CHAPTER IX - The Ladbroke Estate
The estate of the Ladbroke family in
Kensington was one of the largest holdings
in the whole parish. It consisted of
three separate parcels of land, all on the north side
of the Uxbridge road (now Notting Hill Gate and
Holland Park Avenue): the two smaller parcels,
consisting of five acres now occupied by Linden
Gardens, Notting Hill Gate, and of twenty-eight
acres centred around Pembridge Villas, are described
in Chapter X. The third and largest parcel,
consisting of some 170 acres bounded on the cast
by Portobello Lane (now Road), on the west by
Portland Road and Pottery Lane, and on the north
extending almost as far as Lancaster Road, is the
subject of the present chapter (fig. 45).
Large parts of this area became the scene of a
layout quite unlike anything previously, or indeed
subsequently, to be found in London. Building
development was spread over some fifty years,
between 1821 and the mid 1870's, but the most
intense activity took place between 1840 and c.
1868. Half-a-dozen architects and a rather larger
number of major speculators were all involved in
the evolution of the layout, and despite exhaustive
study of the available evidence, the
precise extent of their individual contributions
is still not entirely clear.
The estate had probably been acquired in the
middle of the eighteenth century by Richard
Ladbroke esquire, of Tadworth Court, Surrey, (ref. 1)
who was a brother of Sir Robert Ladbroke. Sir
Robert was a banker in the firm of Ladbroke,
Son, Rawlinson and Porker of Lombard Street,
and had served as Lord Mayor in 1744–5 and as
one of the Members of Parliament for the City
from 1754 until his death in 1773. Both he and
his brother were extremely wealthy. After
Richard Ladbroke's death the estate passed to his
son, another Richard, who at the time of his
death in 1793 owned four houses, in the City, at
Chelsea, at Tadworth and in Reigate, as well as
estates in Middlesex, Surrey and Essex. But he
had no children, and he therefore bequeathed life
interests in his lands to his mother and his four
sisters, with remainder successively to his nephews,
and ultimately, in default of issue, to a distant
cousin, Robert Ladbroke. By 1819 Richard
Ladbroke's mother, sisters and two of his nephews
had all died, and the Kensington estates passed
to the last surving nephew, James Weller, who
in accordance with the requirements of his uncle's
will assumed the name of Ladbroke. (ref. 2)
James Weller Ladbroke held the estate until
his death without issue in 1847. During his
twenty-eight-year ownership a considerable
amount of building development took place, and
the layout and character of the estate were largely
determined. But there is little evidence that he
ever took much active part in these processes,
beyond the routine signature of leases. He lived
at a succession of country houses in West Sussex,
the management of the estate at Notting Hill
being left to a firm of City solicitors, Smith,
Bayley (Bayley and Janson after 1836), (ref. 3) acting
in conjunction with a 'surveyor', Thomas Allason,
who was a distinguished architect. Nor is there
anything to suggest that he was personally concerned
in the family banking business, which was
taken over by Messrs. Glyn and Company in
1842. (ref. 4)
Building development in the
1820's and 1830's
Under the terms of his uncle's will James Weller
Ladbroke could only grant leases of up to twenty-one
years' duration. Encouraged, no doubt, by
the tremendous building boom of the early 1820's
Ladbroke and his advisers obtained power by a
private Act of Parliament of 1821 to grant ninety-nine-year
leases, (ref. 5) and within a year the first
articles of agreement for building had been signed. (fn. a)
This was for the site of Linden Gardens (formerly
Linden Grove, see page 268) where Ladbroke's
own surveyor, Allason, was granted a number of
leases in 1824 and 1827. (ref. 6)
Figure 45:
Principal developers on the Ladbroke estate. In the unnamed areas the developer is either unknown or
the development too complex for ascription. Based on the Ordnance Surveys of 1863–7 and 1894–6
Allason was born in London in 1790. He
became a pupil of William Atkinson, and he won
the silver medal of the Royal Academy School in
1809. After a tour of the Continent he published
in 1817 his Picturesque Views of the Antiquities
of Pola in Istria. He was the architect for the
Alliance Fire Office in Bartholomew Lane and
built a number of country houses. In addition to
