The Kensington District

by G. E. Mitton

The Boltons is an oval piece of ground with St. Mary's Church in the middle. The church was opened in 1851, and the interior is surprisingly small in comparison with the exterior. It was fully restored about twenty years after it had been built. The land had been for many years the property of the Bolton family, whose name impressed itself on the place.

Returning to the Fulham Road, and continuing westward, we pass the site of an old manor-house, afterwards used as an orphanage; near it was an additional building of the St. George's Union, which is opposite. There is a tradition that Boyle, the philosopher, once occupied this additional house, and was here visited by Locke. The present Union stands on the site of Shaftesbury House, built about 1635, and bought by the third Earl of Shaftesbury in 1699. Addison, who was a great friend of the Earl's, often stayed with him in Shaftesbury House.

Redcliffe Gardens was formerly called Walnut-Tree Walk, another rural reminiscence. At the eastern corner was Burleigh House, and an entry in the Kensington registers, May 15, 1674, tells of the birth of "John Cecill, son and heir of John, Lord Burleigh," in the parish. There is no direct evidence to show that Lord Burleigh was then living in this house, but the probability is that he was. To the east of this house again was a row of others, with large gardens at the back; one was Lochee's well-known military academy, and another, Heckfield Lodge, was taken by the brothers of the Priory attached to the Roman Catholic church, Our Lady of Seven Dolours, which faces the street. The greater part of this church was built in 1876, but a very fine rectangular porch with figures of saints in the niches, and a narthex in the same style, were added later. The square tower with corner pinnacles is a conspicuous object in the Fulham Road.

Among other important persons who lived at Little Chelsea in or about Fulham Road were Sir Bartholomew Shower, a well-known lawyer, in 1693; the Bishop of Gloucester (Edward Fowler), 1709; the Bishop of Chester (Sir William Dawes), who afterwards became Archbishop of York; and Sir Edward Ward, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in 1697. It is odd to read of a highway murder occurring near Little Chelsea in 1765. The barbarity of the time demanded that the murderers should be executed on the spot where their crime was committed, so that the two men implicated were hanged, the one at the end of Redcliffe Gardens, and the other near Stamford Bridge, Chelsea Station. These men were Chelsea pensioners, and must have been active for their years to make such an attempt. The gibbet stood at the end of the present Redcliffe Gardens for very many years.

Ifield Road was once Honey Lane. To the west are the entrance gates of the cemetery, which is about 800 yards in extreme length by 300 in the broadest part. The graves are thickly clustered together at the southern end, with hardly two inches between the stones, which are of every variety. The cemetery was opened for burial in June, 1840. Sir Roderick Murchison, the geologist, is among those who lie here. In the centre of the southern part of the cemetery is a chapel; two colonnades and a central building stand over the catacombs, which are not now used. At the northern end is a Dissenters' chapel. Having thus come to the extreme limits of the district, we turn to the neighbourhood of Earl's Court.

Earl's Court can show good cause why it should hold both its names, for here the lords of the manor, the Earls of Oxford, held their courts. The earlier maps of Kensington are all of the nineteenth century. Before that time the old topographers doubtless thought there was nothing out of which to make a map, for except by the sides of the high-road, and in the detached villages of Brompton, Earl's Court, and Little Chelsea, there were only fields. Faulkner's 1820 map is very slight and sketchy. He says: "In speaking of this part, proceeding down Earl's Court Lane [Road], we arrive at the village of Earl's Court." The 1837 Survey shows a considerable increase in the number of houses, though Earl's Court is still a village, connected with Kensington by a lane. Daw's map of 1846 for some reason shows fewer houses, but his 1858 map gives a decided increase.

Near where the underground station now is stood the old court-house of Earl's Court. From 1789 to 1875 another building superseded it, but the older house was standing until 1878. There was a medicinal spring at Earl's Court in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Beside these two facts, there is very little that is interesting to note. John Hunter, the celebrated anatomist, founder of the Hunterian Museum, lived here in a house he had built for himself. He had a passion for animals, particularly strange beasts, and gathered an odd collection round him, somewhat to the dismay of his neighbours.

The popular Earl's Court Exhibition is partly in Kensington and partly in Fulham; it is the largest exhibition open in London, and is patronized as much because it is one of the few places to which the Londoner can go to sit out of doors and hear a band after dinner, as for its more varied entertainments.

One of the comparatively old houses of the neighbourhood of Earl's Court, that has only recently been demolished, was Coleherne Court, at the corner of Redcliffe Gardens and the Brompton Road. It is now replaced by residential flats. This was possibly the same house as that mentioned by Bowack (1705): "The Hon. Col. Grey has a fine seat at Earl's Court; it is but lately built, after the modern manner, and standing upon a plain, where nothing can intercept the sight, looks very stately at a distance. The gardens are very good." The house was later occupied by the widow of General Ponsonby, who fell in the Battle of Waterloo. Its companion, Hereford House, further eastward, was used as the headquarters of a cycling club before its demolition.

The rest of the district eastward to Gloucester Road has no old association. St. Jude's Church, in Courtfield Gardens, was built in 1870. The reredos is of red-stained alabaster, coloured marble, and mosaics by Salviati. St. Stephen's, in Gloucester Road, is a smaller church, founded in 1866. Beyond it Gloucester Road runs into Victoria Road, once Love Lane. General Gordon was at No. 8, Victoria Grove, in 1881. Returning again to Earl's Court Road, we see St. Stephen's, another of the numerous modern churches in which the district abounds; it was built partly at the expense of the Rev. D. Claxton, and was opened in 1858. In Warwick Gardens, westward, is St. Mathias, which rivals St. Cuthbert's, in Philbeach Gardens, in the ritualism of its services. Both churches are very highly decorated. In St. Cuthbert's the interior is of great height, and the walls ornamentally worked in stone; there is a handsome oak screen, and a very fine statue of the Virgin and Child by Sir Edgar Boehm in the Lady Chapel; in both churches the seats are all free.