Young Street
Laid out in 1685, Young Street takes its name from
Thomas Young, the developer of Kensington Square, and
is called ‘Young's Street’ in the contemporary parish registers. (ref. 465) The name Young Street was, however, in use by
June 1685 and was inscribed, with the date 1685, on a stone
formerly let into the façade of No. 7 (previously No. 2). (ref. 466)
Until the opening of what is now Derry Street in the mid
1730s, Young Street was the only roadway into the square
from Kensington High Street. It was built up over a period
of some ten years, most of the houses there being occupied
between about 1689 and 1696. (ref. 18) At least one house was
inhabited by 1686. (ref. 467) Very little of the original fabric of
the street still survives. The west side has largely succumbed to the expansion of barkers’ store, and the only
survivor here is No. 16, a house of the 1690s enlarged and
refronted in the early nineteenth century (Plate 21a). The
redevelopment of most of the east side since the 1950s has
left only three earlier buildings still standing: the
Edwardian No. 9, and Nos. 5 and 7, which under their
stucco overcoats probably contain vestiges of two lateseventeenth-century houses. Amond the post-was casu-alties here were Nos. 11,25 and 27, all of them original
houses dating from the 1680s. (For plans of Young Street
showing the old site divisions see figures 28 and 30 on
pages 77 and 83.)
The original development of the street followed much
the same pattern as that of the square with most of the
sites being let or sold to builders and developers, some
of whom were also active in the square. Young himself
retained the freehold of a plot immediately to the north
of No. 16 and was probably responsible for the two biggish
houses erected there by 1695, which he afterwards sold
to a Colonel Thomas Taylor (see page 16). (ref. 468) The largest
developer in Young Street was the innholder and barbersurgeon William Munden, who acquired land on both
sides of the streets. (ref. 469) Among the builders who undertook
work there were the bricklayers Henry Webb and
Ferdinando Unsworth, the carpenters Richard Slater and
William Shirley, the painter James Wignall and the
plasterer Francis parker. (ref. 470)
From the first Young Street seems to have had a mixed
social character. One or two of the early residents were
connected with the Court but there was also a fair sprinkling of tradesman and shopkeepers. Courtly connections
were represented by Lady Mary Kirke, widow of Percy
Kirke, one of the best known of William III's army commanders, and by Peter Guenon de Beaubuisson, Gentleman of the Guns to William III and Keeper of the King's
private armoury. (ref. 471) Lady Kirke, whose rent was paid by
the Treasury, was briefly the occupant of No. 11 in 1693. (ref. 472)
She the moved to a house in the square (see page 14).
De Beaubuisson inhabited a house on the site of No. 23
in 1699–1700. His successor in the house until 1711 was
a Captain Duperron whose name suggests he may have
been a Huguenot. (ref. 18)
One undoubted Huguenot among the early residents
was Guy Memen, a ‘Doctor of Physick and Refuge[e] from
Paris the place of his habitation in France his Native
Countrey who from thence was with his Familie forced
in the year 1685 to fly for shelter into this Kingdome
because of their Religion and did lately settle himself in
the said Parish of Kensington to keepe a private Boarding
schoole for the education of his owne Children and some
few others who are allready or shall be Committed to his
charge’. (ref. 473) Memen occupied a house on the site of Nos.
