CHAPTER XII - The Boltons and Redcliffe Square Area
Westward of the properties in Drayton Gardens and south
of the Old Brompton Road an area extending to Brompton
Cemetery comprises some ninety-three acres which in
1800 were almost entirely unbuilt upon. To the southward
the area was bounded, east of Walnut Tree Walk on the
line of Redcliffe Gardens, by the properties fronting
Fulham Road which constituted part of the small township
of Little Chelsea, while beyond Walnut Tree Walk the
unbuilt area extended south to Fulham Road itself. The
only important part affected by residential use was the
three acres or so of mansion and garden at Coleherne
House, a substantial dwelling house since the seventeenth
century. Between about 1802 and 1845 some eight acres
more, near the Old Brompton Road, were devoted to nine
villas or 'cottages' and their gardens or pleasure grounds.
All but one lay east of Coleherne House. These were
mostly built, about the same time as some villas north of
the Old Brompton Road, on part of the property recently
acquired by a successful Mayfair confectioner, James
Gunter, and it was on the large remainder of his property,
descended to his son Robert, that the spread of building
began in about 1850 which over the next twenty-five years
or so covered almost all the area with streets of houses
(Plates 70b, 71b). (fn. a) Beginning in the east it extended
westward, and after Robert's death in 1852 largely on
properties either inherited or bought for the purpose by his
two sons, Robert and James. Their tenures were separate,
and they granted their leases individually, but were advised
by the same lawyer and surveyor. The earlier, and perhaps
more attractive, part of the development, westward so far
as The Little Boltons, was entrusted to various
building-lessees. After 1863 the work was almost entirely
in the hands of the firm of William Corbett and Alexander
McClymont. They had already done work in the southern
part of this area a year or two before under other owners,
and were to do so also in the extreme west and south-west,
particularly on the land of the Pettiward family. Their work
on the estates of the two Gunter brothers and on those of
other owners is not distinguishable.
This lack of co-extension between the units of
land-ownership and of significant building-ownership
makes it desirable to discuss this area as a whole. So, too,
does the comparatively unhistoric nature of the largest
element in the land-ownership pattern, that of the
Gunters, where various properties were brought together
piecemeal between 1801 and 1866 and subjected to a
common process of development.
Altogether, on the eighty-two acres or so largely
developed between 1850 and 1876 (including a small area
built-over in the 1880's), some 1,100 houses, two
churches, ninety or so mews premises and five public
houses were built, and the greater part of this survives
today. Of these 1,100 houses, some 670 were built on the
Gunters' properties, and some 220 on the land of R. J.
Pettiward. About 750 were built under leases or (in 76
instances) conveyances to Corbett and McClymont, and
another 180 or so under leases to other building tradesmen
evidently nominated by them. The most active period for
the granting of leases of newly completed carcases of
houses was 1866–9. In those four years 542 leases or
conveyances were granted, all but 28 being to Corbett
and McClymont or their nominees (fig. 64 on page 213).
The property of the Gunter family also extended north
of the Old Brompton Road, where James Gunter's
purchases had slightly antedated those to the south.
Corbett and McClymont also operated north of the road,
conspicuously if not very extensively. This area will be
described in volume xlii of the Survey of London.
The line of this part of Old Brompton Road had from an
early period been a property division. The area here
discussed (fig. 58) was, as to the greater part of it, called
Coleherne (or a variant of this), which as a place-name
existed so early as 1430. (ref. 1) A portion of some fifteen or
sixteen acres, immediately south of the line of the road and
bounded to east, south and west by Coleherne, was
separately distinguished as Goodwin's Field (C and H on
fig. 58), a name already applied to it in the 1530's. (ref. 2) In the
sixteenth century all was regarded as part of the manor of
Earl's Court. Goodwin's Field remained largely or entirely
copyhold land until acts of enfranchisement in 1809 and
1864, (ref. 3) but Coleherne seems to have lost its manorial status
by or before the early eighteenth century. From at least the
early seventeenth century the area was sub-divided into
enclosures, and some of it from earlier. The history of its
tenure before the period of building does not emerge at all
completely from the records, however, partly because the
closes are mostly identified in documents only by their
extent and at any given time there was more than one
'four-acre' or 'eight-acre' close, and partly because their
tenants' names also afford very uncertain identification
when, as is usual, the tenants are known to have had a
number of holdings in the vicinity.
