More Around the King’s Road 1988

London House, Fulham Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-45-positive_2400
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-positive_2400
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.

Kings Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-42-positive_2400
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-positive_2400
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.

Kings Rd area, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-56-positive_2400
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-positive_2400
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-positive_2400
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.


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