19and 21 from 1694 to about 1707. (ref. 18) Another Frenchman,
Elias Dumisy, who was perhaps a lodger, died at Thomas
Hall's house (No. 27 Young Street) in November 1693. (ref. 474)
The tradesmen and shopkeepers tended, naturally
enough, to congregate at the north end near to the High
Street. The first occupants there included, on the west
side, a baker, John Hatter (in the corner house), a stagecoachman, Robert Rose, and apothecary, Robert
Poultney. Rose's property, which abutted north on Hatter,
included stabling and a stable-yard as well as his own
dwelling house. (ref. 475) One of the houses next door to Poultney
was in the hands of a licensed victualler by 1704. In 1713
it was called the Bell Alehouse but was later renamed The
Fowler and later still the Cock and Beehive: it went out
of business in the late 1760s. (ref. 476) Another alehouse called
the Bull's Head may have opened on the adjoining site
to the north in the 1730s. (ref. 477)
There were no public houses on the east side of the
street apart from the Greyhound (see page 11), which
although numbered in the square could be said to be just
in Young Street, and, indeed, is so described in some early
deeds. (ref. 478)
(fn. a) At the north end of the east side, a butcher,
Edward Long, was installed by 1704 at what was later
numbered 1–5 (odd) Young Street. (ref. 18) This was an awkward
triangular-shaped plot which Munden had purchased
from Thomas Young and on which had been erected a
house (No. 5), with a separate shop to the north (No. 3),
and a shed to the north of the shop. By 1740 a slaughterhouse had been built at the back on land leases from an
adjoining owner. Nos.1–5 were to remain wholly or party
in the hands of butchers until at least the 1840s. (ref. 480)
In the mid 1780s the inhabitants included a baker, a
cheesemonger, a clothes-shop-keeper, a smith, a carpenter
and three apothecaries. (ref. 481) The local candle-manufacturer,
James Wheble, had a warehouse on the west side of the
street, near the north end, from 1772, for which his successors in business continued to pay rates until 1828. (ref. 18) A
boarding-school run by a Miss Brown is mentioned in
1794. (ref. 482) By 1860 more than half the houses were in the
hands of tradesmen or shopkeepers. (ref. 93)
Photographs taken in the mid to late 1860s (Plate 20a)
show the still largely unaltered street on the eve of its transformation over the next thirty years. On the west side most
of the northern end of the street was redeveloped between
1868 and 1871 as part of the Kensington High Street
improvements, which included the formation of Ball
Street, connecting Young Street to King (now Derry)
Street (see page 84). The two old houses to the north
of No. 16 (together with an adjoining shop added in
c. 1805 (ref. 483) ) escaped rebuilding at this time but were demolished for a five-storey block of flats called Kensington
Square Mansions erected in 1885 by the builders S. and
R. Cawley of Hornton Street. (ref. 484)
On the east side redevelopment was more piecemeal
though in the end only a little less extensive. Here the most
distinctive of the nineteenth-century rebuildings was the
Venetian-Gothic Post Office at Nos. 15 and 17 (Plate 20c).
This was put up in two stages, the original three-storey
building at No. 17 being erected in the late 1860s. (ref. 485) In
the 1890s a two-storey extension in matching style was
built at No. 15, replacing an old brick-fronted house—with a late-Victorian shop-front— which had been the
home of the bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin
between 1806 and 1814. (ref. 486) Next door, at No. 13, a sober
stucco-faced building with a minimal pediment was erected in 1869 to the designs of Gordon Stanham, as premises
for a coach-builder, William Cole. (ref. 487) At the north end the
sites of Nos. 1 and 3 were redeveloped as part of No. 61
Kensington High Street in 1893–4 (see page 81). South
of the Post Office John Barker and Company rebuilt Nos.
19 and 21 in plain style in 1889–90, with two shops separated by an arched opening leading to stabling and workshops at the rear. (ref. 488) No. 23 was also rebuilt about the same
time, probably to the designs of Charles R. Guy Hall,
architect (Plate 21b). (ref. 489)
Finally, in 1905, No. 9 was rebuilt in an attractive Arts
and Crafts manner for the solicitor Ernest Bird, to the
designs of Frank Chesterton (Plate 20b). Faced in narrow
red ‘Lawrence’ bricks with Portland stone dressings, it
contains a shop on the ground floor with office accommodation above. The builders were T.H. Adamson and Sons
of Putney. Wainwright and Waring provided the leaded
lights and casements, and the plasterwork in the corridors
and principal room was executed by G. and A. Brown
Limited. (ref. 490)
The whole of the east side southwards of No. 9 has been
redeveloped (Plate 20d), beginning in 1968–70 with the
construction of a multi-storey car-park (Roy Chamberlain Associates, architects) on the sites of Nos. 19–27. This
was followed by the rebuilding of Nos. 11 and 13 in
1971–2 (Ardin and Brookes and Partners, architects) and
by the redevelopment of the old post office at Nos. 15 and
17 in 1973–6 by the Property services Agency (P.W.
Flaxman, job architect).
No. 16. This well-known house, with its distinctive
early-nineteenth-century double-bowed front, was originally erected in the early 1690s: it was extended southward and completely refronted in 1804–5.
The original house, of which a ground-floor plan is
given in figure 15, was a flat-fronted brick house, just over
thirty feet in width, and two storeys high with a basement
and garrets in the roof. Two rooms deep, it was conventionally planned with a side entrance passage leading to
a staircase at the rear. But unlike most other houses built
in and around Kensington Square in the late seventeenth
century, it did not have a closet wing. (ref. 491) The original house
occupied the full width of its site, and the later southward
extension was made over land which had previously
formed part of the curtilage of No. 45 Kensington Square.