Figure 58:
The area discussed in Chapter XII, showing former property divisions by heavy and dotted lines, with the present street layout and house numbers. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1949–72
The earliest map of the whole area in any detail is so late
as 1822. Starling's map of that year (Plate 70b) shows
the intensive development of Little Chelsea to the south,
the beginnings of more luxurious building on the north
side, and between them the rectangular or squareish
enclosures of garden ground, market gardens and
nurseries.
Landownership to the Early Nineteenth Century
To deal first with the ground landlordship until the early
decades of the nineteenth century, a start may be made
with the areas C, E, F, G, H and I on fig. 58 in 1715. They
were then owned by a Peter Lavigne, grocer or perfumier
of Covent Garden (who also owned the future site of
Seymour Walk in Little Chelsea, see page 177). The western
part, C, G and H (of which C and H constituted
Goodwin's Field) he had bought (like the 'Seymour Walk'
site) from two brothers, John and Thomas Morgan of
Marlborough, Wiltshire — C and H at least in 1699. The
earlier history of G is not known except in so far as it
seems to have been the property which before 1639 had
been acquired by the Southwark glazier, Lancelot Hobson
(see page 165), and then and subsequently bore the name
Little Coleherne. Goodwin's Field (C, H) had been
inherited in 1699 by the Morgans under the provisions of
the will of their brother Charles Morgan (d. 1682), also a
grocer of Covent Garden, who had bequeathed his shop
there directly to Lavigne, formerly his 'servant'. (ref. 4) Morgan
had bought Goodwin's Field in 1680 from a William
Chare who in turn had inherited it, by the custom of the
manor of Earl's Court, as the youngest son of a John
Chare. (ref. 5) . The latter had bought it in 1641 from mortgagees
of Samuel Arnold, (ref. 6) one of a family widely propertied in
the vicinity of Earl's Court. (Earlier, in the 1530's to
1550's, Goodwin's Field had been owned by a family
called Thatcher. (ref. 7) ) One of Samuel Arnold's mortgagees in
1641, Francis Dyson, was in that year the owner of land to
the east, probably identifiable with E, F and I. (ref. 6) (This was
part of the rather straggling area, extending also south and
west of Goodwin's Field, called Great Coleherne.)
Whether that land followed the same line of descent as the
western part to Lavigne is uncertain.
All this property of Lavigne's passed on his death in
1717 to his widow (ref. 8) and then in 1719 to their daughter, at
that time also a widow, who promptly sold it to Edward
Williams, described as of the Customs House, gentleman.
What he paid for Goodwin's Field (C, H) is not known but
the other parts (G, E, F and I) cost him £1,688. (ref. 9) After
Williams's death in 1752 his son, also Edward Williams,
of the Inner Temple, leased and then, in the following
year, sold Goodwin's Field to trustees for the banker
George Campbell, head of the firm that was to become
Courts. (ref. 10) Campbell, like subsequent owners of Goodwin's
Field, lived here, in Coleherne House (at the north-west
corner of B). The history of the tenure of this old house is
distinct from though often parallel to that of the adjacent
Goodwin's Field, and the discussion of it is deferred. After
Campbell's death in 1760 his trustees, in 1761, sold
Goodwin's Field to the bearer of a name that became
locally important — William Boulton, esquire, of Frith
Street, Soho. (ref. 11) Like the elder Williams he was a public
official, being one of the Clerks of the Roads in the Post
Office. This was at that time a lucrative situation (by
reason of its perquisites rather than its salary), and
Boulton's nephew, the diarist William Hickey, calls him
'very rich'. (ref. 12) Boulton paid the trustees £1,220, but it is
not clear whether this was only for Coleherne House,
which he bought at the same time. (ref. 13) The land to the east
(E, F and I) and west (G) remained in the Williams family
until the 1790's. In 1796 William Boulton, the elder
Boulton's son, bought E, F and I, and thus acquired,
though only for a short time, the area that still (it seems)
commemorates his name. (ref. 14) This part of Great Coleherne
was now called Home Field — a confusing change of
name particularly as at about the same time Goodwin's
Field itself became known as Coleherne. The following
year G was temporarily separated from this propertyholding by its sale to Thomas Smith of Chelsea, gentleman, (ref. 15) elsewhere a developer, who left it unbuilt upon.
