet, of Ingleby Manor, Yorkshire, prebendary of Lincoln and rector of Great Brickhill, Buckinghamshire. Foulis, who does not appear to have had any
previous connexion with the hospital, offered to pay for the
erection of a chapel as a memorial to his recently deceased
sister, Sophia Frances Pauncefort Duncombe. He insisted
on approving the design and arrangements for the chapel
and chose F.B. Lamb as architect on the recommendation
of Lady Frankland Russell, widow of Sir Robert Frankland Russell of Thirkleby, Yorkshire. The Frankland Russells,
who were amateur stained-glass artists, had worked
with Lamb on several churches in the North Riding.
including All Saints, Thirkleby, which was being rebuilt at
that time to his designs. (ref. 43)
An Act of Parliament was quickly obtained to allow the
chapel to be built and consecrated and, as the governors
had not let purchased the freehold of the whole hospital
site, to enable the Smith's Charity trustees to give the site
of the chapel gratis to the hospital. (ref. 17) Hopkins and Roberts
of Islington, who submitted the lowest tender at £1,613.
were engaged as contractors, and the foundation stone was
laid by Sir Henry Foulis on 30 August 1849. A separate
contract was made with Samuel Pratt of New Bond Street,
designer of wood carving, for executing the carved oak
finings, including the pews, stills, pulpit, reading desk and
altar table. Even with extras the cost was only some
£2,500 for the chapel itself and a further £1,500 for the
long range which connects it to the hospital. The completed chapel was consecrated on 27 June 1850. (ref. 44)
(fn. c)
Figure 39:
Brompton Hospital Chapel, plan
In 1891 the hospital's committee of management decided
to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation
of the institution by enlarging the chapel and, on the
suggestion of a member of the committee, chose William
White as architect. He virtually rebuilt the chancel, which
was enlarged in breadth, length and height as well as by the
addition of an organ chamber on the north side, and he
also built an aisle on the north side of the nave, re-using
the original stonework as far as possible. The contractor
was H. E. Nightingale of Albert Embankment and the total
cost was over £4,000. The much-altered chapel was reconsecrated on 22 October 1892 (ref. 45)
E. B. Lamb was described by Goodhart-Rendel, in a
term that has passed into the language of architectural
criticism, as a ‘rogue-architect’ by which he meant one
who used traditional styles in a highly personal and idiosyncratic
manner that defied both imitation and analysis. (ref. 46)
Lamb's eclectic use of Gothic forms at a time when Pugin
and the Camdenians were steering the Gothic revival into
strictly confined channels made him in many ways the arch
rogue. The Ecclesiologist, that organ of Gothic rectitude and
ritualistic orthodoxy, could never come to terms with his
quirky genius. It viewed Brompton Hospital chapel ‘with a
feeling of sadness’ that the munificence of Sir Henry
Foulis had produced such a debased building, (ref. 42) failing to
recognise that in Foulis Lamb certainly had an ally, and,
moreover one who no doubt felt that the broad evangelism
implicit in his architect's approach to church architecture
was appropriate for a congregation which would not for the
most part be using the chapel from choice. Much of
Lamb's work in the chapel has, however, been ‘tamed’ by
White's alterations and by the removal of some of the
decorative stonework, but what remains can be supplemented by early engravings and photographs of the
exterior. Unfortunately, however, there is no record of
the interior, and especially the chancel, as Lamb left it.
William White, on the other hand, was a member of the
Ecclesiological Society and well-regarded in the 1850's
and 1860's when his work was boldly innovative, (ref. 47) but by
the time he was called upon to remodel the chapel he was
in his sixties and had produced little of note for some
years. His work there, though certainly worthy and producing
a greatly increased sense of space, suffers in comparison with the exuberance of his predecessor's.
The chapel, which is faced with Kentish rag and Caen
stone dressings, stands out in sharp contrast to the brick-faced
hospital to which it is attached. Today it is largely
hemmed-in by other buildings and the rationale for providing
it with such an imposing appearance is not obvious,
but when built it was surrounded on three sides by open
fields and it was even raised on an artificial mound to make
it more conspicuous, a reminder, no doubt, that the hospital was a lit object for Christian charity.
The chapel is connected to the hospital by a long,
single-storey range which is faced with red brick at the
hospital end and stone in front of the chapel. Here Lamb
placed another short block crossways containing a gabled
porch (now almost completely obscured), lobby and vestryroom. A bell-turret with an octagonal upper stage originally
stood at the south-east angle of the two ranges but it
has recently fallen victim to the persistent in-filling of the
hospital's courtyards.