It is not known who built the original house or under
what terms and conditions it was erected. The first occupant was a Dr. Ambrose Adams. but he was not the owner
of the property. Dr. Adams, who in 1694 had been the
first inhabitant of No. 25 Kensington Square, occupied
the Young Street house from 1695 to 1700 and again from
1709 to 1710. (ref. 18) By 1700 the freehold belonged to Nicholas
Goodwin, esquire, of Fulham, who also owned property
in the City, and it remained in the ownership of his heirs
until 1754. (ref. 492) In that year it was bought from Goodwin's heirs by John Richards of St. Andrew's, Goodwin's, a
cabinet-maker, who Occupied the house from about 1760
until his death in 1773. (ref. 493)
(fn. b) In his will Richards described
it as ‘the Most Convenient house in Kensington as at a
Great Expense I made it so’ (ref. 495) What exactly he did in
the way of improvements cannot now be identified, but
he was probably responsible for papering the first-floor
landing with a mid-eighteenth-century scenic wallpaper
depicting figures among classical ruins, fragments of which
were discovered in 1984 (Plate 22a). (fn. c)
The small extension behind the staircase, originally only
two storeys high with two arched openings on the ground
floor, appears to have been added in the second half of
the eighteenth century and is perhaps another of
Richards's improvements.
After Richards's death his window, who under the terms
of her marriage settlement enjoyed a life interest in the
house, continued to live there until 1782. (ref. 406) The next occupant, from 1783, was Thomas Hardwick, surgeon and
apothecary, who in 1788 bought the freehold from
Richards's executors. (ref. 497) In 1804 Hardwick purchased the
adjoining property to the south at No. 45 Kensington
Square. (ref. 498) This enabled him to extend No. 16 southward
by one bay in 1804–5 (fig. 15). (ref. 18) At the same time the front
of the house was rebuilt in its present from, a satisfying
but unflinchingly plain two-storey composition in brown
brick, with two segmentally bowed bays breaking forward
of the entrance bay. The widely spaced window-openings
are undressed, as is the door-opening in which is set a simple non-elassical doorcase incorporating a rectangular
light. A plain bandcourse of stone or stucco runs through
below the first-floor windows and the front is finished with
a simply moulded coping (Plate 21a). Inside, the hall was
evidently enlarged at the expense of the old front room,
and the staircase appears to have been rebuilt slightly
forward of its original position. It was probably also at
this time that the back of the house was raised to make
a third storey in place of the original garrets. It is not
known whom Hardwick employed to design and carry out
these alterations.
When the work was completed Hardwick gave No. 45
Kensington Square to his partner, John Merriman. (ref. 499)
Hardwick himself continued to live at No. 16 Young Street
until his death in 1825, and his window remained there until
1835. (ref. 500) After Sarah Hardwict's death the house
descended under the terms of her husband's will to his
godson, Thomas Hardwick Merriman, one of the sons of
John Merriman; and from 1835 to 1844 it was occupied
by another of Merriman's sons, the surgeon John Merriman the younger. (ref. 84)
Figure 15:
No. 16 Young Street. Groung-and first-floor plans in
c 1984, and a reconstruction of the ground-floor plan in c1800
Between 1846 and 1853and 1853 No. 16 was the home of William
Makepeace Thackeray (one of Merriman's patients), whose
residence here is marked by a Blue — or rather brown —Plaque above the front door put up in 1905. Thackeray
described the house (then numbered 13 Young Street) in
a letter to his mother in July 1846. ‘There are 2 capital
bed-rooms & a little sitting room for you and GP [Thackeray's step-father] —a famous bed room for G.M
[Thackeray's grandmother] on the first floor —2 rooms for
the children on the second very airy & comfortable; a
couple of rooms big enough for Servants, & 2 little ones
quite large enough for me— There's a good study for me
down stairs & a dining room & drawing room, and a little
court yard or garden and a little green house: and kensington Gardens at the gate, and omnibuses every 2 minutes
What can mortal want more (ref. 503) His secretary. Eyre
Growe, later recalled an occasion when, catching sight of
the house from the top of Young Street, Thackeray
thought the two bowed bays flanking the front entrance
gave it the air of a feudal castle, and exclaimed ‘I’II have
a flagstaff put over the coping of the wall, and hoist a standard up when I'm at home ’ (ref. 502)
Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond
and Pendennis were all written in Young Street. Thackeray's study was the ground-floor room at the back overlooking the garden, which his daughter described as ’not
tidy… but it was full of sweet things. There were
verbenas—red, blue and scented; and there were lovely
stacks of flags … and bunches of London Pride’ (ref. 503)
Thackeray left Young Street in 1853 before the expiry
of this lease, and for a few month the house was sub-let
to William W.F. Synge, a young English diplomat with
an American wife whom Thackeray had met in the United
States. (ref. 504)
From 1873 to 1893 No. 16 was occupied by the painter
G.B. O'Neill, whose son, the composer Norman O'Neill,
was born in the house in 1875. (ref. 505) G. B. O'Neill set up
his studio in the ground-floor back room which Thackeray
had used for a study, and he seems to have been responsible for making the bow window here and in the room
above. Beneath the studio window a plaster scroll or ‘entablature’ designed by O'Neill's friend Norman Shaw
was erected to commemorate Thackeray's residence at No.
