CHAPTER XIV - Earl's Court Village and Earl's Court Gardens Area
In this chapter are brought together two adjacent areas
between Redfield Lane and Barkston Gardens with separate developments but overlapping histories.
Earl's Court Village
The term ‘village’ as applied to the area east of Earl's Court
Road opposite Earl's Court Station is sanctioned by its
use to designate a Conservation Area in 1973, and perhaps
also by its loose current Londoner's sense denoting a
neighbourhood of small houses, with small shops, really
or seemingly anterior in date to their surroundings. Otherwise it is something of a misnomer. There was no church
or ancient nucleus here, although a malthouse or brewhouse belonging to a Matthew Child had stood somewhere
near the present No. 185 Earl's Court Road in about 1683–1703. (ref. 1) Rocque's map of 1741–6 shows little building in
the locality. What it does show is three paths coming from
the north-east and east, corresponding very roughly to
Marloes Road and (still more roughly) Cromwell Road and
the line of Harrington Road and Harrington Gardens.
These converged towards the manor house and farm of
the manor of Earl's Court on the other side of Earl's Court
Road and in doing so brought potential customers past
a well-placed tavern, the White Hart, which since at least
1722 had stood back from but facing Earl's Court Lane,
in what is now Hogarth Road, slightly forward and west
of No. 2. (ref. 2) It survived, not much modernized, (ref. 3) until 1869
(Plate 97a).
Southward a short terrace of fair-sized houses was
begun about 1757 by an active West End builder, the carpenter Roger Blagrave, on land where three older houses
had stood and which he had bought in 1756. (Later called
The Terrace, it survived until the 1870s, being replaced
by Nos. 189–203 (odd) Earl's Court Road.) The first occupant of No. 1, at the north end, was Francois, comte de
Viry, the Sardinian envoy, and the occupant of No. 1 or
2, in 1760, the surgeon John Hunter (see page 197), but
it was probably about 1767 before Nos. 3 and 4 were built
by another carpenter, John Loveday of Bermondsey, and
no spread of house-building followed (fig. 86 on page
202). (ref. 4)
The area, bounded on the south by what became the
line of Earl's Court Gardens, had formed Pound Field,
which passed, as part of a larger property, to the Greene
family who were owners of the Stag brewery in
Westminster. It was sold by their representatives to John
Hunter in 1793 (ref. 5) and, after his death in that same year,
by his representatives in 1797 to the crucial purchaser in
the area's building history. (ref. 6)
That history extended essentially over some eighty years
and resulted in the miscellaneous and mostly unimpressive
appearance of the area today. No large, long-term unit of
ownership endured: at least a dozen diverse interests can
be identified concerning themselves with building enterprise in this small locality (figs. 95–6). The conventional
mode of residential development by building lease was by
no means always adopted. Some of the building was
evidently done directly for small owners (and is correspondingly difficult to document) and in other cases the
owners were content to sell-out to the builders. The
level—rather below the more formal and approved
procedures— at which some of the building occurred is
reflected by the obscurity of records in which building
history is usually discernible: the ratebooks in particular
lump together for a long period under the landlord's name
small rented houses in terraces (notably those near the
Earl's Court end of Kenway Road and in Hogarth Place).
But as a generalization it may be said the buildings of the
area are less old than they look.
The purchaser of Pound Field in 1797 was Thomas
Smith — described as vintner but soon gentleman — of
Chelsea. (ref. 6) He had just begun important building operations
there (ref. 7) but in Kensington he was soon reducing his newlyacquired interest, which his family's representatives seem
to have finally disposed of in the late 1860s, after a mixed
and lowish level of building achievement. The family's
interests evidently remained centred in and around the
King's Road, where they lived.
At Earl's Court Smith began building about 1803–5. (ref. 8)
It was chiefly along the line of communication already
mentioned and is represented today by Kenway Road and
Hogarth Place. The focus of activity here was acknowledged and increased just at this time by a neighbouring
landowner, James Gunter, who by 1806 had bought the
southern part of Pound Field from Smith (about where
Hogarth Road and the railway now are situated) and in
that year diverted into a path that joined Earl's Court Road
at the present junction with Earl's Court Gardens foot
traffic that had been entering Earl's Court Road further
south. (ref. 9)
Smith built virtually no big houses on his land. The
largest were one or two in the southern angle of Earl's
Court Road and Redfield Lane: otherwise he had nine
small houses built in Earl's Court Road north of Kenway
Road (his ‘New Buildings'), (ref. 10) other small cottages
squeezed into ‘North Row’ and ‘South Row’ (now repre
sented by Nos. 16–30 and the larger 32–36 (even) Kenway
Road and Nos. 6–16 (consec.) Hogarth Place), a public
house, the King's Head, constructed between the junction
of these two footways, and nineteen smallish terrace houses
erected nearby.
Figure 95:
Earl's Court Village and Earl's Court Gardens, showing some former units of freehold ownership mentioned in Chapter XIV.
H denotes Hardwick. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1949–75.