The west front of the nave in its original form (Plate
62b) well illustrated Lamb's style with its large five-light
window, basically Perpendicular but decorated with crockets,
ball-flowers and elaborate ‘cuspy’ tracery to use
Goodhart-Rendel's adjective), set closely between buttresses
with crocketed pinnacles. Additional pinnacles broke
through the steeply raking sides of the gable and a trio of
smaller pinnacles crowned the apex, the middle one carrying
a cross. The rectangular openings above the window
originally contained the arms and crest of Sir Henry
Foulis. Such intricate, not to say finicky, decorative stonework
is particularly vulnerable to decay, however, and
much of it has been stripped off the upper part of the front
including all but the topmost pinnacle. White may have
made some alterations in 1891–2 but more recent repairs
have also taken their toll. The west front of the aisle which
was added in 1891–2 respects Lamb's basic forms and
has a two-light window set between buttresses, three tiny
blind lancets at the apex of the gable, a cross above and
crocketed pinnacles on each side.
The sides of the nave are separated into three bays by
buttresses with crocketed pinnacles, and have two-light
windows with complex tracery characteristic of Lamb and
lozenge-shaped openings inset with quatrefoils interrupting
the parapet above. (Although the north wall was
moved several feet outwards to accommodate the new
aisle, Lamb's decorative stonework and windows were
carefully re-incorporated to match the south side.) The
short transepts, which The Ecclesiologist contemptuously
dismissed as ‘ paddle-boxes’, were originally both fivesided but that on the north side is now flush with the aisle
to the west.
The organ chamber, which projects slightly on the north
side, is entirely the work of White, as for the most part is
the three-bay chancel, the original chancel having been a
bay shorter as well as narrower and lower. Some stonework
was re-used and the five-light east window, more
strictly Perpendicular in form than the west window, was
reinstated in the new east wall, shorn of some of its more
delicate tracery (Plate 62c). The two single-light windows
on the south side of the chancel were preserved from the
original structure, one of them having formerly been on
the north side.
The roofs were slated by White, who added two coppercovered fleches over the nave (with a weather vane) and
aisle respectively, Lamb's roofs having been tiled with
diaper patterning.
The main approach to the interior of the chapel is from
the first floor of the hospital (the lowest ward floor)
through the linking range along a corridor which descends
gradually until the chapel's outer appendages are reached.
Here the flat ceiling of the corridor gives way to open-timber
roofs, supported in the entrance lobby on corbels
decorated with monograms of Lamb, Foulis, his sister and
(Sir) Philip Rose, the hospital's honorary secretary. After
the long cloistral approach the nave unfolds quite dramatically,
its most arresting feature being an open-timber roof
in which hammerbeams, arched braces with traceried
spandrels arranged both crossways and lengthways,
diagonal ties, struts and pendants vie with each other in a
manner described by The Ecclesiologist as ‘ decidedly astonishing… Such a chaos of carpentry so near our
heads we have seldom seen.‘ Lamb was to produce even
more remarkable displays in the vast timber roofs of later
churches such as St. Martin, Gospel Oak, and St. Mary
Magdalene, Croydon, but the effect in such a small chapel
must have been even more startling before the north aisle
was added and a solid wall pierced only by windows filled
with stained glass enclosed the nave on that side. Now a
stone arcade of wide arches carried on pillars of quatrefoil
section with foliated capitals separates nave and aisle (Plate
63c).
White's chancel roof is placid by comparison and relies
for effect on simple hammerbeams ornamented with large
caned angels and heraldic shields, the latter probably
re-used from the original roof (Plate 63b). (ref. 48)
Besides the roof of the nave, the main interest of the
interior of the chapel lies in its fittings and stained glass.
Most of the stained and varnished oak fittings designed by
Lamb and made by Samuel Pratt remain and have been
supplemented by others in a matching style. They include
the pulpit, reading desks, altar table, altar rails, low chancel
screen and the stalls and pews. The bench-ends are for
the most part decorated with conventional fleur-de-lis
poppyheads but are occasionally embellished with the arms
and crest of Sir Henry Foulis. The crest, consisting of a
cross surmounting a crescent, is a ubiquitous feature of the
chapel's decorations in wood, stone and tile. Its use was
defended by Lamb as symbolising the triumph of Christianity over paganism, but The Ecclesiologist could not refrain
from wondering what particular triumph of Christianity
over Islam had taken place in Brompton. Some of the pews
are provided with arm rests for the benefit of weaker
patients, not, as was mischievously stated in some quarters,
for the governors and subscribers. (ref. 49) A small stone font
inset with painted ceramic panels of New Testament
scenes in blue on gold, signed and dated J. Rochefort
1875’, <probably John Rochefort, an amateur artist> stands in the south transept.