16. This was inscribed with a monogram of Thackeray's initials, the dates of his occupation of the house and the
names of the three novels written in Young Street; it had
disappeared by 1904 (ref. 506)
(fn. d)
A later occupant of No. 16. from 1924 to 1931, was Sir
Maurice Linford Gwyer, Treasury Solicitor and afterwards Chief Justice of India. (ref. 93)
After the war of 1939–45 John Barker and Company,
who had bought the freehold of No. 16 in 1924, (ref. 508) wanted
to use the back garden as a loading bay. This proposal,
which also involved taking the adjoining back gardens of
Nos. 42–45 Kensington Square, was refused by the
London County Council, but went ahead after Barkers had
successfully appealed against that decision in 1949. (ref. 36)
The interior of the house is not particularly remarkable.
On the ground floor the entrance hall and the two rooms
on the north side are simply panelled, as is the rear room
on the first floor. A round-arched opening, the spandrels
of which are pierced by small ‘port-holes’, divides the
entrance hall from the staircase compartment. The staircase itself, dating from the early nineteenth century, has
plain square balusters, elegant turned newels and a thin
mahogany handrail.
In 1984 the house was heavily restored and extended
in the south-west corner. (ref. 509)
Nos. 25 and 27. These houses, demolished since the
war of 1939–45 in face of face of considerable local opposition,
were among the oldest and most venerable in Young
Street, dating from the earliest period of the street's development in the late 1680s (Plate 21b). Both, but particularly No. 27, were said to be in a poor state of repair,
and in 1952 the London County Council was not disposed
to object to their demolition when John Barker and Company, who owned the freeholds, wanted the sites for an
extension to their bakery behind Nos. 17–23 Young Street.
Although Barkers did not proceed with this scheme, No.
27 was pulled down in 1956. (ref. 36) No. 25 was threatened with
demolition in 1958, when the two sites were required for
a ‘temporary’ car park to offset the loss of parking space
caused by the building of the public library on a site in
Hornton Street. (ref. 509) The house survived, however, until the
1960s, being demolished for the multi-storey car park
erected in 1968–70.
Both houses appear to have been erected in about 1685—6. At No. 25 (formerly No. 10 and later also known as
Felday House) the builder was a bricklayer, Henry webb
the elder. (ref. 510) Webb also built the house next door but one
to the south which become the Gryhound tavern, and
was associated with the construction of Nos. 43 and 44
Kensington Square. He and his family are recorded as living in Young Street in February 1686 and may have been
the first occupants of No. 25. (ref. 511) As originally built the
house was probably only two storeys high with roof garrets. It was later raised a whole storey, and the ground
storey altered probably at a late date still (Plate 21b). In
1887 the house was extended at the back by Philip Webb
for John Frederick Bowman, solicitor son of the ophthalmic surgeon Sir William Bowman for whom Webb had
previously designed Joldwynds in Surrey. (ref. 512) Webb's extension, in brick with some sparse stone dressings, was
characteristically workmanlike and unadorned. On the
south side a canted bay with unmoulded mullion windows
rose through two storeys finishing in a large cove which
served to support a balcony protected by plain iron
railings.
At No. 27 (formerly No. 11 and later also known as the
Little House) the builder was James Wignall of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, a painter. (ref. 513) He was one of the
workmen employed on the finishing of No. 30 Soho
Square in 1685–6, where one of his fellow employees was
Thomas Young. (ref. 514) The house appears to have been first
occupied in 1691. (ref. 18) Only two storeys high, with roof garrets, it had timber closets at the rear (ref. 515) The house was
never heightened but was refronted, probably at the end
of the eighteenth century, with three bays (perhaps replacing five) of widely spaced squareish windows. The wooden
hood above the front door shown in Plate 21b was added
in 1899 by the architect Leonard Stokes, who was briefly
the occupant in 1902–3, (ref. 516) during which time the house
was known as No. 1A Kensington Square.