These last survive as Nos. 35–71 (odd) Kenway Road
(Nos. 57–61 rebuilt). They were erected in c. 1807–10, (ref. 8)
each one bay wide and three storeys high (Plate 98b,
fig. 97). Before it was renamed and renumbered as part
of Kenway Road in 1908 the row was called Providence
Terrace, but that aboriginal-sounding name was given it
only in 1851: at first it was termed Manor Terrace
(perhaps to acknowledge the significance of the manor
house in Earl's Court Road for this line of route, perhaps
merely to echo Smith's Manor Terrace in the King's
Road), and then Earl's Court Terrace. (ref. 8) Under this name
Faulkner called it ‘pleasantly situated’ in 1820. (ref. 11) The list
of ratepayers about then suggests some respectability, as
half a dozen of the names seem likely to be those of owners
of property locally, or friends or relations of the Smiths. (ref. 8)
The designer of these simple houses is not known,
although in Chelsea, at least, Smith's architect may have
been a Nicholas Handford. (ref. 12)
Figure 96:
Earl's Court Village and Earl's Court Gardens, showing the areas of operation of some initiators of building and the main
dates of activity. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1949–75.
The names denoted by the letters are: B-O, the Revd. M. M. Ben-Oliel; C, The Childs family; CWW,, C. W. Wallgrave of Chelsea,
nephew of Thomas Smith; F, W. Follett, builder; G, Robert Gunter 11; H&H,, Thomas Huggett and/or Thomas Hussey, builders;
K, 3rd Lord Kensington; MDR, Metropolitan District Railway Company; R, Joseph Richmond, grocer; S, Thomas Smith of Chelsea;
Sav, Alfred Savigear, publican; T, J. L. Tomlin, solicitor to Robert Gunter II; V, J. F. Van Camp, builder; Y, George Yates of
Earl's Court Road
Together with this house (or cottage) building of about
1803–10, however, more noxious uses appeared, and
Smith began to sell. In 1803 he granted what seems to
have been a building lease of a site at Nos. 111–117 Earl's
Court Road to a William Rose of Kensington Palace, architect, but two years later the tenure was in a William Rose,
alebrewer, (ref. 13) and a brewery was established here for three
or four years (ref. 8) —long enough to give the name Brewery
Lane to the passageway (now, with a slightly altered alignment, Redfield Lane) made on its north side.
Figure 97:
Nos. 43–51 (odd) Kenway Road, c. 1807–10, elevation
Further south Smith sold the Earl's Court Road frontage now of Nos. 147–161 in 1803 to John Hardwick, a flaxdresser, who promptly built a factory for making floorcloth canvas back from the road. (ref. 14) (On the frontage
Smith's nine cottages became ‘Hardwick's Rents’. (ref. 8) ) Hardwick was declared bankrupt in 1813, when the floor-cloth
factory passed to Messrs. Dagnall and Sewell until 1819. (ref. 15)
As will be seen, no immediate improvement to local amenities followed.
In 1811 Smith sold all his property northward of
Hardwick's—in modern terms the area bounded by Redfield Lane, the backs of the Wallgrave Road properties,
Child's Place and Earl's Court Road. The purchaser, for
£2,280, was John Johnson, paviour, of Horseferry Road. (ref. 16)
This left Smith with his recently built ‘routeway’ of small
houses, plus an unbuilt triangle to the north, east of Johnson's purchase.
In 1819–21 Smith had another, slightly staggered, row
of small houses begun on the north side of his ‘routeway’
under building leases (and probably completed by his
widow in 1825). These were at what are now Nos. 15–33
(odd) Kenway Road, and the builder of some (and therefore perhaps all) was a Henry Cullingham, carpenter. (ref. 17)
Soon this terrace was called New North Row. (ref. 8) The present
houses probably show a considerably later recasting or
rebuilding, but like the early-seeming Nos. 32–36 Kenway
Road opposite are hard to date (Plates 98a, 99e).
Development on Johnson's land seems to have hung fire
until a similar date, c. 1820. (ref. 8) A wax-bleacher's establishment was then set up, between what are now Child's Street
and Child's Place, by a Samuel Childs, who with his
partner Charles Freeman received a lease from Johnson
and his mortgagee in 1825. (ref. 18) Childs's and Freeman's works
presumably served their retail wax-chandler's business —latterly in Irving Street, off Leicester Square. (ref. 19) This was
an important development for the locality, not only by
confirming its insalubriousness but by bringing here the
Childs family, (fn. a) who were partly to rebuild this area as its
freeholders in the 1850s.
In 1822 Smith tried to sell his developed property here
at auction. The advertisement offered ‘an unusual opportunity to small capitalists’, and hopes of a yield of £1,000
per annum. It was the day of the ‘40 shilling freeholder’
and the advertisement recommended these small houses
as nevertheless ‘giving 42 Votes for the County’ (ref. 20) —perhaps a hint at one factor in building at about this level
of value.
It is evident that no sale was made. When the building
boom of 1825 came it was only dimly reflected here, and
then not on Smith's property — doubtless in part because
of his own death at the beginning of that year. In 1827
Albion Place and Johnson's Place appear in Earl's Court
Road, (ref. 8) at approximately the present Nos. 137–145, and on
the south side of what became Child's Street respectively.