The remodelled chancel incorporates Lamb's caned
stone fittings including florid two-part sedilia with the
usual cross and crescent motif (fig. 40), two canopied
niches in the angles of the cast wall which originally
displayed the Ten Commandments, and an equally elaborate
aumbry on the north side of the sanctuary. The
mason who was paid extra for work on the sedilia was ‘ Mr
Bellini’, perhaps William Bellenie of Fisher Street, Red
Lion Square. (ref. 50)
The chapel is particularly rich in stained glass, most of it
donated by benefactors at the time of building and of
Lamb's own designing. In 1849, on proposing that the
west window should be filled with heraldry, he was asked
to prepare a plan for all of the windows (ref. 51) and his monogram
appears on several, while others arc sufficiently
similar to be confidently attributed to him. Most of the
designs, in bright reds and blues against backgrounds of
yellow stain with scrolled patterns, illustrate New Testament
themes, with a special emphasis on healing and
ministering to the sick. In execution the figures are often
naively treated, but the identity of the manufacturers is
unknown. The west window is the most elaborate and, in
the main lights, depicts the twelve apostles under canopies.
The heraldry so much favoured by Lamb is used principally in the south transept window where the committee of
management chose to honour Foulis by placing his arms
and crest and those of his sister. (ref. 52) A small window in the
entrance to the nave depicting the widow's mite has
Lamb's monogram and a pair of dividers at the bottom,
and was a gift of the architect himself. (ref. 53)
The glass in the north transept window, which takes St.
Cecilia playing the organ as its theme (appropriately, as the
organ originally stood in the transept), was presented and
probably designed by Lady Frankland Russell. The window
at the west end of the north aisle, which dates from
1892, was designed and made by A. L. Moore and
Company of Southampton Row. (ref. 54) The east window, also
originally filled with stained glass, is now mostly clear.
Figure 40:
Brompton Hospital Chapel, sedilia
The Estate
The land which was purchased by the governors of the
hospital from the trustees of the fifth Earl of Harrington in
1853 was the southern half of an irregularly shaped parcel
of ground, about eight acres in extent, which lay on the
east side of the lane variously known as Selwood, Sallad or
Swan Lane. This eight-acre piece had formed a detached
part of the large Harrington-Villars estate and had been
divided, together with the remainder of that estate, between
its aristocratic co-owners in 1851, the southern four
acres devolving on Lord Harrington. The northern part,
which had fallen to Baron Villars, had subsequently passed
into the hands of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of
1851 who in turn conveyed it to the Smith's Charity
trustees in exchange for other land (see page 103).
The whole eight-acre site has particular significance in
the history of gardening. Here in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth century Richard Sel(l)wood ran a famous
nursery, and in the mid eighteenth century, when the
tenant was John or Jean Rubergall, it was noted for the
cultivation of lettuces. (ref. 55) In 1789 William Curtis, the
author of Flora Londinensis and the founder of The Botanical
Magazine, took over from Rubergall as tenant and moved
the botanical garden which he had opened in Lambeth in
1779 to this spot. The Brompton Botanic Garden, as it was
known, covered about three and a half acres, almost
exactly conforming to the area which is now occupied by
the streets and houses on the hospital's estate, while the
remaining four and a half acres to the north were used for
experiments in agriculture. After Curtis's death in 1799
his partner William Salisbury kept the garden here until
1808 when he moved it to Sloane Street, Chelsea. (ref. 56) He
continued to use the ground at Brompton for a nursery,
however, until 1829 when he was succeeded there by
David Ramsay, whose establishment was known as the
Queen's Elm or Swan Lane nursery. Ramsay's son, David
Allan Ramsay, was the tenant when negotiations were
taking place between Lord Harrington's representatives