acting for Ladbroke he was surveyor to the Stock
Exchange, the Pollen estate and the Pitt estate in
Kensington (see Chapter III), and he also worked
for the Earl of Shrewsbury at Alton Towers,
where 'He was engaged in laying out the gardens
and from this period he was much employed
as a landscape gardener.' He lived for some years
in Linden Grove, attended the meetings of the
Kensington Vestry, and was a member successively
of the Westminster and Metropolitan
Commissions of Sewers. He remained the surveyor
to the Ladbroke family until his death in 1852. (ref. 7)
Allason's first task after the passing of the Act
of 1821 was to prepare a plan for the layout of
the main portion of the estate. At its south-eastern
extremity Ladbroke's property occupied the high
ground at Notting Hill Gate, which extends
north-west for about five hundred yards along a
broad flat ridge before the land begins to fall away
down a long slope. Due west of Notting Hill Gate
the Uxbridge road led down another long slope
to Shepherd's Bush. Half way down this slope the
ground on the north side of the road rises with
increasing steepness to the top of a knoll which
forms a level extension of the broad ridge to the
east. On the west and north sides of this knoll the
ground falls steeply towards Pottery Lane and
Notting Dale. As well as being unusually large,
the estate thus also possessed unusually varied
contours (at least by London standards), and its
layout therefore presented an architect such as
Allason, a specialist in landscape design, with an
unique opportunity.
In his plan of 1823 (fn. b) (Plate 52) Allason provided
a broad straight road (originally known as
Ladbroke Place and now as Ladbroke Grove)
leading northward off the Uxbridge road for
some 700 yards, up over the knoll where St.
John's Church now stands and about half way
down the further side. Not far from its southern
end this thoroughfare was crossed at right angles
by an east-west road called Weller Street East
and West (now Ladbroke Road). The most
striking feature of the design was, however, the
enormous circus, some 560 yards in diameter and
about one mile in circumference, which was to be
laid out to the north of this intersection. All of the
ground on the inner side of the circular road,
and that on either side of Ladbroke Grove within
the circus, extending to a depth of 200 feet, is
marked as 'building ground', and a clause in the
Act of 1821 provided that up to five acres of land
might be appropriated to any one house. Large
detached, or possibly semi-detached, houses were
therefore evidently envisaged, and the whole
scheme must have been heavily influenced by
Nash's work at Regent's Park, and also, perhaps,
by an unexecuted design exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1802–3 for the layout of a large
double circus on the Eyre estate at St. John's
Wood. The design for this circus has not survived,
but a description of it states that detached houses,
each with over an acre of garden, were to be built
around the circus, and that the residents of all the
houses were to share the use of the large pleasureground
in the centre. (ref. 9)
Whether he knew of this abortive plan or not,
Allason made use of this idea for his scheme, for
within the two segmentally-shaped areas enclosed
by the broad strips of building ground there were
to be two large paddocks, plus a third (triangular,
and again entirely surrounded by building ground)
outside the eastern edge of the circus. The fact
that all three of these paddocks were wholly surrounded
by land designated for building suggests
that they were intended to be private enclosures
for the general use of the residents of the adjacent
houses. Although the circus was never
built, Allason's plan therefore marks the genesis
in Notting Hill of this most original and successful
idea, which in years to come was to lead to the
formation of no less than fifteen such communal
gardens on various parts of the Ladbroke estate.
Allason's plan remained the basis for building
throughout the first stage of the development of
the Ladbroke estate, which lasted until about
1833. At least the southern part of the circus was
actually staked out, (ref. 10) but no houses were built
there, and the whole speculation must have
suffered a severe set-back through the financial
crisis of 1825. Such building as did take place in
this period was restricted to the frontage of the
Uxbridge road and the land adjacent to it.