In the same year the old floor-cloth premises south of
Child's Place were replaced by or reactivated as a brewery
and factory. After about 1845 the latter seems to have been
run with the brewery (the Star Brewery) or malthouse
until about 1861. (ref. 21) Fronting Earl's Court Road small
houses shown by Starling's map of 1822 were perhaps
rebuilt or renovated as Factory Row, later Salt Box Row
(approximately at Nos. 153–161 Earl's Court Road). From
at least 1832 the corner site now occupied by the Prince
of Teck public house contained a ‘Tap’ connected with
the brewery. (ref. 22) Part of the brewery or factory premises
seem to have been given up to use as a school about 1849,
probably in connection with the St. Barnabas Lecture
Room, which was hereabouts c. 1851–65. Locations in this
hinterland are hard to fix: by 1865 the school was probably
on the other, south, side of Kenway Road. (ref. 23)
On the Childs family property the wax-bleacher's business also came to an end, about 1852, its last year or so
being as a night-light factory for Price's candle-making
concern. (ref. 24) By 1857 Samuel Childs was a gentleman, at
Sunbury. (ref. 25)
The end of this factory permitted the first noticeable
and surviving building work since the early years of the
century, when the small cul-de-sac giving access to the
wax-bleacher's was redeveloped from 1854 onwards as
Child's Street. The builder of some and perhaps all of
these modest houses was a local man, Stephen Peirson. (ref. 26)
The Childs family soon found tenants: in 1861 all the
houses (including the older houses of Johnson's Place at
the south-west end, which were rebuilt thirty years later)
were occupied, half of them in multi-occupation, and
averaged seven residents to a house. They were predominantly working-class, without servants. A third of the
heads of households were in building-related trades:
others included an Inspector of Police, a police constable,
a pianoforte-maker, a pianoforte-key-maker, two gardeners, a commercial traveller, a ‘laundress at home’, a
fire-escape contractor and a coachman. (ref. 27) The houses, provided with the simplest late-Georgian cottage-terrace
fenestration, are detailed in a way that looks mid-Victorian
and makes them difficult to date stylistically: in some
respects the treatment of the window keystones, perhaps
indicating a later reconstruction, is very similar to that at
the equally hard-to-date Nos. 23–33 Kenway Road (Plate
99e).
This was not then a ‘good’ area. The 1851 census had
found Providence Terrace at Nos. 35–71 Kenway Road
probably down on its earlier status — perhaps ‘shabbygenteel’ at best. Eight of the twenty-four households had
one servant apiece. The five heads of households who
might be called rentiers were all women. The other heads
were of very mixed occupations—a coachman, a journeyman baker, a ‘clerk’ at the Treasury, a ‘parochial
schoolmaster’, a ‘turner of wood’, two out-of-work publicans, a stockbroker's clerk, a ‘foreman gardener’, a ‘Professor of Classes’, an ‘Inspector’ at the Great Exhibition,
a ‘Daily Governess’ and so on. Four of the nineteen houses
were in multi-occupation, but with five occupants on average these houses were at least not noticeably overcrowded. (ref. 28)
At the southern end of the Childs plot the north and
east sides of Child's Place (Nos. 9–15) were perhaps built
about the same time, in the mid fifties (Plate 99a, 99c).
No. 13, on the east side, was built by David Farmilo of
Pimlico, possibly in association with Charles Biggs and
G. A. Taylor, carpenters. (ref. 29) On the plot at the north-west
corner of Child's Street fronting Earl's Court Road a
builder, John Darby, erected two houses under lease from
mortgagees of Samuel Childs in 1861–2 (an associated
builder being James Mayhew). These are Nos. 121 and
123 Earl's Court Road, the latter being a public house,
the Earl's Court Arms (now Cromwells). (ref. 30) But other
parts of the Childs property were sold off in 1871 for
development or redevelopment.
On the south side of Child's Place house-building could
only begin after the demise of the brewery in about 1861.
Meanwhile in the backland the one vacant area on the
Smith family property was built over, very humbly, in
1860–2. This was on the one-acre triangular piece of
ground — latterly a market garden run by William
Rubergall — between (in modern terms) Nos. 23–77 Kenway Road, the eastern ends of Child's Place and Child's
Street, and Redfield Lane. Thomas Smith's property had
descended on his death in 1825 to his widow Elizabeth
and on her death in 1828 to her unmarried brother William
Coles. His will, made in 1850 and proved in 1854, disposed
of considerable sums of money and important properties
in Chelsea as well as this in Kensington. By it he
bequeathed the developed land here to trustees for the
children of his nephew Charles William Wallgrave and the
undeveloped triangle to H. V. Tebbs of Highgate and John
Martin of St. Pancras. (ref. 31) They sold the triangle in 1856
to Wallgrave and he developed it in building before conveying at least some of it to his daughters. (ref. 32) This development comprised Wallgrave Road and Wallgrave
Terrace at Nos. 1–13 (consec.) Redfield Lane, built in
1860–2 (Plate 100b, 100c). Unlike in some neighbouring
areas, the accredited method was employed of granting
building leases to building tradesmen. The chief of these
in Wallgrave Road, who applied to the vestry in 1860 to
lay it out, (ref. 33) was David Farmilo, who became bankrupt in
1862. (ref. 34) Others were John Palmer of Pimlico (six sites),
J. T. Ward, lead merchant (four sites), S. N. Parkinson
(one site) and W. Graham (one site). (ref. 35) Exceptions are
Nos. 15–17, built in 1866 by an active local builder,
Thomas Huggett, on his recently acquired freehold, which
mostly lay between Child's Place and Kenway Road. (ref. 36)
Palmer received all the leases for Wallgrave Terrace in
Redfield Lane. (ref. 37) He also built in 1862 the adjacent
Nos. 73–77 (odd) Kenway Road under lease from Wallgrave. (ref. 38) Who designed these houses (of which Nos. 7 and
8 Redfield Lane have been rebuilt) is not known. (fn. b) The
owner of these two streets did not aim high in the market.