and the hospital authorities, and after vacating the nursery
he pursued a chequered career as a builder on the Ladbroke
estate in northern Kensington. (ref. 57)
The governors of the hospital had cast anxious eyes on
this piece of ground from the moment that they had
acquired the site for their new hospital from the Smith's
Charity trustees in 1844. Forced by the Charity's surveyor
to build the hospital closer to the western boundary of their
plot than they would have wished, they viewed ‘ the attainment
of this additional land as an object of the deepest
importance to the well-being of the [hospital]; whether
it be considered merely as adding to the present recreation-ground
for Patients, or for the more important purpose
of preventing the close proximity of other buildings,
or for a still more lasting object, of the allowing of a future
extension of the Building in that direction’ . (ref. 58)
After the partition of the Harrington-Villars estate in
1851 the hospital was under the impression that it had
been promised first refusal of Lord Harrington's plot, but
in the autumn of 1852 it was perturbed to learn that the
Earl had concluded an agreement with the builder William
Jackson to cover all of his estate with speculative housing,
including the four acres in question. The surveyor George
Pownall, who had previously warned the hospital that Lord
Harrington's land was about to be offered for speculative
development, was immediately authorized to treat with
Jackson for the purchase of his interest and with Lord
Harrington for the conveyance of the freehold. Pownall
was in a good position to negotiate, for as surveyor to
Baron Villars and H. B. Alexander and as agent for (Sir)
Charles James Freake he was already much involved in the
complex arrangements for the disposal of land in South
Kensington which had followed the Great Exhibition of
1851. (ref. 59)
The precise area of the land was four acres and ten
perches, and Jackson, on agreeing to relinquish his interest
for £500 per acre, was promptly paid the requisite
£2,031. (ref. 60) By February 1853 Pownall had concluded
terms with Lord Harrington for the purchase of the
freehold for £13,195 (£3,248 per acre), the Earl agreeing
to wait three years for payment and in the meantime to
receive interest at three-and-a-half per cent on the sum. A
formal agreement to that effect was drawn up in May 1853,
and the purchase money and interest were paid in full in
April 1855 with the help of a loan of £9,000 from the
hospital's honorary treasurer, John Labouchere, who was a
partner in Williams and Deacon's Bank. As soon as the
deed of sale had been signed a mortgage was arranged with
three spinster sisters who were clients of the law firm of
Philip Rose, the hospital's honorary secretary, to repay
Labouchere's loan. (ref. 61)
In all the hospital had paid slightly over £16,000, or
almost exactly £4,000 per acre, for the land, a sum which
was higher, though not substantially higher in some instances,
than the prices paid by the Commissioners for the
Exhibition of 1851 to acquire their estate a little to the
north. (ref. 62) Understandably, the governors felt called upon
to include a long justification of the purchase in their
annual report for 1853.
Once in possession of the land, and having set aside
about half an acre to add to the grounds of the hospital, the
committee of management sought to promote speculative
building development on the remainder. By April 1853
(before the formal agreement with Lord Harrington had
been signed) Pownall had prepared a scheme for letting
the ground to Charles Delay of Lower Belgrave Place
(now Buckingham Palace Road), builder, and a building
agreement was drawn up in July. Delay, who had been the
building lessee of No. 10 Beauchamp Place in 1844, when
he was described as a plasterer, (ref. 63) was currently engaged in
the building of the Oratory House in Thurloe Place as a
sub-contractor of William Jackson and it seems likely that
he was recommended by the latter. One of his sureties for
carrying out his contract with the hospital was William
Wright, manager to Jackson's brother, the contractor
Thomas Jackson. The other surety was Charles Richardson
of Paddington, a lime merchant.