In the autumn of 1823 Ladbroke signed two
agreements (ref. 11) for the disposal of almost all of his
land between Ladbroke Terrace on the east and
Portland Road on the west, and extending northward
from the Uxbridge road to include the southern
part of the great circus (fig. 45). The undertaker
for the eastern portion, between Ladbroke
Terrace and Ladbroke Grove, was Joshua
Flesher Hanson, gentleman, the builder of
Regency Square, Brighton, and of a number of
houses in Hyde Park Gate, who at about this
time was also beginning to build Campden Hill
Square on the opposite side of the Uxbridge road
(see Chapter VI). To the west of Ladbroke Grove
the undertaker was Ralph Adams of Gray's Inn
Road, brick-and tile-maker, who at about this
time established a pottery manufacture in the
neighbouring district soon to be known as 'the
Potteries'. He took all of the land as far as
Portland Road except for an acre and a half on the
west corner of Ladbroke Grove, where stood a
farmhouse and ancilary buildings. Neither of
these agreements has survived, but other sources
show that Ladbroke undertook to grant ninety-nine-year
leases as houses were completed, and
that Hanson convenanted to build twenty houses
'according to such ranges and levels' as Ladbroke's
surveyor should approve. The houses along the
Uxbridge road were to be ranged at an uniform
distance of at least twenty feet from the roadway,
while those in the projected circus were to be set
back at least thirty feet. (ref. 12) Adams covenanted to
pay a ground rent of £25 in the first year, rising
to £150 in the sixth and all subsequent years. (ref. 13)
By December 1824 Hanson had arranged for
the erection of eight houses along the Uxbridge
road (now Nos. 8–22 even Holland Park Avenue), (ref. 14)
Thomas Allason having acted on Hanson's
behalf in an application to lay a sewer there. (ref. 15) But
in this same month Hanson agreed to lease all
the remainder of his land to Robert Cantwell,
who convenanted to build the remaining twelve
houses required by Hanson's contract with Ladbroke. (ref. 12)
Cantwell is variously described as an architect,
a surveyor or a builder, and he was later to act as
surveyor for the adjacent Norland estate, where he
designed Royal Crescent and a number of other
houses. On the Ladbroke estate his financial
backer was Major-General Laurence Bradshaw
of Harley Street, from whom he was soon obtaining
mortgages of over £6,000. (ref. 16) At Hanson's
nomination Cantwell was in 1826 granted a
ninety-seven-year lease from Ladbroke of Nos.
1–4 (consec.) Ladbroke Terrace (Nos. 1 and 2
demolished), and in 1833 a ninety-two-year lease
of Nos. 5 and 6. (ref. 17) In the Uxbridge road he was
the lessee of No. 38 Holland Park Avenue in
1826, (ref. 18) and he was also involved in the building
of several other houses between Ladbroke Terrace
and Ladbroke Grove (ref. 19) (Plate 58c). The cost of
building varied between £600 and £800 per
house. (ref. 14)
Almost all of these houses are stucco fronted,
and have two or three storeys above basements.
In Holland Park Avenue Cantwell was almost
certainly the architect for the two identical trios,
Nos. 2–6 and 24–28 even (Plate 58a, 58b). Here
each of the central houses has a giant unfluted
Doric order of engaged columns, tetrastyle in
antis, with pediment above the attic storey. Nos.
24–28 were placed so as to close the vista down the
east side of Hanson's Campden Hill Square on
the south side of Holland Park Avenue, a little
further down which, on the south side, stands a
third very similar group, Nos. 23–27 (odd)
Holland Park Avenue (Plate 43a), also probably
by Cantwell, and dated 1829. By comparison with
other houses in Holland Park Avenue, which are
relatively unremarkable, all three groups belong
clearly to Nash's age of Metropolitan Improvements.
Cantwell's houses in Ladbroke Terrace were
more modest. Nos. 1–4 (consec.) were formerly
one continuous stucco-faced two-storey range
with semi-basements, (ref. 20) but (as previously mentioned)
Nos. 1 and 2 have been demolished. Nos.
3 and 4 (Plate 58d) each have a centrally placed
doorway flanked on either side by a wide and
slightly projecting wing containing one window
on each floor. The doorways have shallow projecting
porches supported on Ionic columns, and
the wings have plain pilasters supporting a simple
horizontal band of stucco which performs the
function of an entablature. A low-pitched slate
roof rises above wide eaves carried on brackets set
above the pilasters. The entrance to No. 3 is now
by way of the semi-basement instead of at the
level of the principal floor.
