London House, Fulham Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-45
My walk around the streets to the north of the King’s Road took me as far as the Fulham Road where I found London House at No 266 and joined to it a Servite Catholic Church. Our Lady of Dolours was started by two Servite priests, missionaries from Florence who arrived in London in 1864. Building the church here, designed by Joseph Hansom began in 1874 and it was opened the following year by Cardinal Manning. The church is Grade II listed. London House is currently being refurbished and extended, returning the exterior to something more similar to its Victorian original.
Kings Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-44
V K Patel is still listed as having a dental surgery on the King’s Road, and, allowing for the various London number changes has retained the same phone number, but is now in a very different building to this rather run-down looking and overgrown house, which I think has probably been demolished.
Langton St,, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-42
Flavio looks like an Italian restaurant and although my contact sheet suggests it was on the King’s Road, was actually a few yards from it in Langton St. I think it is now an Irish restaurant with a different shopfront.
Kings Rd area, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-54
I’m unable to remember where I took these two decorative bowls on window ledges, but think it might have been on Lamont Road or one of the adjoining roads.
Hobury St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-56
31 Gertrude St is on the corner with Hobury St and the door is actually in the latter street. It retains the simple elegance that attracted me to photograph it back in 1988. Poet and novelist George Meredith (1828-1909) has a blue plaque on the next house down Hobury St. It was his poem ‘The Lark Ascending’ that inspired the well-known composition by Ralph Vaughan Williams and elsewhere Meredith was the first to publish the word ‘tweets’ as a verb, though his twittering was avian.
Kings Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-52
Chamberlin, Powell & Bon designed 355 Kings R for Kensington and Chelsea council and this 15 storey 152 ft high tower was built in 1968-71. The council sold it off in the 1980s when the brickwork was begining to need repair and it was reclad and converted to private flats. At the right is an office of Roy Brooks, the estate agent who became a legend in the 1960s (he died in 1971) and made a fortune through his adverts in the Sunday Times and Observer desribed the houses he was selling in vivid terms as hardly fit for human habitation, exagerating any defects and making them up where none existed.
Lamont Road Passage, Park Walk, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-53
A handy passage for those living in Lamont Road to get to the shops in Park Walk and the King’s Road. The picture is of its corner with Park Walk and at left you can see Roy Brooks Estate Agents, a tree in the Milman’s Street Moravian Burial Ground and the house on the corner of Milmans St and the King’s Road. There is of course another tree in the shop window.
Clicking on any of the pictures will take you to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse the other images in the album.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
I took a stroll along the King’s Road, looking at some of the shop windows, then explored some of the streets to the north.
Shop window, Kings Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-52
There was something very strange about this view, and looking at when I made a print made me think that somehow it had turned into a negative. The contrast between the two mannequins, one white and one black had attracted me and I think the lighting and my treatment almost makes the right hand figure dissolve.
Kings Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-64
Light fittings for sale in a shop window give some interesting shapes.
Boy, Kings Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-65
Stephane Raynor opened BOY on the King’s Road in 1976, and it became “the epicentre of a new dawn in both fashion and music, defining the spirit of punk and birthing the New Romantic scene that appeared in its wake.”
Elm Park Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-01
72 Elm Park Road is one of a row of individually designed late Victorian houses that make this an interesting street. Since I took this picture it has been extended with an extra storey at both top and bottom, but still looks much the same from the street. The house is now valued at around £12m and was named in 2015 as the address of one of the many people exposed in the The Panama Papers exposure of the rogue offshore finance industry
The Vale, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-03
I’m unsure why this property at 26 The Vale required such an elaborate security camera, something rather unusual back in 1988. I’m sure my framing, although I was mainly interested in the doorway was deliberately to include this. The building is a part of a corner site including joined properties in Elm Park Road, and plans were made in 2012 which would have involved the removal of this doorway. It was still there in 2020.
Fernshaw Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-34
Taken from the corner of Edith Terrace and looking north up Fernshaw Rd (late Maude Grove). The taller block on the right in the distance is Fernshaw Mansions. an Edwardian block in this largely late Victorian street. The houses and garden walls are generally in rather better decorative state now than in 1988.
