CHAPTER VIII - The Ware Estate
This estate, which is slightly under four acres in extent, comprises Selwood Terrace, Selwood Place. Elm Place, Lecky
Street (formerly Elm Mews), Regency Terrace and Nos.
110–132 (even) Fulham Road (formerly Elm Terrace).
Apart from some recent rebuilding in its southern part, it
forms an enclave of small-scale late-Georgian houses amidst
the predominant Italianate and Queen Anne of this area of
South Kensington. As a compact and separate unit of land-ownership. which actually remained in copyhold tenure of
the manor of Earl's Court until after building had commenced, it was ideally suited for suburban development
during the last great Georgian building boom of the 1820's.
The copyhold ownership of the estate had passed
through various hands in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, but for much of that period the land appears to
have been farmed by tenants in conjunction with the neighbouring Brompton Heath on the Smith's Charity estate. (ref. 1)
From 1802 to 1823, however, it was held separately by
Francis Shailer, a market gardener, whose neat
smallholding, surrounded by hedges, is clearly delineated
on the map of Kensington published by Thomas Starling
in 1822 (Plate 70a). (ref. 2) In 1823, perhaps at the termination of a twenty-one-year lease to Shailer, the copyhold
ownership was put up for sale. (ref. 3)
Figure 41:
The Ware estate. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1894–6
The purchaser was Samuel Ware, a successful and by
then prosperous architect whose best-known works in
London are the Burlington Arcade and the remodelling of
Burlington Mouse in Piccadilly. (ref. 4) On entering into possession of the land Ware informed the Kensington Turnpike
Trust of his intention to build there and suggested that the
trustees might like to take the opportunity to widen
Fulham Road and Selwood Lane, both of which came
under their jurisdiction. (ref. 5) Selwood Lane, which formed the
eastern boundary of Ware's holding, linked Fulham Road
with Old Brompton Road and was named after Richard
Sel(l)wood, the former owner of a nursery which had been
established on the eastern side of the lane at the end of the
seventeenth century. It was also sometimes known as
Sallad Lane, which was no doubt a corruption of Selwood
Lane, or Swan Lane after the Swan tavern which stood on
the north side of Old Brompton Road immediately opposite to the entrance to the lane. As well as purchasing
land from Ware, the turnpike trustees decided to straighten the lane by buying further land on the east side, then in
the joint ownership of John Lewis Fleming and the fourth
Earl of Harrington and in the occupation of William
Salisbury, nurseryman. (ref. 6) The straightened road was called
Selwood Lane on the large-scale Ordnance Survey map
published in 1867, but when shortly afterwards houses
were built along the portion north of the Ware estate they
were numbered in the complex of streets named Onslow
Gardens and the name Selwood Lane dropped out of use.
In the southern part of the street the terraces of houses on
each side have retained their original names of Selwood
Terrace and Neville Terrace, and thus this section of the
street has two official names.
Ware must have quickly obtained a promise from the
lord of the manor, Lord Kensington, to enfranchise the
copyhold, for by 1825 he was granting long leases of
building plots. The actual enfranchisement of all the land
except, for some unknown reason, the site of No. 21
Selwood Terrace, took place in November 1827 and cost
him £1,000; (ref. 7) the plot on which No. 21 stands was
enfranchised in 1861 for £53. (ref. 8)
Building appears to have begun simultaneously in Selwood Terrace, on the north side of Selwood Place, and in
Fulham Road where the houses stood opposite to Queen's
Elm and were given the name of Elm Terrace. Three
builders were involved, Samuel Archbutt of Coleshill
Street (now Eaton Terrace) on the boundary of Chelsea
and Belgravia, Christopher Surrey of Pond Place, Chelsea,
and James Ardin of Caroline (now Donne) Place, Chelsea.
Archbutt and Surrey worked in partnership and were
granted the southern of two large plots, while Ardin had
that to the north, the boundary between their respective
‘ takes’ being between Nos. 9 and 10 Selwood Terrace, the
differences in the fronts of which are still very noticeable.
With one exception, Ware proceeded in the normal
manner at this early stage of the speculation, granting
leases of individual houses to the builders or their nominees, or entering into agreements to grant such leases. The
leases were usually for eighty-one years from midsummer
1824, or for equivalent shorter terms if they began at a
later date, but there were several variations and not all the
leases expired at the same time. The exception to this
pattern was the south-eastern corner house, No. 1 Elm
Terrace, which was renumbered as 110 Fulham Road in
1866 and has now been demolished. Here Ware paid £50
to the turnpike trustees for the toll house which had
previously stood upon the site, and after taking it down he
let the new house (the building costs of which he probably
paid himself) to its first occupant, a baker, for twenty-one
years at a rack rent. (ref. 9)
Apart from Surrey and Ardin, only two of the lessees are
known to have been builders. They were William Huckel
the elder and younger of Duke Street, St. James's, who
were granted leases of Nos. 19 and 20 Selwood Terrace
in 1825. (ref. 10) Most of the remaining lessees were the first
occupants of the houses, but some also had wider interests
in the estate. Stephen Harrison, originally of Walham
Green, esquire, was granted leases of five houses in Selwood Terrace including No. 14, where he lived briefly in
1826–7, and No. 8, to which he then moved, (ref. 11) and
William Barber of Chelsea, gentleman, who was the lessee
of three houses, lived at No. 2 Selwood Terrace. (ref. 12)
By the end of 1825 Nos. 1 and 2 Elm Terrace, Nos.