Two drawings in the J. B. Papworth collection
in the library of the Royal Institute of British
Architects evidently relate to these houses (Plate
59). One of them is inscribed in a later hand
'Villas at Notting Hill. R. Cantwell', and there is
no reason to doubt this ascription. They show
that as originally conceived these houses were to
have formed semi-detached pairs, each house
having a width of only two openings including the
doorway, which was placed at the outer end. They
are indeed shown in this manner on the ground
plan attached to Cantwell's lease of 1826, but
their alteration to form one continuous range must
have taken place either during the course of
building or very soon afterwards, for the Kensington
tithe map of 1844 shows them all joined
together. The drawings are nevertheless of considerable
interest for their contemporary evidence
about the internal dispositions of houses of this
general type.
Each house was originally to be twenty-four
feet wide and thirty-two feet deep. The basement
contained a front and back kitchen equipped with
a stone sink, a copper, a dresser and plate-rack,
and a closet-cupboard. The front kitchen, which
had a boarded floor, gave access to a covered area
off which were a small pantry, a cistern, and a
groined coal cellar. The letter was paved with
bricks, and the pantry, cistern space and covered
area were paved with York stone slabs. The back
kitchen, also paved with York stone slabs, had a
small area at the rear from which access was
gained to a privy and to the steps leading up to the
back garden. At the side there were two more
cellars, both paved with bricks, one for wine, and
the other for beer. On the ground floor, the entrance
hall gave access to a stair well, off which
were the dining-room, rear drawing-room (smaller
than the dining-room), and a small study. On the
first floor there were four bedrooms and a watercloset. All rooms except one bedroom had a
fireplace, those in the kitchens being presumably
furnished with ranges. There was no bathroom.
In conclusion it may here be noted that at least
two houses were evidently built in accordance
with these plans, at Cheltenham, where they may
still be seen at Nos. 27 and 29 Tivoli Road.
Cantwell is not known to have worked at Cheltenham,
but Papworth did so very extensively, and
his influence on the Ladbroke estate will be
discussed later.
The houses on the east side of Ladbroke Grove
to the north of Ladbroke Road, now numbered
14–32 (even) Ladbroke Grove, also stand on part
of the land leased by Hanson to Cantwell. Their
site was within the area originally intended for
the 'great circus', and it was probably for this
reason that building did not begin here until the
latter part of the 1830's (ref. 22)
To the west of Ladbroke Grove the brickmaker
Ralph Adams became the lessee between
1826 and 1831 of the eleven houses now numbered
54–74 (even) Holland Park Avenue (Nos.
62–66 recently rebuilt). (ref. 22) These houses, mostly of
two or three storeys with stucco fronts, are of less
interest than those built under the aegis of Hanson
and Cantwell east of Ladbroke Grove, and Adams
may therefore have supplied his own designs. (fn. c)
Between Lansdowne Road and Portland Road,
where all the first houses have either been
demolished or converted into shops with singlestorey
projections over the original front gardens,
Adams was between 1827 and 1831 either the
lessee or a party to the lease for most of the
houses. (ref. 24)
The last portion of the Ladbroke estate fronting
the Uxbridge road to be developed was the
curtilage of the farmhouse on the west corner of
Ladbroke Grove, now partly occupied by the
Mitre public house. Here leases of the present
Nos. 42–52 (even) Holland Park Avenue were
granted in 1833 to John Drew of Pimlico,
builder, (ref. 25) whose kinsman William John Drew
was soon to be active for some years on the Ladbroke
estate. John Drew's houses in Holland
Park Avenue form a routine range, all stucco
fronted except at Nos. 42 and 44, where the
stucco is restricted to the ground storey, and
all with light iron guard-rails to the first-floor
windows. But around the corner, on the west side
of Ladbroke Grove and also within the curtilage
of the old farmhouse, he and W. J. Drew,
beginning in 1833, jointly built the agreeable
two-storey stucco-fronted range numbered 11–19 (odd) Ladbroke Grove, the moulded parapet
of which is surmounted by a central pediment and
flanking ornamentation with Greek Revival
motifs. (ref. 26)
At this point development stopped, and in the
five years 1834–8 Ladbroke granted no building
leases at all. The Act of 1821 had been badly
drawn and doubts had arisen about the validity of
Cantwell's title, so in 1832 Ladbroke had had to
meet the expense of another Act to put matters
right. (ref. 12) . At about this time the grandiose scheme