The plan accompanying the agreement shows the present
layout of streets on the estate, with a total of eightyseven house plots marked out. No doubt this was merely
meant to be a general guide as under the agreement Delay
was required to build only sixty-nine houses and to finish
the development within six years. He or his nominees were
to be granted leases for terms equivalent to ninety-seven
and three-quarter years from 24 June 1853 at a total
ground rent for the whole area of £120 in the first year,
rising to £700 in the fifth and succeeding years. The
houses were to be built according to plans and elevations
previously submitted to, and approved by, the hospital's
architect and surveyor, that is Pownall, who was to be paid
four guineas per house ‘ for his time and trouble in and
about the arrangement of the Plans and the superintending
the building of the several messuages’. A long schedule of
building materials to be used included the stipulation that,
apart from internal partitions where place bricks were
permissible, the brickwork was to consist of well-burnt
grey stocks; the scantlings of the timber were also specified. (ref. 64)
While Delay was preparing the ground and laying
foundations, however, the committee of management had
second thoughts about how much land they should incorporate into the grounds of the hospital and asked the builder
what price he would accept for surrendering the eastern
of the two blocks delineated on the plan, up to the street
now called Neville Street. On being told that he would
want £2,000 and a proportionate reduction in his ground
rent, the committee resolved to re-acquire the ground,
George Godwin senior, acting on Delay's behalf, sought
to modify slightly the terms which the committee thought
had been agreed, and angered them by a ‘ peremptory’
letter demanding that the revised terms should be
accepted at once. They refused, and later attempts by
Godwin to be more conciliatory failed, the committee
taking such umbrage over Godwin's tone that they resolved to have nothing more to do with the matter and
ordered Delay to proceed with his contract forthwith. In
the event Godwin had done his client no favour and the
stoppage of building works while negotiations were proceeding may have contributed to difficulties which Delay
subsequently encountered. The involvement of Godwin in
this affair. however, raises the possibility that he may have
designed the houses in Fulham Road and Foulis Terrace
which were built under the agreement with Delay. (ref. 65)
Delay commenced building in earnest in November
1853 along Fulham Road, where the houses were originally
named Rose Terrace after (Sir) Philip Rose. (ref. 66) The first
block to be built, Nos. 80–92 (even), included the Rose
public house, for which Delay sought a licence in February
1854. (ref. 67) In March of that year he applied to the hospital for
mortgages, ‘ the Committee having kindly offered to assist
him with advances’, and £3,000 was lent in the name of the
Reverend Sir Henry Foulis, the chairman of the committee of management. (ref. 68) A further £1,500 was borrowed on a
mortgage of the Rose public house to a client of Rose's law
firm. (ref. 69) All seven houses, which, apart from the Rose, had
shops on the ground floor, were completed and occupied
by the end of 1855. (ref. 70)
In April 1855 Delay, who had established himself as the
proprietor of the Rose public house, thus combining the
callings of speculative builder and licensed victualler in a
manner by no means uncommon in the mid nineteenth
century, began building in Foulis Terrace, which was so
named after Sir Henry Foulis. (ref. 71) In July of that year,
however, his existing building agreement was replaced
with a new one, partly because the hospital had now
completed the purchase of the freehold of the land but
mainly because Delay wanted some of the provisions
modified. On reflection the committee of management
probably thought that their treatment of him in the autumn
of 1853 had been rather harsh and they extended the time
limit for completion of the development by eighteen
months, granting at the same time an initial period at a
peppercorn rent. The new agreement also contained a
clause allowing Delay to erect a church or chapel in lieu of
some of the houses, a necessary stipulation for he had
already received a request to make a plot available for a
chapel and had obtained the committee's approval. The
schedule of materials was shorter, one change requiring
external walls, where not stuccoed, to be faced with
malms. (ref. 72)
The mid 1850's were troublesome years for builders,
and the easing of the conditions of his contract was
probably designed to tide Delay over a period of financial
stringency, but by January 1856 Pownall was having to
urge the committee to grant him further assistance ‘ in the
unfavourable state of the money market’. ‘ I believe’, he
wrote, ‘ that but for the unforseen difficulties which the
State of Public affairs has brought on all speculations
similar to that under consideration, Mr Delay would have
had no difficulty in obtaining the necessary funds to carry
on his Building operations from the ordinary sources, but
with the high interest which money now bears, a preference is given to other and more available security's [sic]
and he has had and still has difficulty in obtaining sufficient funds to carry on the speculation with advantage to
himself or to the Governors of the Hospital, who considering the high price they have given for the land are greatly
interested in getting the property covered with Buildings
and the ground rent secured at as early a period as
possible.’ The committee accordingly resolved to lend
Delay a further £5,000, making £8,000 in all, and were
told that this sum, together with £2,000 from one of
Rose's clients, would enable him to finish the houses in
Foulis Terrace and Fulham Road. (ref. 73) Williams, Deacon
and Company lent £5,000 to the hospital to cover the
advance to Delay, both transactions being at the same rate