Previous occupants had included the surgeon, James N.
Merriman, 1833–47, and the marine painter, Alfred Clint,
1864–74. Thackeray's daughter, Anne, who spent part of
her childhood at No. 16 opposite, lived at No. 27 with
her husband, Richmond Ritchie, an official in the India
Office, from 1878 to 1884, when they removed to a newly
built house in Wetherby Place (see page 165). <Virginia Crawford (the self-proclaimed mistress of Sir Charles Dilke) and her husband took No. 27 for the 1883 season.> Between
1889 and 1898 it was occupied by the classical scholar and
literary critic, J.W.Mackail, then a civil servant in the
Education Department. (Mackail's daughter, ther novelist
Angela Thirkell, who was born in the house in 1890, described her early life there in her first book, Three Houses,
published in 1931.)
Figure 16:
No. 27 Young Street, plans, elevations and section in 1955. Demolished
Thackeray Street to South End
The irregularly shaped space formed by the junction of
narrow roadways at what is generally called ‘South End’
(fig. 2 on page 10) is a very old feature of this area, derving
from the first building-period of Kensington Square. Early
elements are the former stabling at the back of the houses
on the south side of Kensington Square now represented
by the north side of the cul-de-sac officially named South
End, and the route to Thomas Young's bowling green now
represented by the line of Ansdell Street and South End
Row (see page 8). The South End area is shown on
Rocque's map of 1741–6 with essentially its present configuration. The coming together here of various smallish
landholdings inhibited redevelopment thereafter in a
backwater where, furthermore, drainage was a problem.
Nowadays the large sewer-vent pipe in the centre of the
carriageway, and the flower-bed under a pink cherry tree
that occupies a re-entrant angle shown by Rocque, symbolize a mixed but at present ‘improving’ neighbourhood.
No buildings in this vicinity are of earlier date than the
small handful of houses erected in the early nineteenth
century in South End Row and at the corner of Ansdell
Street and St. Alban's Grove (see page 53). What can be
seen is mostly of this century, some dating (like other
buildings now demolished) from its first decade, when a
very miscellaneous rebuilding period created new workshops, garages, studios and houses and a new sewer. In
1939 the area was still largely a ‘village’, if a lightly industrialized one, where the local shopkeepers nevertheless
expected the ‘cliffs’ of Kensington's big new buildings to ‘close in on the old South End.’ (ref. 517) This has not happen,
the conversion to ‘gentrified’ houses and offices having
served the cause of conservation. By 1972 the longstanding use for shops, workshops, storage, and stables or
garages was receding sufficiently for a householder to complain that even office-use was causing a ‘residential’ area
to be ‘increasingly spoiled by commercial development.’ (ref. 518)
Thackeray Street and Ansdell Street
Thackeray Street was laid out in 1900–1 in partial fulfilment both of a private scheme authorized by an Act of
Parliament in 1896 (ref. 519) and of a wider ambition to improve
the southern egress from Kensington Square and the
amenities of the neighbourhood that had been cherished
by the local authorities since at least 1881. The undertakers
named in the Act of 1896 were an East India merchan
in Mincing Lane, C.W. Simson, and a solicitor in Broad
Street, G.R. Mewburn. The more important figures in
the development, however. Were Albert James Barker
(1856–1909), a local surveyor, and his close associate and
contemporary, R.J. Bowerman, a solicitor in Gray's Inn. (ref. 93)
Barker— the father of Harley Granville Barker—had
since 1882 been accumulating property about here
(fig. 17a) in which Bowerman also had extensive mortgage interests, and they were represented in the Act by
Simson and Mewburn only as recently recruited financial
backers. (ref. 520)
(fn. e)
Barker's first venture in Thackeray Street antedated the
street itself, when his firm, Barker and Roscoe, of Earl's Court Road, had the present Nos. 16–19 (consec.) Kensington
Court Place and Nos. 1 and 3 Thackeray
Street built in 1883 on a site bought by barker in the previous year and abutting northward on the narrow Charles
Place. (ref. 523) The building comprises shops, flats and studios
and was evidently conceived with an eye to the enhancement of the area promised by the making of Kensington
Court opposite from 1882 onwards. The architect, who
produced an unflustered design in red brick to accommodate this mixture of uses, was possibly one of two
associates of Baker and Roscoe, W.G. Flint and H. Powys
Adams. (ref. 524)
(fn. f) Barker was thenceforward interested in the
improvement of the constricted and irregular line of James
Place and Charles Place. In 1886 he unsuccessfully offered
£400 for this purpose to the Kensington Vestry, which
had been alerted to the problem by its own surveyo for
some years past. (ref. 526) Barker's interest here was strengthened
when he bought the whole east side of Kensington Court
Place, then virtually empty of building, in December 1886.