for a great circus was abandoned. (ref. 10) . The building
boom of the early 1820's had collapsed, and
Notting Hill had proved to be still too far west
for successful large-scale speculation. Among the
very few houses known to have been built in the
years 1834–8 were Nos. 12 and 13 Ladbroke
Terrace, which at Cantwell's direction were
leased in 1838 by the mortgagee, General
Bradshaw, respectively to W. J. Drew, variously
described as builder or architect, and William
Liddard, gentleman, both of Notting Hill. (ref. 27)
The Hippodrome racecourse
During the interim before the revival of building
activity the Ladbroke estate was used as a racecourse,
a purpose for which it was in some ways
very well suited. There was no course close to
London, Epsom Downs being the nearest, and
the configuration of the ground, dominated by
the hill now surmounted by St. John's Church,
enabled spectators to view the races from start to
finish as the competitors galloped around the
circular course. In August 1836 a Mr. John
Whyte took a twenty-one-year lease of 140 acres
of ground from Ladbroke. (ref. 28) During the winter
he laid out courses for steeplechasing and flat
racing, the principal entrance being at the modern
junction of Kensington Park Road and Pembridge
Road (Plate 53a). He secured the fashionable
patronage of Count D'Orsay and the Earl of
Chesterfield as stewards and the first meeting at
the new Hippodrome took place on 3 June 1837. (ref. 29)
By this time considerable local opposition had
already been raised against the whole project.
A public footpath extended across the course,
providing the shortest route from Kensington
village to Kensal Green and Willesden. The
fence with which Whyte had enclosed the course
obstructed this path, and in April 1837 over a
hundred people had crowded into a meeting of the
Kensington Vestry to discuss the matter. The
Vestry instructed the parish surveyors of the highways
to keep the path open, and in May legal
proceedings were started against Whyte. (ref. 30) . When
the Hippodrome opened in June large crowds
successfully claimed a right of free entry along
the path. The Sunday Times recorded that 'A
more filthy or disgusting crew than that which
entered, we have seldom had the misfortune to
encounter.' The invaders had not kept to the
path, 'but, relying upon their numbers, they spread
themselves over the whole of the ground, defiling
the atmosphere as they go, and carrying into the
neighbourhood of the stands and carriages, where
the ladies are most assembled, a coarseness and
obscenity of language as repulsive to every feeling
of manhood as to every sense of common decency'.
Even the racing had not been a success, for the
stakes were low and the quality of the horses poor.
'Save Hokey Pokey, there was nothing that could
climb, or hobble, much more leap over a hedge,
and as to a hurdle, it was absurd to attempt one.'
After such an inauspicious start it was perhaps
fortunate that the death of King William IV on
20 June put an end to further meetings for some
while. (ref. 31)
In the two cases heard at Kensington Petty
Sessions the magistrates found against Whyte,
despite the eloquent pleas of his solicitor, John
Duncan, who was later to be involved in the
development of the estate. But Whyte was evidently
not a man to give up easily. There were
counter summonses and an appeal to a higher
court, and in January 1838 he was promoting a
Bill in Parliament to divert the path. Despite
several hostile petitions, including one from the
Kensington Vestry, the Bill passed through the
Commons, but for Some unknown reason was
never presented to the House of Lords. (ref. 32)
In 1839 the Hippodrome was being directed by
a committee of management and a council of
titled aristocrats whose avowed intention was to
raise a capital sum of £50,000 by dividing the
property into five thousand 'proprietorships' of
£10 each. The course itself was altered so that it
no longer obstructed the footpath. It was extended
north-westwards to the neighbourhood of
the modern St. Quintin Avenue (far beyond the
Ladbroke estate), both the starting and finishing
posts being to the west of the hill (Plates 5b, 53b).
Besides the raching there were to be livery-stables
where horses might be hired for hack riding in the
vicinity, and there were also to be facilities for
cricket, archery, 'revels, fetes, balloon ascents,
fancy fairs etc. etc.' Perhaps most important of all,
the whole park was enclosed by a high wooden
fence, thus excluding the rude and licentious
populace of the neighbouring Potteries and elsewhere. The opening meeting in May 1839 was
attended by a 'brilliant and immense assemblage of
the nobility and gentry', and 'not a gamblingbooth
or table, not a single drunken, riotous,
disorderly, or ill-behaved person, or mendicant
was to be seen on the grounds'. (ref. 31)