Fernshaw Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-46
This unmodernised freehold house in Fernshaw Road was for sale in 1988 and if I had been able to afford it I should have bought it. It’s one of a terrace from 1-11 and would probably now sell for around £4m. I suspect the price in 1988 was around a hundreth of that.
Click on any of the pictures abouve to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse through all the pictures in the album.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Old Church St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-21
Old Church St is, as its name suggests a rather old street in Chelsea, running north from Chelsea Old Church by the river up to the Fulham Road. It is thought to be the oldest street in Chelsea but it contains two of Chelsea’s most significant modern buildings. No 66 at the left was designed in 1935–1936 by Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry for the scriptwriter Benn Levy and his actress wife Constance Cummings. They had bought a large site – perviously the garden of a large house – here together with publisher Denis Cohen, and shared it to build a house each, with a communal garden.
Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, came to England in 1934 and was fortunate to get a flat in the Isokon building in Lawn Road, Belsize Park, where he met many leading left-wing intellectuals of the age including modernist architects, among them the designer of the flats, Jack Pritchard. Pritchard and Gropius worked on several projects together, few of which were ever built.
Gropius also worked with Maxwell Fry, and this house they designed together was his most significant domestic work during the 3 years before he left to take up a professorship in the USA. My photograph doesn’t show it well, as it was built to face the private garden to which I did not have access, but for those interested there are plenty of pictures on-line. It was offered for sale in 2013 for £45 million, but I couldn’t afford it. Surprisingly the house is only Grade II listed.
Old Church St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-34
Cohen House on the other half of the site, also completed in 1936 was designed by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff for the publisher Denis Cohen and is more visible from the road. Like Gropius, Mendelsohn was also fleeing from Nazi Germany and went on the the USA; Chermayeff, born to a Jewish family in Russia had come here as a young boy, was educated here and became a British citizen in 1928 and emigrated to the USA in 1940 . This building is Grade II* listed. The partnership between Mendelsohn and Chermayeff only lasted a few years but produced some of the country’s outstanding modernist buildings.
Old Church St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-24
153 Old Church St. The gate at right I think leads to 153a. THe house at the right which you cannot see much of has a blue plaque for John Francis Sartorius (fl. 1775-1831), an English painter of horses, horse-racing and hunting scenes. Accord to Mark Keble in Chelsea The Resident, 153 Old Church Street was built between 1956-57 on the former site of the studio of the renowned Welsh portrait painter Augustus John (1878-1961).
Old Church St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-32
This house is on the corner of Carlyle Square and Old Church St and the gatepost gives its address as 26 Carlyle Square. The land here which contained a number of buildings was sold to Lord Cadogan in 1835, who quickly had the existing houses and cottages cleared and building of a new square, Oakley Square, began in 1836-7. But progress was slow and there were only a few houses completed by 1851. The square was renamed Carlyle Square in honour of the historian and writer Thomas Carlyle in 1872.
Old Church St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-33
This house is on the corner of Old Church St and Elm Park Rd at 125-127. The plaque records the fact that William De Morgan Ceramic Artist And Novelist (1839-1917) And His Wife Evelyn De Morgan Artist (1855-1919) Lived & Died Here. The house was specially adapted for their work – and you can just see the bottom of a large studio window in this picture.
Queen’s Elm Square, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-26
Queen’s Elm Square is on the west side of Old Church St close to the Fulham Rd. It was built in 1904-6 for the Sloane Stanley Estate, just behind the Queen’s Elm pub on the corner of Fulham Rd and Old Church St. This famous pub closed in the 1990s and the ground floor is now shops. The site was earlier a field known as the Queen’s Elm Field and began to be developed – including an earlier pub – in 1792.