Two new blocks of flats called Kensington Court Gardens
were quickly built here by Frederick Moir in 1887–9: a
third block, St. Alban's Mansions, followed on in 1894
to designs by Paul Hoffmann (see page 147). (ref. 527)
In 1888 Barker and Moir, with Bowerman's cooperation, obtained an Act of parliament empowering
them to make the desired street, approximately on the line
of Thackeray Street, as part of a larger scheme by the
architect W.J. Green to give more directly southward
communication from kensington Square across the site
of No. 13 (fig. 17b). Barker and Moir bought some property, but this was again in Kensington Court Place, on
its west side, (ref. 528) and how far the scheme in its larger aspect
was seriously intended is hard to say. The late 1880s were
a doubtful time in the Kensington housing market and
in 1991, when Barker's and Moir's powers of compulsory
purchase were nearing expiry, Barker and Bowerman
appeales to the Vestry for large financial help. The vestry,
recommended by its surveyor either to give some help
towards a scheme that promised a nearly sixfold increase
of rateable values within its area, or to take over the work
itself, did neither, and the Act of 1888 lapsed. (ref. 529)
Figure 17:
James (now Ansdell) Street area. 2, in c. 1862–72: the stippling indicates the extent and dates of A.J. Barker's later purchases;
the proposed streets authorised by the Act of 1888;c, the proposed streets authorized by the Act of 1896
The vestry's more urgent concern was the insanitary
and dangerous state of James (now Ansdell) Street, with
its small, badly planned houses — some of them perhaps
contemporary with the building of Kensington Square
(Plate 22c). (ref. 530) About 384 people lived in the little street.
or ten to a house, the most numerous heads of families
being labourers, building-trades workmen and laundresses
or washerwomen. (ref. 531) From 1891 to 1894 the Vestry, goaded
by its Medical Officer of Health, tried to grapple with this
problem. It obtained Closing Orders on, and bought up,
many of the houses. (ref. 532) and appealed to the young London
County Council to help it under the Houseing of the Working Classes Act of 1890. (ref. 533) Its surveyour produced a scheme
for rehousing the inhabitants on the site. (ref. 534) But there was
opposition from adjacent owners, (ref. 535) as well as some
resistance within the Vestry itself to its direct involvement
in working-class housing, embodied in the buildervestryman Thomas Huggett. (ref. 536) Most crucially, there was
non-co-operation from the London County Council,
which thought the site too confined for the purpose. (ref. 517)
In 1895 the Vestry thus had properties and a degree
of moral commitment in James Street without quite knowing what to do about either. One of the objectiors to its
scheme there had been Barker, doubtless to secure his own
property from too great proximity to new working-class
dwellings. He and Bowerman now persuaded the Vestry
not to dispose of its ground in James Street and promised
to undertake a large scheme under a new Act of Parliament
if the Vestry would give financial help. (ref. 538) The Vestry
agreed to give £8,600 (ref. 539)
The new scheme, by the architect Walter Stair, contained a not-very-convincing version of a route southward
from Kensington Square (fig. 17c), (ref. 540) but as soon as the
Act was obtained, in 1896, Barker and bowerman made
it clear they were really only interested in the ‘Thackeray
Street’ line, pleading the ‘cost of money’ as the obstacle
to financing the larger scheme. (ref. 541) By then Barker owned
the north side of the intended street. (ref. 542) which he gave a
curved alignment, probably to economize land-purchases
on the south side by sacrificing some of his site at the croner of Kensington Square (fig. 2)
This was a not unpropitious time for residential building
in Kensington but the developers nevertheless delayed
implementing even their reduced scheme. The years
1897–8 passed in ‘deadlock’ between them and the Vestry,
while south of the intended line James Street continued
to deteriorate. (ref. 543) Shortly before the powers of compulsory
purchase again expired, in 1899, Barker and Bowerman
tried to get a subvention of £6,000 from the Vestry for
their reduced scheme, and obtained £5,000 (ref. 544) (The transaction earned the Vestry an outspoken condemnation from
the London County Council in 1903— posthumously,
however, as the Vestry had by then been succeeded by
the Royal Borough of Kensington. In the eyes of the
County Council the Vestry's fault had been to subsidize
what the developers needed to do in their own interest. (ref. 545) )
The work, within its reduced scope, at last went ahead—and in the end mostly on land acquired independently of
any powers conferred by the two Acts of Parliament.