The sewerage in this locality was very deficient and in the
late fifties the parish vestry was concerned, if rather
inertly, at sewage overflowing the roadway nearby in Kenway Road. (ref. 40) Perhaps in anticipation of the ‘Wallgrave’
development the vestry decided in 1859 to pave Kenway
Road with York stone instead of gravel, (ref. 41) but overflowing
sewage remained a problem. (ref. 42) Moreover C. W. Wallgrave,
although probably, like William Coles, himself a one-time
resident (as a child) in Kenway Road, (ref. 8) was by this period
based in the house in the King's Road, Chelsea, where
Coles and the Smiths had lived before him. In 1868 he
and his trustees were selling off most of the small houses
built by him and Thomas Smith and these seem soon to
have been dispersed into smaller freehold units. (ref. 43) This
does not mean that Wallgrave Road was not from some
points of view, and despite Farmilo's bankruptey, a success
for its owners. Even more than in Child's Street these
small houses were soon packed with tenants. In 1871 all
were in multi-occupation, containing on average no fewer
than thirteen residents (eighteen at No. 21). Of these virtually all were working-class: six of the heads of households
described themselves as labourers (and one as an ‘excavator’). One was a ‘soldier musician’ in the bandstands
of the Royal Horticultural Gardens at South Kensington. (ref. 44)
There were, of course, no servants employed here: on the
contrary, the butler at No. 52 Rutland Gate owned the
mortgage of No. 10. (ref. 45)
Already various interests have been mentioned — of
Johnson, Hardwick, and, especially, of the Childs and
Smith-Coles-Wallgrave families. With the sixties, and the
prospect of better communications as Cromwell Road
came westward and the Metropolitan District Railway
Company brought its lines through the area at the end
of the decade, more developers were attracted to work in
an area that was, moreover, within reach of the new and
spectacular ‘South Kensington’: sales-advertisements by
the Childs family in Earl's Court Road in 1866 and 1871
stressed the nearness to the Royal Horticultural Gardens,
the Albert Hall and the South Kensington Museum. (ref. 46) Few
of the coming developments or redevelopments were at
all extensive, but the size of building was larger than
before, and for that reason the generally old-fashioned
styles of architecture are the more noticeable.
Some of these developments were by the brothers
Robert and James Gunter, the bulk of whose residential
estate lay to the south. Their father, Robert Gunter, had
bought land around the White Hart in 1844, (ref. 47) but done
little to develop it. In 1862–3 the younger Robert had the
John Darby who had recently worked at Nos. 121 and 123
Earl's Court Road build Nos. 163–175 (odd) Earl's
Court Road and Nos. 1–5 (consec.) Hogarth Place
under lease: (ref. 48) the style, especially in Earl's Court Road,
is, as at Nos. 121 and 123, simple and old-fashioned, and
the name John's Terrace by which the houses and shops
in that road were known hints that Robert Gunter was
content to let the builder's name determine the nomenclature.
Equally old-fashioned are the late-Georgian-seeming
houses at Nos. 2–12 Kenway Road (Plate 100e), erected
on the north side of this land in 1867 by the builders
Thomas Huggett and Thomas Hussey at a site bought
from James and Robert Gunter. (ref. 49) Huggett and Hussey's
conservatism here was, like Darby's, perhaps their own.
In 1866 they bought from C. W. Wallgrave and his trustee
the freehold of land on the south side of Child's Place,
and here also put up some very sober, late-Georgian-looking houses, of which Nos. 17–22 Child's Place
survive (Plate 99d). (ref. 50) In 1868 they returned to working
under lease, this time for the third Lord Kensington, who,
like the Gunters, had made a foray just beyond his main
estate to buy land in 1866 from the Childs family and
others. (ref. 51) Huggett and Hussey built Nos. 147–159 (odd)
Earl's Court Road under lease for him in 1868 (ref. 52) —not
very appealing or even well-built-looking houses. The
Prince of Teck public house at No. 161 (Plate 101d,
fig. 98) they built at the same time on land they had bought
themselves. (ref. 53) (Its external adornments are probably of the
eighties, done for the licensee Alfred Savigear mentioned
below.)