of interest of six per cent. (ref. 74)
Delay was further helped by the purchase of No. 14
Foulis Terrace for £950 by the hospital as a residence for
its chaplain, (ref. 75) and the remaining houses in the terrace and
Nos. 94–108 (even) Fulham Road were begun in 1856. (ref. 76)
In the autumn of that year, however, the development
received a serious set back when Delay became insane and
was confined in the Grove House Asylum at Bow, (ref. 77) He
died a year later, in August 1857. (ref. 78)
Delay's widow, Ellen, and his clerk of works, Robert
Wright, struggled on with the speculation. They found it
difficult to dispose of any of the houses in Foulis Terrace
and placed the blame on the unpleasant sight of male
patients exercising in the hospital grounds opposite, ‘ walking up and down smoking and expectorating’. They
requested that the west side of the hospital should be used
by the female patients, who would presumably behave with
more decorum, but had to repeat the complaint several
times before the committee of management took action. (ref. 79)
In 1858 six of the houses in the street were leased to John
William Sanders of Guilford Street, St. Pancras, builder,
who was presumably called in to assist with the development. (ref. 80)
None of the houses in Foulis Terrace (with the
possible exception of the chaplain's house) were occupied
before that year. (ref. 70)
Early in 1859 Ellen Delay asked the committee of
management to accept the rent which had been reserved to
date—some £440—instead of the higher rent which was
then due under the building agreement and to postpone
further the date when the full rent of £700 would be due,
‘in consideration of the unprecedented difficulties which
have attended the working out of this contract and the
severe losses that both she and her late husband have
sustained’. The committee were sympathetic and Philip
Rose in reply suggested that Mrs. Delay might like to give
up the undeveloped part of the land which she held under
the agreement. She readily consented, and in return for
the hospital remitting an outstanding mortgage debt of
£2,200 and paying her £200, she also surrendered her
interest in four houses in Fulham Road, Nos. 96, 98, 102
and 104, which had not yet been let. (ref. 81) The hospital soon
found a purchaser who was prepared to pay £650 for each
of these houses, but after some legal difficulties had arisen,
he was eventually granted long leases at rents of £60 per
annum per house. (ref. 82)
The houses in Foulis Terrace were all taken by 1860,
but some of the houses and shops in Fulham Road were
not occupied until 1861. (ref. 70)
The undeveloped ground was let within a short time of
its surrender by Mrs. Delay. The builder who took it over
was Thomas Stimpson of Brompton Row, Brompton
Road, a carpenter by trade. (ref. 83) He agreed to build at least
fifty houses at an ultimate ground rent (after five years) of
£260 per annum, thus making up the £700 which had
been anticipated under the original agreement with Delay.
As before, Pownall was to approve the elevations, and brief
general specifications were appended to the building agreement. (ref. 84)
Stimpson was fortunate in taking over the speculation
during an upturn in the building cycle when demand was
high and credit plentiful, but he was also assisted by a loan
of £2,000 from the hospital. (ref. 85) The building agreement
was signed in November 1859 and by May 1863 he had
been granted leases for a sufficient number of houses to
secure the whole of the ground rent of £260 for which he
was liable. Under the terms of the agreement he was
entitled to receive any subsequent leases at a peppercorn
rent, but he proposed that another £100 in ground rents
should be created in return for a payment to him of a sum
equivalent to twenty years’ purchase, namely the £2,000
which he owed to the hospital. The committee agreed, the
remaining leases were granted by mid 1864 at ground
rents amounting to £100, and his debt was cancelled. (ref. 86)
Stimpson built forty-nine houses in all in Neville Street,
Neville Terrace and Onslow Gardens, the shortfall being
accounted for by the erection of a school behind Onslow
Chapel, and only one of the houses appears to have been
still unoccupied at the end of 1865. (ref. 70) The reason for the
street name Neville is not known, but it does not appear to
have had anything to do with the hospital.
The first lessees of the individual houses in Neville
Street and Neville Terrace included a number of persons
connected with the building trades, nearly all with local
addresses in Brompton and Chelsea, who were evidently
assisting Stimpson with the development. They were
George Brown, plumber and builder; Henry Joseph Chappell, smith; Charles Dunning, carpenter and builder;
James Edwards, builder; Thomas Emery, plumber; William Morgan of Albert Terrace, Knightsbridge, builder;
Christopher Richard Surrey, builder; John Henry Surrey,
builder; George Taylor, ironmonger; and Thomas Tozer
of Crescent Mews, Belgrave Square, builder. (ref. 87)
The leases of Nos. 9–16 (consec.) Onslow Gardens (fn. d)
were divided between Alfred Williams of Pelham Street,
who initially described himself as a builder and later as
architect and surveyor, and Thomas Wyatt of Maddox
Street, Mayfair, and later Sydney Street, Chelsea, architect and surveyor. (ref. 88) No. 16, of which Williams was the
lessee, was sold in 1864 for £2,250 to the two daughters
of William Makepeace Thackeray, who had had to move
out of their father's house at No. 2 Palace Green after his
death on Christmas Eve 1863. (ref. 89) Alfred Williams, who was
for some time assistant district surveyor and later district
surveyor for South Kensington, took up residence himself
in 1865 at No. 17 Onslow Gardens (formerly No. 15
Neville Terrace), where he shared an office with the then
district surveyor, T. L. Donaldson, their former premises
having been in Pelham Street on the site of the present
London Transport offices. Williams was not the first
lessee of No. 17, however.