Some eight years later, in 1805, Smith and his
mortgagees sold this land, G, to James Gunter of Berkeley
Square, confectioner. (ref. 16) Gunter already had property north
of Old Brompton Road and was acquiring other lands
south of the road. In 1807 he bought E and I, but not the
small plot F, from William Boulton (who had renamed
himself William Boulton Poynton) and others. (ref. 17) Boulton
Poynton had already sold F, in 1805, to a Samuel Babb, as
the site for a genteel 'cottage'. (ref. 18) If James Gunter wanted to
acquire a continuous holding east-to-west he was
frustrated when in 1808 Boulton Poynton sold his third
property, Goodwin's Field (C, H), to a goldsmith in
Cockspur Street, Philip Gilbert, perhaps for £3,234. (ref. 19)
Gilbert had already bought garden ground at M, extending
to the Fulham Road, in 1806 (ref. 20) (see below and page 180),
but his family, although it retained these properties into
the 1860's, was another, like the Morgans, Lavignes,
Williamses and Boultons, to acquire substantial holdings
here and then pass from the scene without leaving much
trace in building.
Adjacent to the old Lavigne corpus of property at its
northern end were two other pieces of ground that came to
James Gunter at this time (fig. 58). At A the land had
passed into his ownership in 1801 from the representatives
of a John Mears, late of St. Margaret's, Westminster,
gentleman, deceased. (ref. 21) It had been bought in 1755 by a
farmer, John Mears, from a mason, Robert Hardcastle of
Lambeth, who in the same year had himself bought it from
the Rector of East Barnet, Samuel Grove. (ref. 22) Grove's
ownership seems to have derived from the acquisition of a
mortgage interest, perhaps of only part of the property, in
1737. (ref. 23) The mortgagor at that date, a 'yeoman', William
Clarke, evidently derived his own lien on the land in part
from a ninety-nine-year lease granted to an Edward
Clarke in 1676 by a John Arnold. (ref. 24) In 1641 the land was
in the hands of William Arnold, one of Samuel Arnold's
mortgagees in Goodwin's Field. (ref. 6)
At D hardly anything is known of the ownership before
its sale to James Gunter in 1811 by representatives of the
Pettiward family, of Suffolk and Putney. Their ownership
went back at least to Walter Pettiward, who died in 1749,
but its origin is unknown, although elsewhere in
south-west Kensington Pettiward ownership can be traced
back to the 1640's. In 1811 Gunter acquired this wellplaced two-acre rectangle under the name of Glassington
Close or (as in 1753) Long Close. (ref. 25)
Southward from I on fig. 58 James Gunter extended his
easterly holding just (and only just) to Fulham Road by the
purchase of O in 1812. (ref. 26) At that time the vendor,
George Groves, was laying out other property of his to the
east as Thistle Grove (now part of Drayton Gardens, see
page 166). Perhaps Gunter contemplated following suit,
but did not do so, contenting himself with investments in
house-sites in Thistle Grove. This plot (O) had come to
Groves's father, John Groves, in 1786 by purchase from
the sons of the builder Henry Holland, who had acquired
it in 1781 from a beneficiary of the partition of the
extensive property of the Warton family. Its descent, which
is touched upon on page 163, went back to a purchase
from Sir Arthur Gorges in 1651.
The Warton property in Kensington was not compact,
and the awkwardly shaped piece M shared this line of
descent down to ownership by the Hollands. They sold it
to a William Virtue of Chelsea in 1786 and he to Philip
Gilbert in 1806. (ref. 27) Like the Gilbert property northward it
awaited purchase by others in the 1860's to be covered
with houses.
Immediately west of O at N a mainly unbuilt property
with an old house on its Fulham Road frontage also
changed hands about that time, in 1807. It then passed to a
Gloucestershire family called Batchellor from representatives of the Middleton family whose ownership went back
to the seventeenth century and perhaps derived from the
Hobson family already mentioned. (ref. 28) Of the properties so
far dealt with this is the first never to pass into Gunter
ownership, and the account given of it in the chapter on
Little Chelsea would suffice (pages 174–6) were it not that
the circumstances of its laying out, chiefly as Redcliffe
Road, when it came to be sold by the Batchellors in 1859
brings it also within the scope of this chapter (see below).