In 1868–9 the southern boundary of this area was
defined by the making of the railway line. In 1871 the first
Earl's Court railway station was established and the incentive to development, where that remained possible,
increased. Small and mainly of wood, the station was situated on this, eastern, side of Earl's Court Road, where
Nos. 181–185 now stand. It was burnt down in 1875 and
replaced by a station on the present site in 1878. (ref. 54)
In 1872–3 a good builder, G. E. Mineard, with George
Gregory of the Harrow Road, built three houses, now
demolished, for Lord Kensington at Nos. 111–115 Earl's
Court Road (ref. 55) (the architect being probably A. R. Stenning (ref. 56) ), and William Ashfold built Nos. 177 and 179
Earl's Court Road, adjacent to the new station, for
Robert Gunter (the builder William Jackson being a party
to the lease). (ref. 57)
The biggest innovation, however, was a completely new
road built north of the railway line and called Hogarth
Road, which brought another developer on the scene. He
was the Gunters' lawyer, J. L. Tomlin, who in 1873
bought from the Metropolitan District Railway Company
their surplus land here, mainly on the north side of the
railway. (ref. 58) (They had bought it in 1865–6 from the Gunters. (ref. 59) ) Hogarth Road, built de novo in 1873–6, is, in its
type of big house for respectable occupation, more like
the new streets on large estates nearby than the rest of
the area here described. The first application to the vestry
for permission to make the road came from the builder
Matthew Scott, but he did not build the houses. At the
western end, at Nos. 1–7 and 2–24, Tomlin granted leases
to the builder William Ashfold (the builder Jackson being
party to the leases of Nos. 2–24). (ref. 60) Eastward, at Nos. 9–35
and 26–54 (Nos. 27–35 rebuilt), he granted conveyances
to the builder J. F. Van Camp, (ref. 61) who also built at the
easternmost end Nos. 37 and 39 and 56–60 (and the adjacent houses in Knaresborough Place) under leases from
Robert Gunter. (ref. 62) The two builders used separate styles
for their houses, Van Camp's being the same in the
‘Tomlin’ and ‘Gunter’ parts of his ranges (Plate 89d) and
also virtually identical with that of the houses he was building on Lord Kensington's estate in Trebovir Road and
Templeton Place (Plate 126a). As to the early occupants
of Hogarth Road, they were probably about what the
developers wished. The first occupant of No. 52 was a
Mrs. Gunter, and in 1880 there was an admiral at No. 26,
a major at No. 21, and three clergymen at Nos. 33, 50 and
60, as well as the geographer, mapmaker, and creator of
the Great Globe, James Wyld, at No. 25. (ref. 63) These big
houses were so laid out, however, as to accentuate rather
brutally the narrowness of Hogarth Place (then South
Row) behind them on the north side, a fact pointed out
unavailingly by the Kensington Vestry's surveyor to the
Metropolitan Board of Works in 1874. (ref. 64) Possibly the Godwin brothers may have had something to do with the architecture of Hogarth Road: the styles are not quite like them
elsewhere, but George Godwin was mortgagee of No. 60
and the lease plans given in the Middlesex Deeds Register
look as if they might have been drawn in their office. (ref. 65)
Van Camp also built Nos. 40–54 (even) Kenway Road
in 1877 immediately north of Hogarth Road on land he
had just bought from Tomlin. (ref. 66) Here he seems to have
made a lease-back arrangement with another solicitor,
W. M. Sherring, to whom he sold the houses during building and who then leased them to him. (ref. 67) (Van Camp then
mortgaged some of them back to Sherring. (ref. 68) ) Unlike Van
Camp's houses with fancy fronts in Hogarth Road they
are built to a dull, old-fashioned pattern.
Tomlin was important hereabouts. South of the railway
he had the north side of Earl's Court Gardens built, and
the west end of the south side (see page 224). Adjacent
to the last is The Courtfield public house at No. 187
Earl's Court Road (Plate 101c), built for him under lease
in 1876, with the demolished Nos. 189–193, by the locally
active builder, E. Francis, on land Tomlin had bought in
the previous year. (ref. 69) The architect of this vigorous Victorian piece is not known: the Godwins (perhaps particularly Henry) are likely architects in connection with
Tomlin, but the Courtfield does not seem to be detailed
quite oddly enough to be theirs.
In 1872 Lord Kensington's surveyors had successfully
argued against more than a slight widening of the footpath
connecting Kenway Road to Cromwell Road (where it still
remains as a reminder of Barrow's Walk). More would
‘throw open a low neighbourhood’, to the detriment of
adjoining property. (ref. 70) Nevertheless in the same year it had
seemed worthwhile to the builder Matthew Scott to propose the erection of ‘a Handsome but small church’ in this
vicinity, at the east end of the south side of Kenway Road,
where the land belonged to the Metropolitan District Railway Company but was soon to be bought by Tomlin. (ref. 71)
From 1872 or 1873 a ‘temporary’ Anglican church with
some high hopes behind it, called St. Patrick's, Cromwell
Road, stood here until it was burnt down in 1879 (see page
380). The site by then belonged to the incumbent, the
Reverend M. M. Ben-Oliel, who on being prevented by
his bishop from rebuilding a superfluous church here had
a row of houses over shops built instead in 1881–2, as
Nos. 56–70 (even) Kenway Road, and transferred his
church-making ambitions to what became St. Cuthbert's,
Philbeach Gardens. This must explain the appearance
here of an architect of some note, Hugh Roumieu Gough,
who was the architect of St. Cuthbert's. The builders, at
a tendered price of £7,404, were similarly the builders of
St. Cuthbert's, S. Belham and Company. (ref. 72) The elevation
of the range, although executed in the fashionable red
brick with sunflower decorations, is neat, very flat, and
constrained.
