CHAPTER X - The Day Estate in Drayton Gardens
For more than two hundred years the Day family has
owned land in Old Brompton on both sides of Old
Brompton Road, but only the southern portion of the
estate is described here. This area, formerly a three-acre
field called Rosehall or Rose Hawe, is now occupied by
Nos. 1–39 (odd) and 4–56 (even) Drayton Gardens, Nos.
135–157 (odd) Old Brompton Road, Nos. 10–13 Thistle
Grove and a few properties on the east side of Cresswell
Place (fig. 45). The history of the other part of the Day
family's land, on the north side of Old Brompton Road,
which was customarily known as the ‘six acres’, and which
now comprises Hereford Square, Brechin Place, Rosary
Gardens and Wetherby Place, will be described in volume
XLII of the Survey of London
The two parts of the estate have been in common
ownership since at least the seventeenth century, when the
land was (and remained until 1835) copyhold of the manor
of Earl's Court In the 1530's Rosehall had been in the
tenure of one Thomas Thatcher and subsequently of his
son, John (d. 1558), who owned a substantial copyhold
estate in the vicinity but not, it seems, the piece known as
the ‘six acres’. (ref. 1) By 1661, however, both Rosehall and the
‘six acres’ were among a small group of copyhold
properties held by James Dyson, and by 1666 these two
alone had descended to his son Francis. (ref. 2) Thereafter they
remained in the ownership of the Dysons until the early
eighteenth century, when they passed into other hands. (ref. 3)
The Day family first secured an interest in the property
in 1743. This was through the marriage of Benjamin Day,
the son of a successful worsted weaver in Norwich, to Ann
Dodemead, daughter and co-heir of Walter Dodemead,
esquire, of St. Paul's Covent Garden, (ref. 4) who had acquired
the property in 1735 by foreclosing on a mortgage. (ref. 5) A
fellow-parishioner of the Dodemeads in Covent Garden,
Day was a mercer by trade, with a shop or warehouse at the
north corner of Tavistock Street and Charles (now
Wellington) Street, which doubtless afforded a London
outlet for the family business in Norwich. (ref. 6)
On the death of Walter Dodemead in 1744 Ann Day
and her two sisters, Elizabeth Brent and Susanna Vincent,
became the joint owners of their father's lands. (ref. 7) But in
1753 Ann and Susanna surrendered their share to
Elizabeth, who died in 1755 leaving the property to her
husband. Thomas Brent, with the proviso that if he died
childless it should pass to her nephew, James Frapwell
Day, the second son of Benjamin and Ann Day. (ref. 8) And this
is what eventually happened, though it was not until 1772
that James Frapwell Day came into his inheritance
following the death of his uncle's brother, the Reverend
William Brent, who had been left a life-interest by
Thomas Brent's will. (ref. 9)
From James Frapwell Day, who died unmarried in
1819, (fn. a) the estate passed to a nephew. He was James Day
of Horsford near Norwich, (ref. 10) who in 1835 purchased the
enfranchisement of the copyhold tenure from Lord
Kensington, the lord of the manor of Earl's Court. (ref. 11)
The present proprietors of the estate (now by a number
of sales considerably reduced in size) are the direct
descendants of James Day (see fig. 46). He died in 1875,
and by his will placed the estate in the hands of trustees
until all the children of his son, Gerard, should come of
age. It then passed to his eldest grandson, Herbert Allen
Day, who later achieved local fame as a socialist and
philanthropist in Norwich, (ref. 12) and it is now owned by two
of the latter's grandchildren.
Figure 45:
The Day estate in Drayton Gardens Based on the
Ordnance Survey of 1949–63.
Figure 46:
Abridged pedigree of the Day family, showing the owners of the Brompton estate in hold.
In the 1820's and '30's Rosehall, the three-acre field on
the south side of Old Brompton Road, was used as a
market garden, Henry Kennett, William and William
Thomas At(t)wood being successive tenants of it. (ref. 13) After a
period of relative quiescence in building activity in
London, there were signs in the early 1840's of a revival,
and this evidently encouraged James Day to think about
developing his property. By the summer of 1843 Rosehall,
though still under cultivation as a market garden, was
already being classified by the Tithe Commissioners as
‘Building Ground’, (ref. 14) and in January 1845 Day concluded
an agreement to let the ground to two speculators. These
were Joseph Dunning of York Street, Foley Place, St.