The Vale, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-42
The Vale is a short street running parallel to Old Church St north from the King’s Rd about 200 yards to its west. The unusual Russian House, at 27 The Vale, was built in 1914 just before the start of the First World War by architect F.E. Williams and incorporates at in the frontage of the substantial property a Russian Dacha that had formed a part of an exhibition at the Crystal Palace in the 1890s. The house was occupied by the British Red Cross during the war and later became the home of members of the Sainsbury family. It was then converted into flats, but in the 1990s converted back into a single house. It sold in 2018 for 12.75m
Click on any of the above images to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos and to browse other pictures in the album.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
The Gateways, Sprimont Place, College Place, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-43
The Gateways is a block of houses with a difference and though it may look ancient, was built in 1934 in a Tudor Revival style to designs by Herbert Winkler Wills (1864-1937) and William Kaula. Certainly unusual but not greatly to my liking the whole block was Grade II listed in 1993, some under the address Whitehead’s Grove.
Chelsea Green, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-45
All that remains of the old Chelsea Common is a small triangle at this road junction with two small fenced plots of grass, each with a small tree, separated by a footpath through its centre, room on both sides for a couple of park benches and a rubbish bin or two.
Chelsea Green, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-46
Stepping a few feet gave a clearer view of the pub, still now open but called The Wild Tavern, and the buildings down Elystan Place which are a part of The Gateways, with some good brickwork.
Bray Place, Draycott Ave, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988
The ornate ironwork around and in the door of 5 Bray Place finds an echo in the window opposite. This doorway has now been converted into a rather plain window and there are other changes to the exterior of the building. It remains a restaurant but with a different name under different management.
Blacklands Terrace, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-52
This building is on Blacklands Terrace, but confusingly has the address 18 Culford Gardens, which it and the building to its right stand on the corner of. I don’t know when it was built – or perhaps when this frontage was added, but it was very different from the properties around. The ground floor has since been altered and is now less starkly geometrical.
Avenue Court, Draycott Avenue, Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-61
Draycott Avenue is lined with large and rather boring appartment blocks, mainly in red brick, which are slightly enlivened by some impressive doorways – and I think this is the most impressive. Most of these large blocks of flats were built in the 1930s, replacing streets of smaller houses. In Pevsner’s The Buildings of England London NW it describes them as “enormous and forbidding blocks of flats, either cautiously Art Deco or approximately neoGeorgian in style.”
Avenue Court, Draycott Avenue, Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-01
Sloane Avenue Mansions also dates from the 1930s, redeveloping an area of smaller houses but was designed by G. Kay Green in a more modern style with touches of Art Deco. Built in 1931-3, it towers 11 stories above the street, though appears slightly less massive as the top two are set back slightly. Around 20,000 working class people had lived in homes around here that were cleared after the company decided to redevelop the area in 1908, though much of the area remained empty or full of part-demolished slums until the 1930s. The large blocks of flats were usually provided with underground garages for the wealthy flat-dweller.
Click on any of the images to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, where you can browse through the rest of the images in the album.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Anderson St, Kings Road, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-21
It was the eye on the billboard that particulalry caught my attention on the corner of this long block of rather distressed looking shops and accomodation on the Kings Road, though I now have no idea what it was advertising and rather doubt if I did then. The long terrace has been considerably smartened now, with both advertising hoardings gone and the building has a smooth unblemised finish.
Royal Ave, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-22
Royal Avenue was first laid out as a part of a scheme connecting the Royal Hospital Chelsea with Kensington Palace which was apparently approved by Sir Christopher Wren in 1681, but only ever got as far as the King’s Road. At first it was planted with two rows of horse chestnut trees and grass and was known as Chestnut Walk, then it got white ladder stiles over the walls at each ends and became known as White Stiles. The terraces on each side date from around 1840 and are Grade II listed. The chestnuts were replaced by lime and plane trees and the grass by gravel around the same time, and it was renamed Royal Avenue in 1875. In 1970 the road access to King’s Road was replaced by a broad area of pavement. It still looks much the same as when I made this picture in 1988.
Kings Road, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-23
Another view of the King’s Road that is relatively unchanged, although there is now a florists stall which would have obscured this view. Strangely the council have replaces the plain but elegant bollards here with rather more ornate versions which seem rather less in keeping with the elegant white stucco architecture of Wellington Square, behind me as I made this image. The square was developed around the time of the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852 and was named for him.