Earl's Court was now attractive to developers of a
perhaps rather promiscuous kind. The Wallgrave sales in
1868 and a sale of much of the Childs property in 1871,
when nine of the ten lots that were sold yielded £8,395, (ref. 73)
had given opportunities to pick up sites for development
or redevelopment and one who did so was Joseph Richmond, a grocer in Church Street, who in 1868, 1871 and
1873 bought sites all over this area. (ref. 74) In Providence Terrace in Kenway Road he seems initially to have contented
himself with uniting each of his two pairs of houses
(Nos. 37–39 and 69–71) with a conventionally modelled
rendering, but elsewhere he contributed more to the mixed
bag of Earl's Court building — houses at Nos. 1–4 Child's
Place in 1872–3 (builder Henry King, Plate 99b), (ref. 75) and
at No. 5 (1879, builder S. Benstead), (ref. 76) at Nos. 125–135
Earl's Court Road in the mid 1870s (Nos. 125–129 Earl's
Court Road, 1876, builder S. Benstead), (ref. 77) at Nos. 6–8
(consec.) Hogarth Place in 1882–3, (ref. 78) at Nos. 18–20
(consec.) Child's Street in 1888, (ref. 79)
and at Nos. 137 and
139 Earl's Court Road in 1896. (ref. 80) All are old-fashioned
in appearance, especially the last, and all are different. The
peculiar houses over shops at Nos. 6–8 Hogarth Place
(lettered H, O, P, E, on the fascia-stoppers, Plate 100d)
have, however, affinities with the more seemly heightening
and recasting of No. 71 Kenway Road done for Richmond in 1885 (Plate 100b): (ref. 81) just possibly the architect
was Edward Monson, junior. (ref. 82)
The ‘service industries’ represented by shops and public
houses were now becoming very important. (The Earl's
Court Arms at No. 123 Earl's Court Road was advancing
in value from £3,800 in 1868 to £9,000 in 1885 for a correspondingly shorter term. (ref. 83) ) Nearby, in Earl's Court
Gardens, the front curtilage of new houses was utilized
for shops in 1876–7 (see page 224), and 1878–80 saw shops
built out in front of Nos. 1–5 (consec.) Hogarth Place, (ref. 84)
and others at Nos. 2–12 (even) Kenway Road by the
Aldershot builders Martin, Wells and Company (Plate
100e). (ref. 85) The last property had been bought for the purpose
in 1879 by another important developer in this little
neighbourhood — appropriately for the time and place a
publican, Alfred Savigear, (ref. 86) who employed his favourite
architect George Edwards for the job. Soon Savigear was
using Edwards to make alterations, at a tendered price of
£875, to his public house opposite, The Prince of Teck,
in 1880 (Plate 101d, fig. 98). (ref. 87) The balustrade and its
adornments, the window-dressings, and the red-brick and
terracotta panels may well be of that date, and the shop
front is evidently of 1901. (ref. 88)
Figure 98:
The Prince of Teck public house, elevation to Earl's
Court Road Built in 1868, altered in 1880 and 1901
Savigear had recently, in 1878, bought for £8,100 from
a land investment company (itself the purchaser from
Huggett and Hussey in 1870 (ref. 89) ) a site east of The Prince
of Teck, where he had Martin, Wells and Company build
the present Nos. 1–13 (odd) Kenway Road (Plate 101b)
for him at a cost of about £7,000 in 1880: he mortgaged
the site to them. The architect here also was George
Edwards, with J. Wormleighton the carver (presumably
of the fascia-stoppers). This block of flats over shops was
illustrated in The Builder, which noted that all the shops
were occupied by the ‘Earl's Court General Provision
Stores’, although the Post Office Directory Suggests this
had ceased to be so by 1885. (ref. 90) Savigear was a versatile
man, and about 1892 opened a well-known riding school
on the hinterland of the site between Kenway Road and
Child's Place. (ref. 91)
Flats over shops also caught the eye of The Builder at
this time at the now-demolished Nos. 117–119 Earl's
Court Road, designed by the architect-cum-speculator
W. H. Collbran for the owner (himself a builder) William
Follett (1879–80, builder, C. Hunt). When illustrating the
rather meretricious design The Builder thought it worth
noting as something of an innovation the complete separation of flats from shops, which removed a deterrent to such
developments by relieving the shopkeeper of the burden
of rates on the upper parts of the building. (ref. 92)
An obscure development difficult to date is the enhancement of the yard on the south side of Child's Street, formerly Child's Passage but since 1960 renamed Child's
Walk Probably this dates mostly from conversions by
Joseph Richmond in the 1890s, (ref. 93) with much more recent
improvements.