Marylebone, and William Ward of Northampton Road,
Clerkenwell. (ref. 15) In the agreement they are both described
as builders, but it is as architects, with an address in
Hanover Chambers, Buckingham Street, Adelphi, that
they appear both in directories and in the early leases soon
to be granted.
Dunning, who was then aged about thirty-one, had been
involved professionally in the development of the Norland
estate in northern Kensington since 1841. There he had at
first worked as an assistant to the architect Robert Cantwell,
before assuming an independent role as survey to several
of the principal developers—a function he continued to
perform until at least 1851. As a speculator he built more
than twenty houses on part of the estate in Portland Road in
the mid 1850's. (ref. 16) In 1861 he was practising his profession
from lodgings at No. 7 Barkham Terrace, Southwark; ten
years later he was still at the same address, having in the
meanwhile (it seems) married his landlady. (ref. 17) Of Ward's
career, either before of after his involvement with the Day
estate, nothing is known.
Under the terms of their agreement with Day, Dunning
and Ward were required to construct a new road down the
middle of the site, from north to south, build fifty-seven
houses and complete the whole development within seven
years. (ref. 15)
At its southern end the new road was to link up with an
existing road, then called Thistle Grove, which extended
northward from the Fulham Road as far as the southern
boundary of Day's property (see page 166). In this way a
new thoroughfare was to be opened between Old
Brompton Road and the Fulham Road. But instead of a
single name being adopted for the whole street, as is now
the case, the longer, southern section continued to be
known as Thistle Grove while Day's portion was originally
called Drayton Grove. (fn. b) This dual nomenclature survived
until 1865, when the Metropolitan Board of Works
abolished the name Drayton Grove, and for nearly twenty
years the entire road, newly renumbered from south to
north, was called Thistle Grove. It was renamed Drayton
Gardens in 1884 and given its present sequence of house
numbers in 1894. In 1907 the name Thistle Grove was
revived, being applied (very confusingly) to the old
pathway formerly called Thistle Grove Lane which runs
parallel to and cast of Drayton Gardens.
The development of Rosehall took place under the
overall supervision of Day's surveyor, the local architect
John Blore (1812–82), of Michael's Place, Brompton,
who provided the layout plan and designed all the houses.
These he grouped into three terraces of unequal length,
one facing Old Brompton Road, and two in Drayton
Grove. Each terrace is basically symmetrical, consisting
mainly of three-storey houses over basements with one or
more four-storey houses as a centrepiece (Plate 67, fig.
47). Executed in stock brick with copious stucco dressings,
Blore's designs are in an orthodox late-Georgian manner,
showing little to justify the later assertion of The Building
News (echoed by the architect himself) that ‘the style
adopted is Italian’. The dressings of the doorcases,
however, seem distinctively Victorian, those in Old Brompton Road by reason of the console brackets supporting
the straight hood-moulds, and those in Drayton Grove
by reason of the Doric pillared porches. (ref. 19)
Blore's authorship of the design is avowed by an
inscription incised into the front of No. 151 Old Brompton
Road which reads J. BLORE ARCH 1846.
For supervising the construction of the houses Blore
was to be paid a fee of £3 per house by the developers. (ref. 15)
As soon as the houses were covered-in Dunning and
Ward could apply to Day for a grant of a ninety-nine-year
lease for each house or group of houses. The individual
ground rents were not specified in the agreement but they
were to be apportioned in such a way as to produce after
five years a total annual ground rent for the whole site of
£110 (equivalent to just over £36 an acre). The houses
were to be occupied only as private dwellings, and the
leases granted by Day contained restrictive covenants
forbidding the premises to be used for any trade, sale or
exhibition, manufactory, lunatic asylum or any other
business ‘except surgeon, apothecary, sculptor, artist or
seminary for young ladies’. (ref. 20)
Road-building and sewer-laying occupied the developers during the spring and summer months of 1845, and
house-building did not begin until September. (ref. 21) The first
to be completed were the nine houses fronting Old
Brompton Road between Thistle Grove Lane and Drayton
Grove (Plate 67b, fig. 47). Now numbered 135–151 (odd)
Old Brompton Road, they were originally known as
Drayton Terrace, a name that can still be seen cut into the
stucco of the pedestal-course below the first-floor
windows of Nos. 135 and 151. All nine houses were leased
in February 1846 to Dunning and Ward, who immediately
mortgaged them for £1,000. (ref. 22) Apart from what is now
No. 135 they were all occupied by the end of 1848. (ref. 23)
At the time of the census of 1851, when six of these nine
houses were still in the hands of their first occupants, the
heads of household included a professor of music, a
solicitor, an upholsterer, a lodging-house keeper and two
clerks, one of them the chief clerk in the office of Cox and
Company, the bankers. The total number of people then
living in Drayton Terrace was fifty-three, of whom twelve
were servants. In 1861 the number of resident servants was
still twelve and the total number of inhabitants forty-six.