On the north side of Thackeray Street two blocks of
flats over shops were built for Barker as owner in 1901–2.
The eastern, at Nos. 2–14 (even, with a single-storey shop
extension at No.16) is the back of Durward House, Kensington Court, built by Bywaters to designs by Durward
Brown (see page 70), and the western, at Nos.18–28
(even) Thackeray Street and Nos. 8–10 (consec.) Kensington Square, is Abbotts Court, built by Martin,
Wells and Company. (ref. 546) Whether Brown was also the architect of this better-organized-looking block is not known.
From the beginning the shops were of a kind similar to
the present.
On the south side Nos. 5, 7 and 9 Thackeray Street
were built in 1904–6 by J. Easton of Barnsbury for A. B.
Rumball, a civil engineer. (ref. 547)
Most of the ground on this side west of James Street
had passed in 1895 to the important local building firm
of Leslie and Company, who still owned it when they built
Esmond Court here in 1931–2. The architects were
Richardson and Gill, who designed plain brick exteriors
with Georgian fenestration and a minimally neo-Classic
entrance. Lock-up shops were incorporated in the streetfrontag (replaced by a shop and flat in 1969) and the basement and ground floor devoted mainly to garages for the
occupants of the moderate-sized flats above. Basementdrainage, as at other sites nearby, was problem. (ref. 548)
James Street was never abolished and its old crooked
line survives as Ansdell Street. In 1902 Barker and Bowerman, who had acquired the site via Simson and Mewburn. (ref. 549) had workshops built on the west side, designed
in a very utilitarian manner by Durward Brown. (ref. 550) and
on the east side Bowerman had a large garage, with a ‘machinery department’ and dressing-rooms, built in 1905
to designs by G.R. Crickmay. (ref. 551)
(fn. g)
Ansdell Street has lately been transformed, agreeably
but in the widely divergent ways characteristic of recent
years. On the east side at Nos. 7–17 (odd) a car-hire complex was recast in 1976 by the architects Riley and Glanfield in a cool, unitimidating modernish. (ref. 554) Southward
Nos. 19, 21 and 23 were reconstruced for office use in
1980–1 by Alexander, Reece and Thomson, surveyors,
with the fronts of Nos. 19 and 21 rebuilt on the existing
pattern of early-nineteenth-century brick building. (ref. 555) A
stone tablet on the north wall of No. 19 shows it had been
built in 1824 for Thomas Chancellor, a jobmaster who
owned the site as heir of Jonathan Hamston (see page
137). (fn. h) Southward again, Nos 25 and 27 Ansdell Street,
together with Nos. 19 and 20 St. Alban's Grove, were
also built for Chancellor— here by John Saunders, a carpenter, between 1824 and 1829. This corner block (orignally of five houses and until recently accommodating
small shops) presents more directly the old-fashioned
manner of building that still prevailed in this backwater
in the 1820s. The windows are flush-framed in segmentally
headed openings (those at the southern end of No. 27
Ansdell Street being a recent and characteristically unobtrustive insertion) and the hipped roof is pantiled. On the
west side of Ansdell Street most of Barker's and Bowerman's workshops were rebuilt in 1975–6 to designs by
Daniel Watney Eiloart Inman and Nunn with a calm,
strongly horizontal, brick front at Nos. 12 and 14.
(ref. 556) In
1982–3 Blissett Macdonald Associates of Stoke Poges,
architects, refronted the remainder at No.10, while retaining the old window-openings. They used cream-coloured
rendering and tiles of greyish-blue with touches of red,
in a style influenced by ‘Art Deco’ but light-hearted rather
than aggressively facetious. (ref. 557)
The occupants of Ansdell Street in 1984 were also
characteristic of their time, including recruitment consultants, building-refurbishment specialists, a publishing
group, a vehicle-hire company (perhaps to be supplanted
by the classes of an American college), agents for Italian
printers and an association of bussiness and professional
women. (ref. 93)
No. 21 St. Alban's Grove
This building was erected in 1894 to serve as a mission
hall and school for the parish of St. Mary Abbots, to
designs by the architect T. Phillips Figgis, (ref. 558) in a simplified version of the Flamboyant-cum-Arts-and-Crafts style
of some expensive houses in Kensington Court. In 1985
it was reshaped, and the already-altered front further
altered, to designs by APT Partnership, architects, for use
as Leith's School of Food and Wine. (ref. 559)
South End
The cul-de-sac now named South End— a designation
which proir to 1925 extended also to what are now Nos.