Two conspicuous Edwardian buildings survive in this
part of Earl's Court Road. Nos. 181–185 were built in
1905 by Ford and Walton of Kilburn for the Metropolitan
District Railway Company as shops and a Post Office on
the former site of the first Earl's Court Station. The architect was perhaps G. Estall of the Company's Lillie Bridge
Works. (ref. 94) At Nos. 195–201. Earl's Court Road (fig. 99)
the large, double-fronted building was erected by James
Smith and Son of South Norwood in 1903–4 for the
London and County (now National Westminster) Bank,
to a design, broad-shouldered but not clumsy, by the
architect Horace Cheston. (ref. 95)
Since then the area has changed greatly, but not much
in its basic fabric. In about 1929 the southern arm of
Child's Place began to become unrecognizable under light
industry (partly in Savigear's former riding-school
premises). (ref. 96) From 1936–8 date Nos. 141–145 Earl's
Court Road (architect (Sir) Oliver Chesterton, F.A.S.I.,
of Chesterton and Sons, estate agents) (ref. 97) and the King's
Head in Hogarth Place (architects, Surveyor's Department (Sidney C. Clark) of Hoare and Company,
brewers). (ref. 98) A newspaper article on the old part of Kenway
Road in 1939 suggests that although it was no longer disagreeably ‘low’ it was an unaspiring if pleasant backwater. (ref. 99) But when Nos. 57–61 Kenway Road were rebuilt
in 1950–2, after war-damage, it was as one larger house,
No. 61 Kenway Road, designed by (Sir) Oliver
Chesterton in a solid, restrained, neo-Georgian manner.
By-laws in effect precluded the alignment of windowheights with those of its neighbours, which the planners
furthermore thought ‘had no particular Architectural
merit’. (ref. 100) (The first occupant was Henri Frankfort, Director of the Warburg Institute.) Nearer Earl's Court Road
a local government officer in 1956 found Child's Street
‘quiet, shabby’ The small houses built there in 1957, more
in the style of the day, on another bomb-site at Nos. 1–4
Child's Street (Field, Petherbridge and Partners, architects) pleased the planners by their slight setting-back
from the narrow cul-de-sac. (ref. 101) After some difficulty with
the planners No. 21A Wallgrave Road, behind its east
side, was rebuilt as a bachelor's single-storeyed house
about 1965 to designs by the Owen Luder Partnership. (ref. 102)
In 1967–9 a branch of Barclays Bank, rather small-scaled
and in a variety of smooth materials, was built at Nos. 189–193
Earl's Court Road (Messrs. Gordon Jeeves, architects). (ref. 103) The Hogarth Hotel was built by W. J. Marston
and Son of Fulham in 1971–3 at Nos. 27–35 Hogarth
Road to designs by Buxton, Truscott and Wall of
Newquay, Cornwall, W. J. Marston being the licensee. (ref. 104)
Figure 99:
Nos. 195–201 (odd) Earl's Court Road, elevation.
Horace Cheston, architect, 1903–4
The 1971 census found the Earl's Court area one of the
most densely populated areas of the kingdom. In 1973 the
increasing turmoil of this part of Earl's Court Road and
the growing attraction of the hinterland of small oldish
houses with their small gardens resulted in the inclusion
of much of the subject-matter discussed here in the Earl's
Court Village Conservation Area. The chief exclusions
were Earl's Court Road itself and Hogarth Road. Immediately behind Earl's Court Road some perplexing quasiaccidental-looking jumbles and juxtapositions of building
remain from the mixed uses of earlier years. But in the
residential parts improvements to the houses and gardens
have made the area probably more agreeable, as well as
immensely more expensive, to make a home in than at any
time since 1820. In 1978 a proposal that had been informally considered by the county education authorities since
at least 1951 to rehouse a Kensington primary school in
the Wallgrave-Kenway Road triangle was abandoned
partly because of the greatly increased cost of buying
sites. (ref. 105)
One very recent scheme here, though unrealized, may
be noted for its suggested handling of the lightly industrialized site south of Child's Place. Here the architect
David Le Lay proposed in 1981 conversion back to partly
residential use in an architectural manner consonant with
ordinary mid-Victorian inner-city building. (ref. 106)
Earl's Court Gardens
Earl's Court Gardens is in some ways an interloper at
Earl's Court both by reason of its development separately
from the ‘village’ area north of the railway and the Gunter
estate to the south, and by reason of its appearance, which
seems to relate it more to the areas south of Old Brompton
Road than to its immediate surroundings.
The original development was on the south side only,
from 1852 onwards, when Nos. 1–24 (Plate 97b, 97c) were
built along a field-path made, perhaps in the 1790s, at the
southern boundary of Pound Field. (ref. 107) The site was a piece
of walled ground, known in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries as the Pingle and held since the 1760s, as garden
ground, with No. 2 The Terrace, adjacent westward facing
Earl's Court Road. (ref. 108) In 1852 it belonged, with that house,
to George Yates, an elderly man who described himself
successively as merchant, gentleman, retired proprietor
and retired picture dealer. (ref. 109) In October he came to an
agreement respecting the whole site with a builder, George
Stevenson, who began two houses in March 1853. The
work was, however, suspended in the autumn (ref. 110) and in
January 1854 Stevenson sold his interest to a gentleman
in the City (with a house at Pentonville), G. T. Mansell. (ref. 111)
In July the work was recommenced, when John Taylor
of Kentish Town tendered at £13, 158 to build 22 of the
24 houses, which he began, at the east end, in October
1854. (ref. 112) Possibly the houses Stevenson had begun were
Nos. 15 and 16, as these were singled out for a sub-lease
by Mansell in 1856 to a triumvirate of builders, George
Torkington, W. G. Arnold and Noah Holliday. (ref. 113)
The named ‘architect’ inviting Taylor's tender was William Moxon, a land agent, surveyor and auctioneer in St.