The Pheasantry, Kings Road, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-13
The Pheasantry got its name from Samuel Baker who bred new breeds of pheasants and other species there in the nineteenth century, though the present building is thought largely to have been built and embellished after the building was bought in 1880 by Amédée Joubert & Son, upholsterers and sellers of furniture, tapestry and carpets. In the early 20th century it also housed artists and a ballet school, and from 1932 when Felix Joubert retired the basement became a bohemian restaurant and drinking club with a host of famous actors and artists among its patrons. The club closed in 1966, the basement becoming a nightclub and the rest of the building flats. Now it houses a branch of Pizza Express and a cabaret club. Wikipedia has more.
The Pheasantry, Kings Road, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-24
The listing text describes this as “Central entrance with split segmental pediment supported by 2 male caryatids.”
Shop window, Elystan St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-33
Elystan Street runs from the miniscule remains of Chelsea Common and was originally called College St. Here in 1913 the William Sutton Trust built 14 red-brick blocks of model dwellings, designed by E C P Monson, with 674 dwellings for around 2,000 working-class residents of Chelsea. Another large estate was also begun close to this in 1913 by the Samuel Lewis Housing Trust, with eight blocks of model dwellings completed after the First World War to house 1,390 people. (British History Online.)
Elystan St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-35
Elystan St is better known now as the name adopted by a restaurant at No 43 with a Michelin star.
Monkeys, Restaurant, Cale St, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-36
Monkeys in Cale St, also leading from the residual Chelsea Common, a small triangle of grass in a road junction looks more my kind of restaurant. It faces that triangle and still looks very similar, but now claims to be “London’s best Neapolitan pizzeria”.
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All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
It was too hard to resist the Michelin Building any time I walked past, though I felt it had already been photographed to death – and most of my pictures were in colour, including closer views of its decorative panels.
Opened in 1911 as the first UK headquarters and tyre depot for the Michelin Tyre Company Ltd, and designed by Michelin employee and engineer François Espinasse it was more an architectural advertising hoarding featuring the Michelin Man ‘Bibendum’, his name derived from “Nunc Est Bibendum“, “Now is the time to drink”. A precursor of art-deco, it is grade II listed. It was also a fairly early use of ferro-concrete, using the Hennebique system, which gave its interior wide spaces for a tyre bay and made it relatively fire-proof. This picture was made three years after Michelin moved out, when the building was redeveloped by publisher Paul Hamlyn and restaurateur/retailer Sir Terence Conran as offices, shop and restaurant. (mainly from Wikipedia.)
This house is on the west corner of Pelham Crescent, and the three trees that attracted my attention are still there, remarkably little changed 33 years later, though of course each spring they get covered with leaves.
Selwood Terrace, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4r-61
The east side of this street is Neville Terrace and the west side is Selwood Terrace. This front garden with a wall covered with ivy is close to the Fulham Road and I think both wall and ivy have disappeared, possibly as a part of a basement extension to the property.
South Parade, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4r-62
I think this tall building probably dates from around 1892 and is part of long terrace including a former fire station with that date on the north side of Chelsea Square. It was the Nurses Home for the Royal Brompton Hospital and is still a part of the hospital. Chelsea square was named Trafalgar Square when it was laid out in 1810 but that was later used for a rather larger square in Westminster. The square later became a tennis club before much of the area was rebuilt in neo-Georgian style in the 1930s.
The Crown, Dovehouse St, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4r-63
The Crown pub is on the corner of Dovehouse St and Dudmaston Mews, just a few yards south of the Fulham Rd and more or less surrounded by hospitals. No longer a Whitbread pub it has lost the crown sign, replaced by a dreary sign with a neon crown, and other largely flowery embellishments have ruined the simplicity of the frontage. The Princess Of Wales at the left of the row of buildings closed as a pub around 2000 and is now a French restaurant, with considerably more expensive food than The Crown.
Kings Road, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-11
I took fewer pictures of the Kings Road than I should have done. This shop window display seemed more erotic than most.
Kings Road, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-16
These rather disparate buildings are still there on the Kings Road, on the south side just east of Radnor Walk, though now occupied by different shops and rather less trendy.