12, 13 and 16 Selwood Terrace and No. 1 Selwood Place
had been completed and occupied, the last by James Ardin
himself. In the following year the remaining four houses in
the eastern part of Elm Terrace up to Elm Mews and all of
Selwood Terrace with the exception of the Anglesea public house and No. 21 were completed. The Anglesea was
leased in 1827 but does not seem to have opened until
1829, while No. 21 was not built until 1829 on the
piece of ground which then still remained copyhold. (ref. 13)
Building along the north side of Selwood Place proceeded more slowly. Nos. 2–6 were occupied by the end
of 1826, No. 7 in 1827, Nos. 8, 9 and 10 in 1828, No.
11 in 1829 and Nos. 12 and 12A (originally numbered
13) by 1831. No. 18, which was added to the eastern end of
the terrace, was built by 1831 on ground originally leased
with the Anglesea. (ref. 14)
On the south side of Selwood Place, the site of Nos. 14
and 15 was not part of Ardin's ‘take’ and these houses
belong chronologically and stylistically to the later development of Elm Place which will be described below.
Nos. 16 and 17 were built on a plot which was leased to
Ardin in 1829 but the houses themselves were not erected until 1834. (ref. 15)
The houses in Selwood Terrace have two storeys above
a semi-basement and are standard examples of late-Georgian speculative housing (Plate 65c). Nos. 1–9 (consec), for which Archbutt and Surrey were responsible,
have channelled stucco at ground-storey level, uncomfortably narrow arched doorcases, and sunk brick panels above
the first-floor windows, while Ardin's houses have plain
brick façades. Inevitably several have been altered, especially by the addition of an extra storey, and Nos. 4, 6 and
21 have been more thoroughly Victorianised. The Anglesea public house has an attractive stuccoed facade (Plate
66a) but has been so extensively altered inside that few
original features survive.
The terraced houses on the north side of Selwood Place
built by Ardin have three storeys without basements, their
stock-brick façades, well-proportioned window-openings
with slightly curved heads and honeysuckle-patterned iron
window guards providing a handsome though conventional
appearance (Plate 65a). The distinguishing features of
these houses, however, are the stuccoed doorcases, which
have shouldered architraves and prominent hood-moulds.
Similar doorcases are found in E1m Place (fig. 42), where
Ardin was not apparently involved, and their use may
indicate a more direct contribution by Ware to the design
of these houses than in Selwood Terrace. All of the houses
except Nos. 18, 1–3 and 8 now have channelled stucco on
the ground floor, but at No. 4 the stucco was added during
recent restoration. Other alterations include the addition
of extra storeys to Nos. 7 and 10.
Nos. 16 and 17 on the south side of Selwood Place,
which were also built by Ardin, form a pair of two-storey
‘cottages’ with an overhanging eaves cornice. Both houses
have been extended at the sides ‘The Studio, which is
situated to the east of No. 17 and has a large bracketed
doorcase, a tall studio window and an asymmetrically
placed gable, was originally built as a stable and coach house behind No. 14 Selwood Terrace in 1829. It was
later converted into a workshop and was probably given its
present form in c. 1909, when William Bateman Fagan, a
sculptor, took up residence. (ref. 16)
In Elm Mews (now Lecky Street) some five small
cottages were interspersed with stables and workshops,
one of the latter being a carpenter's shop belonging to
Christopher Surrey. (ref. 17)
All have now been demolished.
Archbutt and Surrey having quickly finished their part
of the initial development, Archbutt retired from the
scene. He had not been granted any leases of the completed houses and was apparently left with no interest in
the estate. Ardin was still engaged in building Selwood
Place, and so Ware seems to have relied entirely on
Christopher Surrey for the development of the remaining
vacant rectangular plot in the south-western corner of his
estate.