25 and 27 Ansdell Street and Nos. 19–22 St. Alban's Grove
on the other side of the road-junction — consists on its
north side of what were formerly the back premises of
houses in Kensington Square now numbered 15–20 South
End (Plate 23a, 23b). On its south side the eastern end,
occupied early in this century by near-picturesque, semirustic coffee-rooms, and premises in the hands of a bottlemerchant, is now part of a yard and depot of the Property
Services Agency, while the western end, like No.14 on
the north side, is part of the property of the Convent of
the Assumption.
The enhancement of the north-side buildings dates
essentially from the early years of this century— the same
period that saw a new sewer made (with its tall vent-pipe)
in 1908 and the fanciful studios built at the corner of South
End Row in 1911 (see page 148). No. 15 South End, previously the stabling of No. 19 Kensington Square, was
rebuilt as a ‘ garage’ and two flats facing South End
shortly before 1912. (ref. 560) The architect of this quite
positively-designed building in a modified neo-Georgian
style (spoilt by a new window in 1968) is not known. At
No. 17 the stable block of 1881 at No. 17 Kensington
Square (see page 23) can be seen behind the wall of a
single-storey extension of 1908. (ref. 561) No. 18 is a reconstructed former stable behind No. 16 kensington Square built
in 1875, which was in use by a ‘motor engineer’ in the
1920s, authorized for office use in 1958–61, and refronted
about 1980 by Morrison, Rose and Partners, architects,
of Cosham, Hampshire. (ref. 562) No. 19 used for storage or
warehousing in the 1930s, was converted to office use in
1964 and refronted by Newman, Levinson and Partners,
architects, in 1972. (ref. 563) No. 20 was built in 1909, on the
site of three small cottages, by J. Marsland and Sons,
builders, to a notably simple and unaffected design by E.
W. Marshall, architect, who also designed Garden Lodge
in Logan Place (see page 282). The semi-circular doorhood was added (and the estermost fenestration brought
into conformity with the rest) in 1967 by the architects
of Nos. 16 and 17 Ansdell Terrace adjacent. (ref. 564)
Ansdell Terrace
The cul-de-sac of Ansdell Terrace (formerly St. Alban's Road North) was laid out and ten houses on its east side,
of which Nos. 18–20 and Nos. 24–27 survive, were erected in 1878 by the Kensington builder Thomas Hussey, (ref. 565)
on the back garden of the house at No. 13 Kensington
Square which he had just bought (see page 20). Four
storeys high and staidly designed by their unknown architect in a style old-fashioned for its date—particulary so
on the ground floor — these houses have the outward
aspect of substantial single-family residences (Plate 23c).
Three years after building, however, they are known to
have been numerously inhabited by the working classes,
each house accommodating, on average, twenty occupants
divided between three or four artisan families. (ref. 566) In 1888
they were referred to as ‘industrial dwellings’ (ref. 567) A peculiarity of their internal arrangement is that the conventional plan of the ground floors, with three rooms and a
water closet, was repeated on each of the floors above
instead of being reduced and sub-divided on the upper
floors for the bedrooms required by single-family occupation. (ref. 568) It would thus seem that Hussey intended them.
like some of his other developments, for working-class use
and furthermore deliberately planned them for multioccupation— but as single houses behing a ‘middle-class’
front and arranged on not ungenerous lines.
After war-damage Nos. 21, 22 and 23 were rebuilt with
three storeys only to designs by the architect J.J. de
Segrais made in 1953. (ref. 569)
The west side of Ansdell Terrace occupied (like No. 20
South End) part of the former garden of No. 14 Kensington Square. It is taken up by two low-built ‘cottages’, Nos
16 and 17, which were erected in 1967–8 to designs by
Richardson and McLaughlan, architects, of Watford, for
the owner-occupants of No. 14 Kensington Square, the
National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers. (ref. 570) In
1972 No. 16 was occupied by the Union's General
Secretary. (ref. 518)