At L the ground had in the early nineteenth century
been held by the owners of the two houses at what were
later Nos. 252–258 (even) Fulham Road since at least
Ralph Palmer's tenure in the late seventeenth century (see
page 185). Nothing is known of the earlier history of the
ground, or of the house upon it, unless the latter can be
identified with the house of eleven hearths, otherwise
difficult to locate, which in c. 1662–6 was in the
possession of James 'Bovey' (ref. 29) — probably a member of
the Boevey family whose chief property was on the south
side of the Fulham Road in Chelsea. (ref. b) In c. 1670 the
occupant of that 'Bovey' house was Doctor John Whitaker
until c. 1701, when other members of his family succeeded
him until 1724 or later. (ref. 32) Charles Boyle, later fourth
Earl of Orrery, soldier, author and patron of science, was
born at Doctor Whitaker's house in 1674. (ref. 33) In 1784 James
Gunter, in one of his earliest ventures in property in this
area, acquired a mortgage interest from Lewis Lochée, to
secure a loan of £700, but the Gunters did not acquire the
freehold until 1836, when the Lochée family sold the
ground to James Gunter's son Robert—his only purchase
in this area and at that time isolated from his father's
acquisitions. (ref. 34)
The large plot of ground at K on fig. 58, now virtually
indistinguishable in appearance from the rest of the area
subjected to the operations of Corbett and McClymont,
has a quite different history of ownership from the lands so
far mentioned. It is still in part owned by the Pettiward
family and was so at least as early as 1753. (ref. 35) As at D,
however, it is uncertain whether that ownership extends,
like the Pettiwards' former tenure of the adjacent ground
westward described on page 241, back to the mid
seventeenth century.
The last plot on fig. 58 of which the ownership needs to
be indicated is J. Together with K, L and I it was generally
considered part of Great Coleherne, whereas G to the
north was Little Coleherne. Like Goodwin's Field (C, H)
its tenure at the beginning of the nineteenth century was
still as copyhold of the manor of Earl's Court (being
enfranchised only in 1867 (ref. 36) ). It was then in the ownership
of the Hillersdon family who acquired it about 1794,
evidently from a descendant of the Henry Marsh of North
End, Fulham, who had bought it in 1641 from Samuel
Arnold. (ref. 37)
The Use and Occupation of the Land
Despite such instances of long tenure, this diversity of
ownerships in the area as a whole shows that it did not lie
undeveloped in building because it reposed in the hands of
one or a few ancestral proprietors with, perhaps, greater
interests elsewhere. A sufficiently active picture emerges
of land-transfers between men seemingly of a type to
foster building development when that promised well. But
the occupation of the land remained overwhelmingly agricultural or horticultural. By the time of the Tithe Commissioners' tabulation of the whole area in 1843 the part
not taken as the sites of villas was shown to be divided into
some seventy acres of market gardens and ten acres of
grassland or paddock. (ref. 38) The earlier picture is more
variegated. Towards the south end of Goodwin's Field a
gravel pit is mentioned in 1753, (ref. 39) and the right to excavate
gravel was reserved by the ground landlord a few years
later. (ref. 11) In 1808 land in this vicinity was said to be on lease
of recent date for the purpose of extracting gravel. (ref. 40) A
few years previously, in 1802, the farming tenant of area
K on fig. 58 was also licensed by the owner to dig for
gravel. (ref. 41) Brick earth had been dug at an unknown date in
the part of area G where St. Luke's Church, Redcliffe
Square, was built in 1872, when the old excavations
impeded the laying of its foundations. (ref. 42) Some five acres
of the area I were arable in about 1720, (ref. 43) and were
probably still so in 1807. (ref. 17) Part of C and H was arable in
1748, (ref. 44) and rye grew there in 1808. (ref. 45) In 1746 the area L
was described as 'planted with Walnut Trees, Mulberry
Trees, Apple Trees and other fruit Trees'. (ref. 46) The walnut
trees in particular were a landmark and presumably
account for the name of Walnut Tree Walk, on the line of
Redcliffe Gardens, which existed as a 'lane or drove' in
1639, (ref. 47) a 'warple' in 1753, (ref. 48) a 'footpath or bridle way' in
1797, (ref. 15) and a 'bridle or carriage way' in 1805. (ref. 16) This
orchard at L is 'shown on the Ordnance Survey map
surveyed in 1865, at the moment of its supersession by
houses. (ref. 49) At the beginning of the nineteenth century
another orchard, of cherry trees, was at D-E on fig. 58.
Starling also shows the eastern limb of M and the
south-west part of K as orchard in 1822 (Plate 70b).
Some of the 'gardens' here were or had been nurseries
rather than market gardens. In the 1780's nurseries at O
and N respectively (fig. 58) were conducted by James
Russell and Daniel Grimwood (see pages 173, 175), the
latter, at least, a notable name in the propagation of the
rose, like his successor here in c. 1807–19, Henry
Shailer. (ref. 50)
A comparison of Starling's map of 1822 with the tithe
map of 1843 suggests the growing ascendancy of market
gardening. At areas G and H pasture was seemingly
changed to that use, and the nursery garden at O just
mentioned seems similarly to have been taken by James
Gunter's son Robert into his market garden at I (fig. 58).