The heads of household then included a sculptor, Felix
Miller, at what is now No. 147 Old Brompton Road, and a
market gardener, Henry Atwood, at No. 149. (ref. 24)
In Drayton Grove (fn. c) (Plate 67b, 67c) building started at
the north end of both sides of the street in the summer of
1846, and by December twelve houses there were ready to
be leased to Dunning and Ward. (ref. 25) These are now Nos. 1
and 3 Drayton Gardens, on the east side, and Nos. 4–22
(even) on the west. Also leased at the same time was the
Drayton public house at the west corner with Old
Brompton Road. This had been the subject of a separate
agreement with Day in August 1846, whereby Dunning
and Ward were allowed to substitute a public house for the
dwelling house originally intended here. The building had
to be erected in accordance with plans prepared by Blore,
and the ground rent was to be £10. (ref. 26) It was first occupied
in the second half of 1847, at least as early as any of the
houses in Drayton Terrace. (ref. 23)
The original Drayton public house has been demolished
and no illustration of it is known. But a plan shows a rather
narrow building with a porticoed entrance on the north
side opening on to a carriage drive into Old Brompton
Road. On the western side of the site a private roadway
gave access to a coach-house and stables behind Nos. 4
and 6 Drayton Gardens. (ref. 27)
All the leases granted by Day in 1846 had been made
direct to Dunning and Ward, and the houses had evidently
been built under their auspices by building contractors
employed by them. This method of working came to an
end, however, in the spring of 1847, when building
operations all over the country were badly disrupted by a
short but very severe financial crisis. In Drayton Grove
work on three houses which Dunning and Ward had
started in September 1846 was suspended, (ref. 28) and for
several years building here was at a complete standstill.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, however, (including
the developer of Hereford Square on Day's other
Brompton property) they avoided bankruptcy, but only by
mortgaging most of their interests in the development to
provide security for their creditors. (ref. 29) One of these
mortgages was to a builder, William Thomas of Princes
Street, Lambeth, (ref. 30) who had probably built the houses
concerned—Nos. 1 and 3 and 4–22 Drayton Gardens— but had not yet been paid.
After the crisis of 1847 Dunning and Ward took no
more leases, which were thereafter granted (sometimes at
their nomination) to the individual builders. As owners of
the building agreement of 1845 they were still involved in
the development, but they ceased to employ building
contractors on their own behalf.
In 1849, when the worst effects of the crisis had passed,
building work was resumed in Drayton Grove. But only
five houses were erected (now Nos. 5–13), and they
probably included one or more of the three previously
suspended. All five were either built or completed by
William Thomas, to whom the leases were granted, at
Dunning and Ward's request, in November 1849. (ref. 31)
Figure 47:
Nos. 135–151 (odd) Old Brompton Road (Drayton Terrace), plans and elevations. John Blore, architect, 1845–46.
Only twenty-seven houses, including the Drayton public
house, had so far been completed on the estate. But
Dunning and Ward's agreement with Day of 1845
required the erection of fifty-seven houses by January
1852, and in March 1851, when fulfilment of this
condition was clearly proving impossible (no building
having taken place since 1849), Day granted them a three-year extension. Dunning and Ward agreed to a small
increase in the total ground rent. Most of this increase was
appropriated to four additional houses, to be built at the
north end of Thistle Grove Lane on a vacant site at the back
of some of the houses at the north end of Drayton Grove.
Originally called Drayton Villas and now numbered
10–13 Thistle Grove, these four additional houses were
erected in 1852–3 by Frederick Detheridge Davies of
Schofield Place, Brompton, builder, and leased, in
December 1852, to John Carter of King's Road, Chelsea,
grocer. (ref. 33) Designed by Blore, (ref. 34) they consist of two pairs of
unpretentious semi-detached villas in greyish brick with
stucco dressings. Each pair is two storeys high over a
semi-basement, and is flanked by narrow recessed wings
which contain the entrances. The latter are dressed with
Roman Doric doorcases. In 1861, when only two of the
four houses were still in the hands of their original
occupants, none of the families living in Drayton Villas
employed any servants. No. 10 was then a lodging-house,
and No. 11 was shared by a joiner and a house painter and
their families. (ref. 35)
Meanwhile in Drayton Grove another four houses were
started in 1852, the first to be built there since 1849.