Jubilee Place, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5a-15
And immediately opposite the previous picture is Jubilee place, leading north with this house and wrought ironwork at No 9 over double gates leading down to a basement garage.
Click on any of the images to go to larger versions in my album 1988 London Photos were you can browse through these and other pictures.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
A GLC plaque records that Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe (1859-1935) lived in this house.
Blacklands Lane ran from the Kings Road to Fulham Road; most was renamed Marlborough Road in the 1820s and later became Draycott Avenue. The name Blacklands possibly came from the dark earth of Chelsea Common and was a small hamlet and a large house dating at least from the 1680s which at the start of the 18th century was a French boarding school for young ladies and became an asylum for the insane in the 19th century and Samuel Wesley spent some time as a patient there in 1808. Blacklands Terrace was developed at the end of the 19th century taking its name from the house a short distance to the west and was on a part of its extensive estate There was also a house nearby called Whitelands, which became a paper factory. The short street is now best known for a restaurant (an earlier version was a location in Blowup) and a independent bookshop opened by John Sandoe in 1957.
Both the outside of Andrea’s Restaurant and the interior feature in the film ‘Blowup’ made in 1966 and its exterior had changed little 22 years later. After than it became El Blason Restaurant & Tapas Bar and then in 2013 went considerably upmarket as The Five Fields with a Michelin star and prices to match.
This huge block of flats in Brompton is the rear of Chelsea Cloisters, ten storeys with over 800 small flats as well as shops etc along its Sloane Avenue frontage, built in the 1930s, demolishing the earlier houses on the site. The block was controversially bought in 1968 by the Freshwater Corporation. The conversion of part of the property into a hotel was extremely controversial, and many tenants lost their homes. Plans by the GLC and Kensington & Chelsea council to buy the block for public housing fell through and in 1984 the 747 flats, garage, petrol-filling station, restaurant, and coffee shop were sold. It was then extensively refurbished. (British History Online.)
The entrance into a small private courtyard in front of 53 Bury Walk still has this pair of lions proudly guarding a rather plain and basic gate. The street perhaps gets its name (previously Bury Street) as it led to St Lukes Burial Ground. It was developed on Chelsea Common in the nineteenth century.
These flats are I think Thurloe Court which consists of two linked blocks, that at right with a frontage on the Fulham Road, or possibly a neighbouring 1930s block of flats, and I walked down the narrow Kinbolton Way to take this picture bwtween the blocks. An estate agent describes it as a “charming, period, redbrick portered mansion block ideally situated between South Kensington, Knightsbridge and Sloane Square” and flats there are valued at £1.5-£2m.
The Baby Doll poster is for the 1956 American dramatic black comedy film directed by Elia Kazan. I think the shop is probably in Crescent Mansions at 113 Fulham Road. Steps led down to a basement where men’s clothes were for sale.
Pelham Crescent, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4r-45
Pelham Crescent was named after Henry Thomas Pelham, third Earl of Chichester, one of the trustees of the Smith’s Charity which acquired the land from nurserymen Samuel Harrison and William Bristow who went bankrupt in 1832. George Basevi junior provided the drawings for the house frontages which were contracted to builder James Bonnin who was required to build houses worth at least £800 and complete the job in seven years. (British History Online.) They now sell for over £10m.
Click on any of the images to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos and to browse the images there.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Redherring, Old Brompton Rd, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-52
Red Herring had a shop for some years at 6 Old Brompton Road, more or less opposite South Kensington Station, which has now for some years been an opticians. They sold trendy casual clothes for women including shoes and bags. The poster at left in Arabic I think reflects the Iranian presence in the area.
Old Brompton Rd, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-53
The Brompton Hotel is still there at 30 Old Brompton Road, getting rather mixed review which perhaps reflect its 3* status and rather cheap rates for London. You can no longer go in and swear an oath at Lawrence Bloomfield, though the curious short pillar is still there. The Punch wine bar has last its superstructure, though the low wall at the bottom remains and there is still a popular bar area, but now steps lead down to a steak restaurant.