In 1843 the agrarian occupants of the land were five. (ref. 38)
Robert Gunter occupied his own land at A, G, I and O as
part of the market-gardening enterprise which attracted the
attention of contemporaries by its business-like progressiveness: (ref. 51) he himself lived and had extensive holdings north
of the Old Brompton Road. At L the occupant under him
was James Broadbent, probably dwelling in the house
mentioned above as perhaps Doctor Whitaker's (or its
successor), which stood in what is now the roadway of
Fawcett Street, near Nos. 6–8. It was approached from
Fulham Road via the precursor of Hollywood Road, called
Hollywood Grove. At J the occupier of the land under
John Hillersdon was William Atwood. At N John Rubergall had a small holding under Edward Batchellor and
probably lived in one of the houses near its southern end in
the area discussed on page 175. (ref. 52) The fifth was the
market gardener John Poupart, with a name later well
known at Covent Garden, who occupied H and M under
the Gilberts and K under the Pettiwards. He, too, lived
here, in the small unpretentious farm-house near the
south-east corner of K shown by Salway in 1811 (Plate
72). (ref. 53) Salway depicts a barn behind it, and in front a
wooden fence that announces the lapse to rusticity after
the front garden-walls and gate-piers of Little Chelsea. It
stood near the present No. 2a Redcliffe Gardens and
perhaps dated from the late 1780's. (ref. 54) Apart from this
house, the only buildings of any note in the fields in the
1840's seem to have been a cottage at the south-west
corner of H on fig. 58 (near the present No. 49 Redcliffe
Gardens), James Broadbent's house, and some farm
buildings erected by the go-ahead Robert Gunter at what
is now the south end of the carriageway of Coleherne
Road, seemingly between the dates of Starling's map of
1822 and Greenwood's of 1827. Away in the southwest corner of K, however, in the angle of Honey Lane
and Fulham Road (now approximately the site of Nos.
304a–306b Fulham Road), a furniture dealer's establishment, run by a family called Jackson, was set up in 1812
and survived until the building wave of the sixties. (ref. 55)
Coleherne House to 1815
Having brought some aspects of the ownership and use of
the area forward to the early nineteenth century it is
convenient to revert to an area notably different from the
rest—Coleherne House and its immediate grounds (B on
fig. 58). (The house was sometimes called Coleherne
Court, but is here called House throughout to distinguish
it more readily from the blocks of flats which occupy its
site.) Here at the beginning of the nineteenth century the
old mansion was occupied by the family owning Goodwin's
Field and had gardens that extended eastward across the
northern part of C on fig. 58 to a shrubbery or 'garden
walk' extending down what is now the west side of The
Little Boltons. Here in 1808 the widowed Mrs. Boulton
could perambulate. (ref. 40) Like Coleherne House itself but
unlike most of the intervening garden this strip was a little
piece of freehold, having at an earlier date been the
'headland' of the ploughed land to the east. (ref. 39) Part of the
garden was shaded by the 'lofty brick walls' mentioned in
particulars of the property, and a 'well stocked' fishpond
extended east-west across the garden. (ref. 56)
Unfortunately, little is known of the house itself.
Eighteenth-century title-deeds begin the descent of
ownership with the occupation by the physician-poet Sir
Richard Blackmore, whose tenure can be traced back from
1721 to 1705 or 1706. (ref. 57) His poetical works passed swiftly
into 'silence and darkness', and Blackmore, 'being
despised as a poet was in time neglected as a physician',
which perhaps accounts for his vacating the mansion when
he did. (ref. 58)
A large house existed in this vicinity before then,
however, and can doubtless be identified with the same
site. This was the house 'at Cold Hearne' which first
occurs in the records in 1647 as the place of baptism of two
sons of the Parliamentarian John Lambert, being the
house of his father-in-law Sir William Lister. (ref. 59) In 1653 (ref. 60)
and (seemingly) 1665 (ref. 61) 'Colehearne house' was occupied
by a James Floyde, esquire, and then by a Doctor Ford in
1666. (ref. 62) The house can probably be traced forward to
occupation by the pioneer journalist Henry Muddiman in
c. 1673–1691, (ref. 63) being perhaps divided and shared with a
Doctor Huybert. Later, this seems to be the house for
which Peter Lavigne, the well-propertied Covent Garden
grocer already encountered, was assessed by the parish for
himself or a tenant in 1696-1701, (ref. 57) and the house of
Lavigne, known as Coleherne House, (ref. 64) can certainly be
identified as a piece of property with Blackmore's house,
as it was Lavigne's son-in-law who sold the latter house in
1723, after Blackmore's tenancy had ceased. (ref. 65) (That
Blackmore should have been Lavigne's tenant is consistent
with the interest that a William Blackmore of Covent
Garden had in another piece of Lavigne's former property
in 1730. (ref. 66) See page 177.)