These are now Nos. 24 and 26 (on the west side), and
Nos. 37 and 39 (on the east). The former pair were built
by Edmund Mesher of Blenheim (now Astell) Street,
Chelsea, to whom they were leased in December 1852, (ref. 36)
and the latter pair by Stephen Peirson of Elm Tree
Cottage, Old Brompton, (ref. 37) a builder also working on the
adjoining Gunter estate, where several houses on the west
side of Gilston Road and the south side of Tregunter Road
were built by him in the early 1850's. (ref. 38)
In the following year another builder in Tregunter
Road, Henry John Clarke, erected six more houses in
Drayton Grove, at the south end of the west side. These
are now Nos. 46–56 (even). Clarke later had the
misfortune to become bankrupt and for a few months in
1863–4 he was confined to a debtor's prison. In letters to
the builder Edmund Mesher, to whom he had assigned a
number of his houses in Drayton Grove in trust for his
children, Clarke attributed his predicament to a breach of
trust or embezzlement (‘I cannot say which’) by his father,
‘whoom [sic] I have employed for some time past to do
my business and keep my books’. He warned Mesher
against allowing his father to collect any of the rents from
Drayton Grove, and concluded his letter with a bitter
postscript: ‘See what depravity drink has brought on in
him even imbecility’. (ref. 39)
Despite the efforts of Mesher, Peirson and Clarke the
development was again behind schedule, and when
Dunning and Ward's three-year extension expired in
January 1855 twenty houses in Drayton Grove still
remained to be built. Both terraces were punctuated by
unsightly gaps caused by the builders having been allowed
to leapfrog the intended four-storey centre houses, none of
which had yet been started, and to work northwards from
the south end. Surprisingly, these gaps do not seem to
have deterred prospective inhabitants, the 'detached'
portions being occupied just as quickly as the rest of the
terraces. (ref. 23)
Having again failed to complete the development on
time. Dunning and Ward applied to Day for another
extension, pointing out, no doubt, that the building
industry was once more going through a period of difficulty; and in November 1855 Day granted them a further
three and a half years, again in exchange for a small rise in
the ground rent to take account of the increased value of
the plots still to be built. (ref. 40) When this second extension
expired in January 1858, however, not a single new house
had been erected; and thereafter Dunning and Ward do
not appear to have taken any further part in the
development.
The two terraces in Drayton Grove were eventually
completed between 1858 and 1863 by one of the original
builders engaged on them, William Thomas, then
operating from York Road, Lambeth, (ref. 41) and by another
builder not previously involved in this development, Evan
Evans of Stanley (now Alderney) Street, Pimlico. Thomas
was responsible for the west side, where the houses were
leased in 1859 and 1862 (Nos. 28–36 and 38–44 even
respectively), (ref. 42) while Evans took the east side, the houses
here being leased in 1861 (Nos. 31–35), 1862 (Nos. 27
and 29) and 1863 (Nos. 15–25). (ref. 43) Most of these houses
were occupied within a year or two of the lease being
granted. (ref. 23)
The long time over which the terraces were built, and
the difficulties under which the builders had laboured,
seem not to have caused any major disruption of Blore's
intended scheme, and the last houses to be erected are
accordingly in a belated style for their date. In 1858 The
Building News carried a short article about the development in Drayton Grove drawing attention to the central
block of three four-storey houses in the western terrace
(then being completed internally) which it thought ‘renders
the range more effective’. (ref. 44) It did not, however, comment
on the disturbing effect of the off-centre portico at No. 30,
the central house, which is otherwise distinguished from the
rest of the terrace by its completely stuccoed facade
and three tiers of triple windows (Plate 67a). Here, as elsewhere, Blore was prepared to sacrifice strict symmetry
to the needs of a conventional terraced-house plan with a
hallway and staircase on one side. According to the same
article the living-rooms in each house were on the ground
floor while the floors above were occupied by bedrooms,
an arrangement, which, if accurately reported, was highly
unusual in the 1850's in houses of this size, where the first
floor was generally given over to one or more drawing-rooms.