Martin's Place, Trafalgar Square, (ref. 114) who seems, however,
not to be known otherwise as an architect.
The years 1853–4 were difficult for building enterprise
in London and Mansell evidently abandoned any idea of
extending the project to Earl's Court Road and surrendered his interest in No.2 The Terrace itself back to
Yates in January 1855. (ref. 115) Yates stayed there until 1861. (ref. 8)
Mansell was granted his leases by Yates in 1855—of
Nos. 1–14 in May and of Nos. 15–24 in December. (ref. 116) The
houses were finished in 1856. (ref. 117) In 1854–5 the road was
briefly called Yates Grove (although Yates evidently had
no trees planted in it) and then Manor House Road, (ref. 118)
but had its present name by 1856. (ref. 113)
All stucco-fronted, this long terrace is composed of
houses not highly elaborated individually but organized
in a careful and rather intricate symmetry. The variation
in the height of the terrace, which rises to three storeys
at the central four houses and at the terminal and intermediate pairs, the slight stepping forward and back, the
various placings of the entrance-bays (repeated, mirrored
or grouped), the varied dressing of the doorcases with pilasters, engaged columns or porticoes, and the check and
run of the main cornice through the whole make an interesting mid-nineteenth-century-Classic counterpoint, even
if one characteristically notional in a range so difficult to
take in at a coup d'oeil. There is a faint hint of Priory Walk
and other contemporary houses by George Godwin on the
Gunter estate in the dressing of the first-floor windows
at the lower, two-storeyed, houses.
In February 1855 the Land and Building News carried
a puff for the new development — seemingly regarding it
as in some way related to the adjacent Gunter estate and
foreshadowing development there: meanwhile it was an
exception to the prevailing quietness in the speculative
building trade. (ref. 119) Taylor was named as builder but not
Moxon as architect. The fine alluvial flat on which the terrace stood and the 14-inch thickness of the walls were noticed, while the variety in the elevational treatment was
carefully described. The views at front and back over
‘richly-cultivated fields’ were pleasing. The writer stressed
by repetition that these and the ediversified elevations made
it all ‘cheerful’.
Gas was supplied to street-lamps (three only) by the
Western Gas Light Company in the autumn of 1856, (ref. 120)
but in the summer of 1857 the vestry refused to extend
the main sewer down Earl's Court Road as far as Earl's
Court Gardens, evidently obliging the estate (presumably
Yates or his representatives) to use cesspools or a sewer
of their own draining into a ‘large tank’ near the junction
with Earl's Court Road. (ref. 121) The occupants came in between
1856 and 1858, except at Nos. 17–20, which filled up a
year or two later. (ref. 8) The early residents were of a decent
respectability and almost all the houses were in single
family occupation. On average six people lived in each
house, one being a servant. Rather like Priory Walk, this
terrace seems to have been attractive to the ‘clerk’. (ref. 122)
Disturbance came in 1868–9 with the laying of the
Metropolitan District railway in a cutting between Earl's
Court Gardens and the ‘village’ and then more emphatically in 1871–3, when the builder Matthew Scott erected
a row of houses opposite (Nos. 25–35), on the north side
of Earl's Court Gardens (and the south side of what had
been Pound Field), rather closely fitted-in between the
railway line and the roadway. (ref. 123) Initially this was to be
under lease from the railway company (ref. 124) but by the time
Scott received his leases in 1873 the land had been bought
by the Gunters' solicitor (and a land developer in his own
right hereabouts), J. L. Tomlin. (ref. 125) Scott said the houses
would be ‘of a pretty Villa kind of Elevation’ (ref. 124) but
whoever was the architect interpreted this harshly (Plate
101e).
In 1876 Tomlin granted the easternmost house-site on
the north side, previously part of the stopped-up Raspberry Lane, (ref. 126) to another professional adviser of the Gunters, the architect Henry Godwin. (ref. 127) He probably designed
the assertive No. 36 here (Plate 101e), with detailing
reminiscent of what he and his brother George were providing, with less polychromy, for the Gunters elsewhere.
The directories note a first occupant — a music-seller— in
1883. (ref. 63)
Tomlin also completed the south side with the block
of houses behind one-storey shops at No. 24A. He bought
the site in 1875 (ref. 128) and had it built up (like the adjacent
houses in Earl's Court Road) by Edward Francis, in 1876–7;
the architect of this rather forbidding block was perhaps
George Edwards. (ref. 129) In 1881 Turkish Baths were designed
for this site by C. Harrison Townsend (as of Banks and
Townsend) but evidently built (at a tendered price of less
than £1,000) only in 1885–6. (ref. 130) Alterations were made in
1888 by the architects Morley and Letts to the Baths, (ref. 131)
which survived here until the 1939–45 war. (ref. 63)