The only certain view of Coleherne House is a
nineteenth-century photograph showing the staircase compartment (ref. 67) (Plate 78b). This gives a glimpse of earlyGeorgian-looking plasterwork (rather like that, for
example, at No. 43 King Street, Covent Garden, of
1716–17). In other respects, however, the view would not
preclude an earlier date for the house.
Coleherne House itself seems to have been freed from
manorial status by or before the 1720's and thereafter
changed hands as freehold. Its curtilage (the eastern and
southern parts of area B on fig. 58) remained copyhold,
however, until enfranchisement in 1864. (ref. 36) The purchaser
from Lavigne's son-in-law in 1723 was Thomas Morgan
of Lincoln's Inn, esquire, of the family that had earlier
owned much land here. Since Blackmore's residence in
the house it had been occupied by a Thomas Morphey or
Morphew, esquire, (ref. 68) but in c. 1724–36 Morgan was the
ratepayer. (ref. 69) In 1735 Morgan conveyed the house to
another lawyer of Lincoln's Inn, Walter Gibbons, in trust
himself to sell it on Morgan's death, (ref. 70) and in 1739 the
latter and Morgan's son sold it to a Sibilla Egerton,
spinster, of Soho, who was soon said to be in occupation. (ref. 71)
The occupant was said to be a Catherine Hays in 1749,
when Sibilla and her husband, Sir Francis Eyles Stiles,
sold it to another unmarried lady in Soho, Ann Walwood
or Watwood. (ref. 72) She sold it in 1751 to the banker George
Campbell. (ref. 73) The ownership was thus reunited with that of
the adjacent Goodwin's Field for the first time since
Lavigne's ownership of the site. It was therefore
presumably about this time that the gardens were extended
eastward and the fishpond made. Campbell occupied the
property until his death in 1760, and in 1761 it passed like
Goodwin's Field into the ownership and occupation of
William Boulton and his family. (ref. 74) In 1810 Boulton's son,
William Boulton Poynton, sold it to Philip Gilbert, (ref. 75) who
had recently bought Goodwin's Field from him, and for
the next five years Gilbert himself lived there. (ref. 54)
Coleherne House and Hereford House 1815–99
The subsequent history of areas B and C on fig. 58 is
carried through here to the end of the century, before
reverting to the history of the larger area about 1810.
Philip Gilbert's abandonment of Coleherne House in 1815
was the result of his building a second large house on the
east side of the extended garden, to which he moved in
that year. (ref. 54) This was Hereford House, which in views of
subsequent date looks much later than 1815 — a high
block flanked by big staid conservatories and with the
appearance of a Victorian idea of the architecture of the
reign of George I (ref. 76) (Plate 78a). The fact that young
Beatrix Potter in 1883 called it 'the red house' also
suggests drastic revision since 1815 (ref. 77) — perhaps in
1871. (ref. 78) The Gilberts vacated the house in 1838, and some
later occupants were Charles Dance, son of the architect
George Dance, burlesque-writer, and clerk in that
'Temple to the Genius of Seediness', the Insolvent
Debtors' Court (1841–5); Lady Hotham, life tenant of the
Pettiward estate nearby (1846–56); Benjamin Lumley,
theatrical manager (1857–9); and Dion Boucicault, a more
flamboyant figure of the same type (1861–3). (ref. 79) In 1864
representatives of the Gilbert family sold the house, with
Coleherne House, to the younger James Gunter, (ref. 80) at the
same time as Goodwin's Field.