By 1863 the hospital was receiving the full ground rent
of £700 which Pownall had thought that the estate would
bear. In addition it had obtained an extension to its
grounds which he considered to be worth £100 per annum, and if this is added to the £700, the governors had
paid almost exactly twenty years’ purchase for Lord Harrington's land. This was by no means an excessive rate,
especially as the hospital had a valuable reversionary interest in the houses which had been erected. Despite the
delay in the completion of building development, the
hospital had, indeed, fared rather well from its investment
in contrast to the sad fate of the first developer.
The houses built under the auspices of firstly Delay and
secondly Stimpson fall into two groups, the earlier houses
having fully stuccoed facades and the later ones grey
brick with stucco dressings. Of the first group, the two
terraces at Nos. 80–108 (even) Fulham Road, which have
three storeys above ground-floor shops, have been greatly
mutilated, only the Rose public house retaining an impressive display of dressings with faceted quoins, elaborate
architraves to the windows and a bracketed cornice.
Foulis Terrace consists of a symmetrical group of fourteen houses, each originally of four main storeys (the
additional storeys at Nos. 10 and 11 dating from 1875 (ref. 90) ,
with Doric porches and standard Italianate features above.
The balconies at first-floor level have iron railings which
are identical in pattern to those used by C. J. Freake on the
neighbouring Smith's Charity estate. Inside, according to a
description in 1858, the houses had a dining-room and
library on the ground floor, two drawing-rooms on the first
floor and five bedrooms and a dressing-room on the top
two floors. (ref. 91)
The houses built under the agreement with Stimpson
display a number of variations on the Italianate theme.
Nos. 9–l6 (consec.) Onslow Gardens are divided by
Neville Street into two groups of four tall, impressive
four-store), houses, in which the bold Tuscan porches,
well-spaced window-openings with wide architraves, prominent stringcourse at third-floor level and crowning
entablature with dentil cornice and guilloche-band frieze
convey an air of solid prosperity (Plate 63b).
The houses in Neville Street are much smaller, the
majority having only three storeys above basements, and
the decorative motifs are more crowded. Each side of the
street consists of a terrace of thirteen houses in which the
three houses in the centre and two at each end are
advanced slightly from the general building line. On the
east side Nos. 1–2 at the south end and Nos. 12–13 at
the north end have an additional full storey above the
cornice, but on the west side the symmetry is rather
surprisingly destroyed by the omission of the extra storey
from Nos. 25–26. The addition of attic storeys with
dormer windows to some of the other houses commenced
as early as 1871 when it was stated that ‘ any addition to the
houses in Neville Street will be for the interests of the
Hospital’. (ref. 92)
In Neville Terrace the house fronts are less standardised and display an almost playful combination of decorative motifs (Plate 64c), perhaps the result of an attempt to
produce a foil to the dour and at that time unfashionable
late-Georgian houses of Selwood Terrace opposite. At the
south end of the terrace No. 1 and the entrance bay of No.
2 share a wide gabled facade which is set back, presumably to avoid encroachment on the view of the Onslow
Chapel to the south. Alterations were soon made to several
of the houses. No. 17 Onslow Gardens (originally No. 15
Neville Terrace) was raised by a storey in 1872 and
further altered in 1875, and extra storeys were also added
to No. 8 in 1878 and No. 4 in 1885, although the hospital's
architect, Lewis Karslake, did say of the latter addition that
it would be ‘ a decided improvement as regards the interior
of the house but will damage the general appearance of the
Terrace’. (ref. 93)
The census of 1871 was the first to be taken after all of
the houses on the estate had been completed. (ref. 94) Apart from
the shops with living quarters above in Fulham Road,
which are perhaps best placed in a separate category, there
are sixty-three houses in Foulis Terrace, Neville Street,
Neville Terrace and the small part of Onslow Gardens
which belongs to the estate. Three of these houses were
being looked after by caretakers on the night of the census
while awaiting new occupants, and of the other sixty, nine
were used as lodging-houses (seven of them in Neville
Street) and No. 13 Onslow Gardens housed a girls’ boarding-school. The remaining fifty houses had 284 occupants, of whom 107 were servants, an average of 5.68
persons (including 2.14 servants) per house. The biggest
households were in Onslow Gardens, where three of the
resident families each had five servants. The total number
of occupants in the nine lodging-houses was sixty-three,
an average of exactly seven per house; most of the lodgers
described themselves as annuitants or shareholders. Some
even had their own servants, but in six of the lodginghouses only one general servant attended to the needs of
everybody else.