I couldn’t resist another picture of the Imperial Hotel on the corner of Queen’s Gate and Harrington Rd, demolished in 1992 and since then a cleared site used as a car park. In an earlier post I mentioned that planning permission had been granted in 1975 for the erection behind this facade of a cultural centre for the Islamic Republic of Iran and twenty self-contained flats, and later by Kensington and Chelsea for the use of the cleared site as a car park pending the building of this.
Shop, Harrington Rd, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-63
There was a crude simplicity about this mosaic of a bottle advertising the off-licence to its left that attracted my attention.
The Institut français du Royaume-Uni was begun in 1910 by Marie d’Orliac to introduce Londoners to well-known French writers, thinkers and artists. This building in Queensbury Place by architect Patrice Bonnet (1979-1964) in an art deco style was opened in 1939. Along the top of the facade are an olive branch, a cockerel, an asp and an owl, symbolising peace, courage, knowledge and wisdom. The Grade II listing text attributes the building to A J Thomas, a former assistant of Edwin L Lutyens and the architect of St Pancras Town Hall.
Bray Place is a short street a little to the north and parallel to the King’s Road in Chelsea presumably named for Sir Reginald Bray who owned the manor at the time of Henry VII. This house with its two round windows is on the corner with Draycott Ave.
Mr Brunello is no longer here, and the shop is now a hairdresser, on the corner opposite the previous image at 3 Bray Place. The view is looking down Draycott Ave to the houses on Coulson St, and above them the tall block of flats, Whitelands House, a 10 storey block of flats dating from 1935-7 above the shops in the Kings Road by Frank Verity & Sam Beverley.
I can tell you nothing about this small half-timbered house on Draycott Avenue, which I suspect is considerably more modern than it looks. At a glance the tiles and windows look remarkably ancient, and the beams have something of the character found in genuinely old buildings. Perhaps someone reading this will know more and comment.
Click on any of the above images to go to a larger version in the album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse through other pictures that I made in that year in London.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Roland Gardens, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4p-65
More pictures from my wandering walks around South Kensington.
Another of the houses in Roland Gardens, No 46, was built in 1883-5 for Peter Le Page Renouf, a former professor of ancient history and Oriental languages, an Inspector of schools who in 1886 became the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum, and was occupied after his death in 1897 by his wife and daughter. Since the late 1930s the house together with No40, 42 and 44, is now St Teresa’s Home, a care home run by Sisters Hospitallers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. According to theSurvey of London, the architect of this Tudor Gothic house, which is “reminiscent of a Victorian country vicarage, and has a prominent corner tower capped by a small spire” was most probably T Chatfeild Clarke who designed the rather similar Parmiter’s School in Bethnal Green.
Poster, Queensgate, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-03
The Iranian Embassy in London is in Princes Gate overlooking Hyde Park and there is also a Consular section in Kensington Court in South Kensington, as well as a vacant site on the corner of Harrington Rd and Queens Gate, so it was perhaps not surprising to find this poster calling on Ayatollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, to stop killing children and end his terrorism and mad war, though it was a called destined to fall on deaf ears.
I think my bus to South Kensington went along the Fulham Road, and I decided to alight here and take a few pictures. I’m not sure who would want to buy any of the things on display here or what they would do with them, other than the fireplaces which are around the edges, but I am sure they would all be very expensive.
I suspect it will have been this shopfront which made me get off the bus, and take a few pictures on the corner of Sydney St on my way home from South Kensington. The shop window has the name of New Zealand born interior designer Anouska Hempel (Lady Weinberg) whose “vision of a utopian world encompasses luxury design from landscapes, gardens, hotels and residential to retail, yachts and couture” according to her website.
This location is now occupied by a Thai restaurant which a rather plain frontage, and the pub opposite, the Cranley, which can be glimpsed in a reflection in the window in one of the pictures closed bin 1990.
Onslow Square, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-33
Onslow Square is between Fulham Road and South Kensington station and is on land purchased by the trustees of the Henry Smith Charity in the 1620s from the Earl of Onslow. Henry Smith had made his fortune as a moneylender in the City. When the chrity trustees leased land to Charles Freake to build the square they insisted they were built to the specifications of their architect George Basevi. The first houses were completed in 1847 two years after Basevi’s death and the square was only completed in 1865, with later houses diverging from his designs with exposed stock bricks. The Smith Charity estate was sold to the Wellcome Trust in the late 1970’s.