Coleherne House on its vacation by the Gilberts had
been occupied by, among others, Lady Georgiana
Ponsonby (1816–34), W. J. N. Neale, judge and author
(1849, 1851), Thomas Dyke Acland (1850), and Andrew
Wynter, physician and essayist (1858-63). (ref. 81)
A perplexing circumstance is the lack of any apparent
division between the gardens of Coleherne House and
Hereford House as they are shown on the Ordnance
Survey map surveyed in 1865. (ref. 82) The houses were then
and always had been occupied by separate families. The
arrangement has a long-established look, but perhaps was
a very short-lived state of affairs brought about by Dion
Boucicault in 1863 when he occupied Hereford House
and had the lease also of Coleherne House, which was
empty in that year. (ref. 83) (The same map shows that the
fishpond no longer existed although its site was
discernible.)
The double site of Coleherne House and Hereford
House had been advertised in 1863 as 'Building Land ...
for an important building operation in first-class
residences', (ref. 84) and the first effect of James Gunter's
purchase of it was to bring this ground within the scope of
Corbett and McClymont's schemes for their leasehold
building estate. A plan of 1866 shows that they then hoped
to carry the line of Hollywood Road and Harcourt Terrace
northward to Old Brompton Road between the gardens of
the two houses and at the same time build over at least the
Coleherne House site. (ref. 85) The line of road was marked out
on the ground, (ref. 86) but Corbett and McClymont became
bankrupt in 1878 and the Coleherne site remained
undeveloped. The strip of intended road was evidently let
on short lease by James Gunter to William Corbett, who in
1879–80 kept it as garden ground. He was at that time very
hopeful of getting an extension of his tenure to the end of
the century. (ref. 87) If he did so it would at least partly explain
why it was not until about 1900 that the redevelopment of
the sites of the two houses was taken in hand.
Meanwhile the two houses survived. Hereford House
was occupied in 1865–9 by an Adam Spielman and in
1872 by a Leopold Seligman into the 1880's. (ref. 54) By 1896 it
had declined to use as the home of a rather blue-blooded
ladies' cycling club, where races were held on Saturday
afternoons. 'The track is a miniature Olympian, composed
of wood with trellis-work sides. It forms a circle round the
grounds, running over two artistic bridges.' (ref. 88) In
c. 1899–1900, however, Hereford House was demolished
to make way for the flats of Coleherne Court.
Coleherne House had its longest occupancy under
James Gunter's ownership, when from 1865 to 1898 it was
the home of Edmund Tattersall, head of the bloodstock
auctioneers. (ref. 89) It, too, was demolished in c. 1899–1900.
Villa-building near Old Brompton Road, c. 1802–44
The erection of Hereford House about 1815 was part of a
significant development in that neighbourhood. This was
the building of villas near but generally not fronting the
south side of Old Brompton Road (fig. 59). Respectable
houses of the kind called 'small' were already stretching
out along the winding, leafy road from Old Brompton
towards Earl's Court and extending westward the spacious, sequestered suburban development that already
characterized Old Brompton.
In the area under discussion a lead was given at Hawk
Cottage, built for occupation by Samuel Babb about
1802–4 at F on fig. 58 and sold to him by W. Boulton
Poynton in 1805. (ref. 90)
More significant was the building of White Cottage in c.
1809 at what was later the south-west end of South Bolton
Gardens. This was on the land (I on fig. 58) bought by
James Gunter two years before and was evidently part of
the same campaign in which he built a number of villas
(one for his own occupation) between c. 1805 and 1813 on
the opposite side of Old Brompton Road a little further
west. Its positioning vis-à-vis Mr. Pettiward's cherry
orchard (at D on fig. 58) — soon to be bought by James
Gunter but not yet his property — and the eastern
shrubbery of Coleherne House's grounds (at C)
adumbrated the northern end of what later became The
Little Boltons and the western end of the road later called
South Bolton Gardens. The house was subsequently
known as Rathmore Lodge at No. 10 South Bolton
Gardens. (The name White Cottage was later applied to a
quite different house on the north side of South Bolton
Gardens, behind Nos. 5 and 6 Bolton Gardens.) The first
occupant was John Fermor, until 1830. (ref. 91)
For his next house, Cresswell Lodge, James Gunter
went to the other side of his 1807 purchase, at E on fig. 58.