Apart from the three caretakers, nine lodging-house
keepers and headmistress of the girls’ school, there were
fifty householders, of whom seventeen lived off the proceeds from rents, government funds, stocks and shares or
annuities. This large rentier element was, however, actually outnumbered by those belonging to the professions, who
totalled twenty-two. They included four solicitors, three
barristers, three retired army officers, three music teachers
(all living in Neville Terrace), two clergymen (the chaplain
of Brompton Hospital and a curate of Holy Trinity,
Brompton), a civil engineer, an artist, an artistic repairer
(from the South Kensington Museum), a physician, a
dentist, an architect and surveyor (Alfred Williams at No.
17 Onslow Gardens), and an ‘ editor and journalist’ (Leslie
Stephen, who was living at No. 16 Onslow Gardens with
his first wife, Harriet Marian, the daughter of William
Makepeace Thackeray, and her sister, Anne, later Anne
Thackeray Ritchie). Nine of the householders were connected with commerce and industry—two merchants, a
‘ warehouse man’, a linen manufacturer, a commercial
traveller (who was not present on the night of the census
but whose wife described his occupation in those words),
two builders (Thomas Stimpson at No. 1 Neville Street
and Christopher R. Surrey at No. 10 Neville Terrace), an
upholsterer and a retired contractor. The remaining two
householders were clerks in the civil service.
In Fulham Road all but one of the houses (No. 96) were
occupied by the families and assistants of the proprietors
of the ground-floor shops. The households were generally
small with one, or sometimes two, servants, and in some
instances none at all. The exceptions were a draper who
occupied three of the houses and had fourteen assistants
living-in as well as four servants, and the publican of the
Rose who had three servants. Two of the houses were
divided, the other occupants being an annuitant and a
shareholder, and the head of the household which occupied the premises above a lock-up wine shop at No. 96
also derived his income from dividends. In all there were
ninety-nine occupants of the fifteen houses, of whom
eighteen were servants and eighteen more were shop
assistants.
The expansion of the hospital since the war of 1939–45
has led to the adaptation of several houses on the estate to
provide services for the hospital or accommodation for its
staff, while other houses have been let on a short-term
basis so as to be available for similar uses in the near
future. In Neville Terrace, however, houses have continued to be let on long leases or sold freehold, a policy
first introduced in 1979, amid the uncertainties brought
about by leasehold reform legislation and when attempts to
sell houses on eighty-year leases were proving unsuccessful. (ref. 95)
The governors have used the proceeds from the sale
of houses in Neville Terrace to purchase property in
King's Road, Chelsea, adjacent to the site of the proposed
new chest and heart hospital, for much the same reasons
that induced their predecessors to buy the land adjacent to
Brompton Hospital some 130 years ago.
Onslow Chapel, Neville Terrace
This chapel (now demolished) was built in 1856 for an
interdenominational congregation which had been meeting for some years in the former premises of the Western
Grammar School on the site of the present No. 2 Alexander Place (see page 85). The first minister, the Reverend
John Bigwood, was a Baptist, and the chapel quickly
became known as the Onslow Baptist Chapel.
The chapel was a substantial building finished in Kentish rag with Bath stone dressings and was later described
as ‘ one of those early attempts of the Nonconformists to
establish a better style of architecture in their buildings for
public worship’ (Plate 64a). The towers with octagonal
open belfries and spires which flanked the west front were
conspicuous landmarks in the district before many of the
surrounding houses and churches were built. The interior
had a western gallery and an unusual arched ceiling divided into compartments by beams and intersecting ribs
with enriched bosses at their main junctions. The architect
was William Mumford and the builder was Thomas Rudkin of St. Giles in the Fields. A large hall which served as a
schoolroom and lecture-hall was erected in 1862 behind
the chapel, facing Neville Street.
The contract price for the chapel was £2,369 and the
entire cost was estimated at the time of building to be
about £3,500 The cost of the hall was said at the time of
opening to be £900, but in 1872 it was stated that about
£6,000 had been spent on both structures. A lease of the
chapel site was granted by the governors of the hospital in
1856 at a ground rent of £42 per annum, and another
lease of the hall was granted in 1862 at a further annual
rent of £10. (ref. 96)
The chapel continued to be used until shortly after the
war of 1939–45, but after standing empty and decaying for
some years it was demolished in 1961. (ref. 97)