Nothing is said about the internal finishing of the
houses, but in c. 1864 a bill for redecorating the dining-room at No. 46 included painting and graining all the
woodwork and wainscot and varnishing the same with a
good oak varnish, and papering the walls with a satin paper
and borders. (ref. 45)
The pattern of occupation in Drayton Grove as shown
by the census returns of 1851 and 1861 is, not surprisingly,
very similar to that already described in Drayton Terrace.
In both 1851 and 1861 the average size of households was
just over five and the average number of servants in each
household just over one. In 1851, when all but one of the
seventeen completed houses in Drayton Grove (Nos. 4–22 and 1–13) were in normal occupation, the heads of
household included two naval officers, two annuitants, and
one merchant, a clerk in the Foreign Office, a solicitor, a
hosier and glover, a landed proprietor, a proprietor of
mines and an animal painter (Edward Webb at No. 22).
By 1861 the number of completed houses had risen to
thirty-four, of which thirty-three were in normal
occupation. The heads of household in that year included
five fundholders, five clerks, three proprietors of houses
and three lawyers, two clergymen and two engineers, and
one accountant, annuitant, hotel keeper, lodging-house
keeper and landed proprietor. The largest single household in 1861 was not at one of these houses but at the
Drayton public house, where lived the publican, his wife,
their seven children and five servants, making a total of
fourteen. (ref. 46)
From 1873 until 1881 No. 9 Drayton Gardens (then
No. 80 Thistle Grove) was the home of Alan Cole,
younger son of Sir Henry and a senior official in the
Science and Art Department.
Since the completion of the development in the mid
1860's only one of the original buildings has been demolished. This was the Drayton (now Drayton Arms) public
house at No. 153 Old Brompton Road, which was rebuilt in
1891–2 to the designs of Messrs. Gordon, Lowther and
Gunton of Finsbury Circus, surveyors, the contractor being
J. Anley of Dalston Lane. (ref. 47) In sharp contrast to the grey
brick and stucco of the adjoining terrace, the Drayton Arms
displays chiefly a buff-coloured terracotta, flamboyantly
decorated with Renaissance-style figures and motifs in high
relief, interspersed with some red brickwork (Plate 68a).
The adjacent building, incorporating two shops at Nos. 155
and 157 Old Brompton Road, shows the same materials,
with less terracotta, and is part of the same redevelopment.
The overall appearance of the terraces remains generally
good in spite of many small but often disfiguring alterations.
of which the most intrusive are changes to the roof-line. As
early as 1860 there was a proposal to raise the root at No.
26 Drayton Grove, which Blore at first resisted, even
though the addition was to be largely hidden behind a
balustrade (now removed), as it would, in his opinion,
‘disturb the uniformity and symmetry of the range of buildings in its outline next the sky as seen from the opposite
side.’ After modifications, however, ‘which will in a great
measure remove my objection’, he allowed it to go ahead. (ref. 48)
In the 1880's and 90's W. H. Collbran, Blore's successor as
surveyor to the estate, permitted a number of roofs to be
raised at Drayton Terrace but insisted that the work should
be carried out in a uniform manner. (ref. 49)
In more recent years the problem of car-parking in Drayton Gardens, particularly for the houses on the east side,
which have no rear access for vehicles, has led to the destruction of some of the front gardens to make parking sites or
ramps down to basement garages. In the early 1970's the
Greater London Council attempted to stop this practice as
‘detrimental to the design of the terrace as a whole’, but was
overruled by the Secretary of State for the Environment. (ref. 50)
In Cresswell Place a number of former stables have
been turned into dwelling houses. When first built none of
the houses on the west side of Drayton Grove, whose
gardens extended back to Cresswell Place (then Bolton
Mews), were provided with stables; but by 1894 (ref. 51) some
had been erected at the back of Nos. 26–34 (even), and
these were subsequently converted into two houses,
numbered 43 and 44 Cresswell Place. No. 43 received its
present form in 1973–4 (Nicholas Johnston, architect). (ref. 52)
Further north at No. 50 a stable block rebuilt for the
Drayton public house in 1891–2 was converted into a
dwelling house by John G. Rutter and Company of Pall
Mall, architects, in 1933. (ref. 53) No. 38 Cresswell Place was
originally built in 1903 as a studio for the landscape artist
Fanny S. G. Nathan. (ref. 54) The adjoining studio over a double
garage at No. 37 dates from 1969–70 (W. R. Siddons and
Associates, architects). (ref. 55)