French school, Queensberry Way, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-41
The Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle has a distinctly French look to its building along Harrington Road and Queensbury Way, known as Victor Hugo, which was built in the 1980s. The concrete structures at the entrance from Queensbury Way, (this was one of a pair) have been replaced.
Small Ads, Harrington Rd, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-42
I was amused by the range of small adds, offering dance lessons, corrective training, Caribbean Beauty, health therapy, French massage, electrical repairs, a Morris Oxford, a flat for students and more.
Vacani School of Dance, Harrington Rd, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4q-43
The Vacani School of Dance was founded in 1915 by Marguerite Vacani and later taken over by her niece Betty Vacani, and the pair of them later gave private lessons to the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. Lady Diana Spencer later spent three months as an apprentice teacher at the school. Founded in Knightsbridge it moved to South Kensington under Elfrida Eden and Mary Stassinopoulos in the early 1980s. There are now Vacani schools in Clapham and Woking.
The doorway is still there on Harrington Rd, but now longer a school of dancing, but at the side of the South Kensington Club at 38-42.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
The Boltons, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4o-52
If the houses around The Boltons are all much the same – the Grade II listing text for most simply tells you to see that for the first pair, 1 &2 – some distinguished themselves by their gates. Those of No 16 have lost their eagles since I made this picture, and the iron gates have lost both their angled top and the arch above as well as the rampant creeper but have gained an entryphone and a letter box. Walking down the street today there would be no picture to make here.
The Boltons, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4o-66
There are various designs of wrought iron gates to the houses around The Boltons, though quite a few share the same pattern. This one, I think at No 23, appealed to me more than most and I was fortunate to find it half opened, giving a clearer view of the tiled path and those ornamental ceramic leaves containing a small bush.
It also shows the peeling paint which still then could be seen on quite a few of these houses, which are now all I think pristine. I rather liked the impression it gave of these houses being old and lived in.
Boltons Place leads north from The Boltons to the Old Brompton Road and its east side is occupied by several large houses. That occupied by Jenny Lind, the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, has undergone various changes of street name and number since she moved in as the first occupier in 1874, and is in a rather different style to the rest of the area. In 1906 it was altered by the addition of a rather attractive semi-cicular bow window, hidden in my view. The effect is less austere, described in the Victoria History as “un-Godwinian suavity in a rather French way“.
School, Boltons Place, South Kensington, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-4o-54
The west side of Boltons Place is quite different, occupied by Bousfield Primary School. This primary school was built in 1954-6 by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and is on the site of Beatrix Potter’s house and garden at 2 Bolton Gardens, where she lived for more than 40 years until she was married in 1913, a short walk from Brompton Cemetery where she found some of the names for her characters. The site became available thanks to wartime bombing.
The school is a heavily over-subscribed local authority school which had its origins in a school set up as a “poor school” for local Catholic children by the parish priest in the 1800s which was renamed Bousfield School in 1913. The children were transferred to the new school in 1956. Later the old building became another Catholic school.
The Fulham Road has a rather different atmosphere with this row of shops with an entrance probably for horses to be led through to stables behind. When I took the picture it led to the Hungry Horse Restaurant, and although the board with its two horses heads looks like that of a French horse butcher, the English menu will almost certainly not have included horsemeat – nor will it have had hay offer, so any horses would have remained hungry.
Now the gate seems closed and the area behind looks unused. Unsurprisingly the shop at left is now an estate agent.
The cinema opened as the Forum Theatre in 1930, designed by architect J Stanley Beard, featuring live variety shows with an orchestra. It was sold to Associated British Cinemas (ABC) in 1935 and lost its organ in the 1960s. Like others it got altered internally to provide first three then four, five when I made this picture and finally six screens. Now owned by Cineworld who have transferred it to their Picturehouse chain, it had further renovations in 2019.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