A new road, Elm Place, was laid out alone the middle of
the plot to link Fulham Road with Selwood Place, leaving
room for two groups of three houses to lace Fulham Road
on each side of its entrance. In May 1827 Ware entered
into a conventional building agreement with Surrey for the
construction of the western group, originally Nos. 10–12
Elm Terrace and later Nos. 128–132 (even) Fulham
Road, (fn. a) and for the granting of eighty-one-year leases to
Surrey or his nominees (ref. 18) Four months later, on Surrey's
direction. Ware granted such a lease of the central house
and the site of No. 1 Elm Place, which was included in
Surrey's ground, to William Bushell, a pianoforte-maker,
who eventually took up residence at No. 1 Elm Place. (ref. 19)
In June 1828, however. Ware and Surrey sold their
respective freehold and leasehold interests in Surrey's
plot, subject to the lease already granted and to an agreement to let No. 12 Elm Terrace for three years The
purchaser was William Bristow of Fulham Road, Chelsea,
gentleman, perhaps the nurseryman who was a partner
with Samuel Harrison (see page 60). (ref. 18) The eastern trio of
houses, formerly Nos. 7–9 Elm Terrace and later Nos.
122–126 (even) Fulham Road, now demolished, were
also sold freehold by Ware in August 1828 to Richard
Foster of Limehouse, a schoolmaster. (ref. 20)
Of these six houses in Fulham Road, the surviving
group at Nos. 128–132. which was completed in
1828–9, is a good example of the kind of terraced housing
which was springing up in the late-Georgian period along
the major thoroughfares leading out of London. The
houses have three full storeys above basements, with
channelled stucco at ground-floor level and exposed stock
brickwork above, round-headed doorcases, wrought-iron
window guards of the same pattern as those in Selwood
Place, and a bold stringcourse below the third-storey
windows.
The freehold sales of the two plots in Fulham Road
occurred at about the same time as Ware was mortgaging
the whole estate in July 1828 to Robert Langford of
Covent Garden, a solicitor, for £3,000 with an option to
borrow further sums up to £10,000. (ref. 21) In March 1829 he
also sold the freehold of another plot, this time on the
north side of Selwood Place and comprising the sites of
Nos. 9–12A, to James Ardin the builder. (ref. 22) The desire to
obtain a large amount of capital, which is implied by these
transactions, may have been the result of a wish on Ware's
part to take a more direct financial involvement in the
speculation than hitherto. In this context the absence of
any record of building leases of all but four of the houses in
Elm Place (and two of those were granted ten years after
building) may be an indication that the houses there were
built directly for Ware by Surrey at the former's expense.
Of the four exceptions, the site on which No. 1 was erected
had already been leased in 1827, Nos. 2 and 3 were
belatedly leased to Surrey in 1843 for eighty-one years
from 1834, and only at No. 10 was a similar lease granted,
to Surrey's nominee, at the time of building in 1836. (ref. 23)
The original houses in Elm Place were completed between 1830 and 1836 (ref. 14) and, apart from No. 1, form a
homogeneous group. They are two-storeyed houses, faced
with channelled stucco at ground-floor level and stock
brick above, and have a continuous moulded stucco parapet. Nos. 2–9 (consec.) on the west side form a symmetrical terrace of three-bay double-fronted houses interspersed at Nos. 4 and 7 with two-bay houses which project
slightly from the general building line (fig. 42). A similar
pattern is followed on the cast side, where Nos. 10 and 13
are the projecting, narrower houses, but here the
shortness of the range does not allow for strict symmetry
(Plate 65b). The appearance of these neat, small houses is
given added character by the use of doorcases with shouldered architraves similar to those in Selwood Place. Here
each door has a small rectangular fanlight above it, the
transom between them being sometimes embellished with
egg-and-dart moulding (fig. 42). In contrast to the other
houses, No. 1 has an arched doorcase, a smoothly rendered façade and projecting eaves.
Nos. 14 and 15 Selwood Place, which were built by
Surrey in 1834–5 but not leased to him until 1843, (ref. 24) are
virtually identical to the houses in Elm Place, apart from
the addition of a bay window to No. 15.
Selwood Lodge, a two-storey stucco-fronted house to
the north of No. 10 Elm Place, was built by Christopher
Surrey in 1842–3 as his own residence. It was leased to
him together with Nos. 14 and 15 Selwood Place in 1843
and he lived there until his death in 1865. (ref. 25) The site of
No. 15 Elm Place was originally occupied by a two-storey
shed which Surrey used as a carpenter's shop, and the
present house was built in 1886 by his son, Christopher
Richard Surrey. (ref. 26) Formerly a dour, brick-faced house
with two tall storeys and a mansard-roofed attic, typical of
the 1880's, it was substantially altered in c. 1962, when a
new entrance to Lecky Street was made on its south side,
and is now stuccoed and white-painted.