There in 1809 he made a building lease to a bricklayer
with whom he was similarly associated on the other side of
Old Brompton Road, James Faulkner of Jermyn Street, (ref. 92)
who in 1810, when he subscribed to Thomas Faulkner's
history of Chelsea, described himself as 'bricklayer to her
Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales'. (ref. 93) (Later
he subscribed also to Faulkner's history of Kensington, in
1820.) James Faulkner very soon sub-leased the property
to a local builder, William Blore, a carpenter in
Knightsbridge. (ref. 94) Blore seems to have mortgaged his
leasehold interest back to James Gunter, who was probably
financing the building of the house, and when Blore
became bankrupt his assignees and Faulkner returned the
leasehold interest to Gunter in 1812. (ref. 95) In the following
year Gunter leased the newly built house, with additional
land to the west and north, to its first occupant. (ref. 96) He was
William Cresswell of Belgravia, probably an elder brother
of the judge, (Sir) Cresswell Cresswell. (ref. 97) An advertisement of the house for sale in 1820 noticed its
extensive aviary and conservatory, the 'high condition' of
the plantations and the 'particularly beautiful and
diversified views' enjoyed from the house. Its appearance
can be judged in an undated lithograph, perhaps of the
1840's (Plate 78c). This shows the severest style of the
Regency set off by rustic verandahing and an elaboration
of sun-shades and trellis-work around the great westfacing bow, evoking the fierce suns of a still crescent
empire rather than umbrageous Brompton. (ref. 98) Lady Groves
lived there in 1831–4 and the Reverend T. S. Evans in
1835–40 but by 1842 it was a ladies' school. (ref. 55)
After James Gunter's death his son Robert had Osborn
House, still surviving at No. 7 South Bolton Gardens, built
eastward of White Cottage in a plain late-Georgian
manner. The first occupant was a Jacob Jones in 1821.
The name of the house derives from the residence of Sir
John Osborn, fifth baronet, in 1826–47. (ref. 54)
The identity of South Bolton Gardens as a residential
road between The Little Boltons and the northern limb of
The Boltons (Plate 79a) has now been destroyed by the
post-war construction of the Bousfield School, converting
the road into a cul-de-sac. Originally the sequence of villas
was extended eastward, after a rather long interval, by the
building of Bladon Lodge in 1836 under a building
agreement concluded the previous autumn by Robert
Gunter with the first occupant, Martin Bladon Edward
Hawke Nixon, who lived there intermittently until 1859. (ref. 99)
It was again a plain house, facing south over a large
garden, with a central bow to light the drawing-room
(Plate 99a).
A more highly wrought attempt at architectural effect
followed two years later, when Sidmouth Lodge was built
east of what is now the northern limb of The Boltons.
Again Robert Gunter's lease, in March 1838, was to the
first occupant, Captain Samuel Lyde. (ref. 100) He was
presumably a sometime resident at Sidmouth as his son
had been born there. (ref. 101) Lyde occupied the house from
1839 to 1848. (ref. 54) Like Bladon Lodge, it was south-facing.
The facade was carefully composed in a neo-Greek style,
with a grave and narrow entrance between Ionic columns
in antis (Plate 78d). (ref. 102)
Figure 59:
Villas south of Old Brompton Road in a 1865. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1862–72, with modern road names
The cherry orchard between the new road and Old
Brompton Road had been Gunter property since 1811. In
1840 the western part was taken by Philip Conway of
Earl's Court as a nursery and florist's establishment, which
continued until the site was given over in 1862 to the
building of Nos. 1–8 Bolton Gardens. The eastern part
was leased to the occupant of Bladon Lodge in 1839 as an
additional garden. (ref. 103)
In 1842 Robert Gunter completed this sequence south
of Old Brompton Road when he had a 'cottage' built north
of Sidmouth Lodge, for yearly letting. (ref. 104) A Mrs. Russell
was the first tenant in 1843–5, succeeded by Lady
Malcolm (1845–9) and the Reverend Hogarth J. Swale, the
first incumbent of St. Mary, The Boltons (1849–52). (ref. 54) It
was dignified by the name Moreton Tower.
An outlier of this development was the villa built a year
or two later on Robert Gunter's land abutting on Old
Brompton Road at the north-west corner of A on fig. 58.
Here it originally had a roadway on its west side, the
northern end of Honey Lane, until this was supplanted in
the 1860's by a new road, Finborough Road, which joined
Old Brompton Road east of the villa. Another plain house,
called Brecknock Villa by 1851 and later Walwyn House, it
was built in c. 1842 under a lease from Robert Gunter to a
John Evan Thomas. He was possibly the sculptor, a native
of Brecknockshire. Perhaps because of its remote situation
adjacent to a cemetery it did not 'go' very quickly. Its first
occupant, briefly, in 1847 was the keeper of a menagerie,
Bryan Helps. (ref. 105) (For the later history of this site see page
231.)