On the west side of Elm Place, No. 1a (originally called
Alpha Cottage), which is of a similar, though not identical,
appearance to the main group of houses in the street, was
built in c. 1860 on the curtilage of No. 128 Fulham Road
and first occupied, from 1860 to 1865, by John Liddell, an
architect who was employed by the Science and Art Department on the design of several of its monumental
buildings in South Kensington. (ref. 27) No. 1b, to the south of
No. 1a, was formerly an outbuilding of No. 128 Fulham
Road and has recently been converted into a separate
house; it differs from No. 1a in that its upper storey is
rendered.
Samuel Ware maintained a close control over the estate,
applying in 1839, for instance, to the Westminster Commissioners of Sewers for the construction of sewers in
place of the cesspools with which the houses were originally provided. (ref. 28) He died in 1860 with effects of ‘under
£60,000’ and by his will the estate was entailed on his
nephew, Charles Nathaniel Cumberlege, and his descendants on condition that they adopted the surname and
arms of ware. (ref. 29)
Figure 42:
Nos. 2–9 Elm Place, plans, elevations and detail of doorcase. Christopher Surrey, builder, 1830–3. Back addition on plan
restored from lease-plan in Middlesex Deeds Registry
From the evidence of the census, enumerators’ books the
houses were respectably tenanted in the nineteenth century
despite their small size and, to Victorian eyes, un
appearance. In 1871, for instance, only three
of the sixty-six inhabited houses were occupied by more
than one family, although at seven others there were
lodgers or boarders, Excluding visitors, there were 291
occupants in the sixty-six houses (an average of 4.4 per
house). At forty-two of the houses there was one servant
living-in and at five more there were two servants; in Elm Place only two of the houses were without at least one
servant in residence on the night of the census. The
householders’ occupations ranged from the building trades
to marshal and chief constable of the City of London. A
number lived on private incomes, while others were clerks,
tradesmen, commercial travellers or small-scale manufacturers, such as bootmaker, harness-maker and pianoforte-maker. Persons who belonged to the professions included
three music teachers, two doctors, a naval lieutenant, a
journalist, an auctioneer, a surveyor and an architect
(Zephaniah King at No. 3 Selwood Terrace). (ref. 30)
Although it cannot boast of many famous inhabitants,
this small area does have associations with two outstanding
English novelists. Charles Dickens lodged here in the
summer of 1835 in order to be near his future wife,
Catherine Hogarth, who lived in York Place on the south
side of Fulham Road. In a letter written in June of that year
he gives his address as 11 Selwood Terrace, but, confusingly, some other letters of about that time are headed
simply ‘ Selwood Place’ (ref. 31) D.H. Lawrence stayed at No. 9
Selwood Terrace for about six weeks in the summer of
1914 and it was while he was living here that he married
Frieda von Richthofen at South Kensington Register
Office in July. (ref. 32) <David Rhind, the Scottish architect, died at No. 19 Selwood Terrace in April 1883 (see Roderick Brown, ed., The Architectural Outsiders, 1985, p.204).>
The estate remained in the ownership of the Cumberlege-Ware family until after the war of 1939–45. At that
time it included all of the houses which had been built
under Ware's auspices with the exception of Nos.
128–132 Fulham Road and the adjoining buildings on
the west side of Elm Place up to and including No. 1,
which had been sold to William Bristow in 1828, and
Nos. 9–12A Selwood Place, which had been sold to James
Ardin in 1829. The freehold of the ground (in which Nos.
122–126 Fulham Road stood, which had also been sold
in 1828, must have been re-purchased in the meantime.
In 1949 a small company, Ware Estates (Kensington)
Limited, was formed to take over the management of the
estate, but shareholding was restricted largely, or perhaps
wholly, to members of the family. In 1960, however, the
company went into voluntary liquidation after having sold
the estate to Shop Investments Limited for £394,862 net,
the proceeds from the sale being distributed among the
shareholders. (ref. 33)
The new owners decided to carry out some redevelopment and began in Lecky Street where in 1960–2 the
existing dilapidated and war-damaged buildings were
demolished and five two-storey neo-Georgian houses
were built in their place. (ref. 34) A new entrance was made into
Lecky Street from Elm Place, and this made possible the
rebuilding of the frontage to Fulham Road between Selwood Terrace and Elm Place as one composition. Plans for
this were drawn up in 1963 and the resulting neo-Georgian
terrace was built in 1964–6. It consists of ground-floor
shops with three-storey houses above, which are entered
from an upper level at the rear and have been given the
separate name of Regency Terrace. The company's
architect for these schemes was Raymond J. Sargent. (ref. 35)
Plans for the erection of further buildings at the rear of
the houses on the north side of Selwood Place were
thwarted in 1964 when the demolition of No. 4 Selwood
Place, which was necessary to provide access to the ground
at the rear, was prevented by the vigilance of nearby
residents and the prompt action of the London County
Council in serving a building preservation order on the
owners. (ref. 36)