Brompton Road and Egerton Gardens Area
In the mid 1880's the Smith's Charity trustees decided not
to renew the leases of Novosielski's houses in Michael's
Place, Michael's Grove and Brompton Crescent for further
short-term periods, but to demolish the houses and let
the ground for building. In so doing they were making an
investment for the future, as there was a loss of income
when rack rents were exchanged for ground rents, albeit in
this instance quite high ones. The largest piece of ground,
comprising the present-day sites of Nos. 227–251
(odd) Brompton Road and all of Egerton Gardens except
Nos. 1–7 (consec.) and 36–50 (even), was let under one
building agreement dated 25 March 1886 at an ultimate
ground rent (payable from 1891) of £1,425. At about the
same time the sites of Nos. 209–225 (odd) Brompton
Road, Egerton Gardens Mews and Nos. 17 and 19 Egerton
Terrace were taken under several separate agreements
at a total ground rent of £642 per annum, while Crescent
House was replaced by the large mansion called Mortimer
House at a ground rent of £240. The houses at the
eastern end of Egerton Gardens, Nos. 1–7 (consec.) and
36–50 (even), were erected under a separate building
agreement in 1888 at a rent of £500. Finally Egerton Place
and Nos. 4–28 (even) Yeoman's Row were built under
another agreement of 1891 (modified in 1893) at £700 per
annum. (ref. 272) The leasehold terms granted under these
agreements ranged from ninety years in Egerton Gardens
to ninety-nine years in Egerton Place and Yeoman's Row.
Some eight-and-a-half acres of land were involved, and
the total ground rent received (£3,507) was, at over £400
per acre, very substantially larger than the £75 per acre
received on average from Freake's various takes. A higher
sum was, however, to be expected from the redevelopment
of an established area than from the opening up of new
territory.
Figure 33:
No. 235 Brompton Road. shop from
Nos. 209–251 (odd) Brompton Road and Egerton Gardens
The agreement of 25 March 1886 was with Alexander
Thorn, builder, of Cremorne Wharf, Lots Road, Chelsea.
In April Thorn applied to the Metropolitan Board of
Works for permission to form a new street between
Brompton Road and the street then still known as Brompton
Crescent, and in June the course of this road and its
name, Egerton Gardens (after the Honourable Francis
Egerton, son of the first Earl of Ellesmere, one of the
trustees), were approved. (ref. 273)
In the same month Thorn commenced building at Nos.
227–235 (odd) Brompton Road, (ref. 274) a group of groundfloor
shops with three main storeys and high attics above
decked out with characteristic ‘Queen Anne’ trimmings of
gables, red brickwork with occasional lighter bands, ribbed
chimneys, and round-arched and segmental-headed windows
openings, and sporting little semi-circular balconies in
front of the central windows on the second floor (Plate 25a,
fig. 33). Above the shops in Brompton Road these buildings
were intended to provide very spacious single dwellings
entered from Egerton Gardens, where the numbers 67–75
(odd) were assigned, but within a few years most of them
were occupied as flats. (ref. 91)
Thorn was also involved in extensive building operations
in Elm Park Gardens, Chelsea, and by 1887 he was
apparently in financial difficulties. He entered into an
arrangement with his creditors (ref. 275) whereby he divested
himself of his responsibilities in the Egerton Gardens area
to Matthews Brothers and Company, who were then
building in Bramham Gardens. Nos. 229–235 Brompton
Road were assigned to Matthews Brothers in the
names of the company's partners, Andrew Rogers,
Maurice Charles Hulbert and Henry Arthur Matthews,
for £3,000 per house (sums which would indicate that they
were then practically finished). (ref. 276) No 227 had already
been sold to Charles Leonard Hacking, an ironmonger,
(ref. 277) hence the ceramic plaque with the initials
CLH on the side of the building.
Building had also begun in 1886 at Nos. 209–225
(odd) Brompton Road, a range of shops with flats above.
Here individual or pairs of buildings were erected under
separate agreements, and the flats, which were given the
collective name of Egerton Mansions, are approached
from entrances between the shops in Brompton Road.
They also consist, above the shops, of three storeys and
attics with gables or prominent dormers but are treated in
a mixture of more restrained styles than Thorn's houses,
ranging from simple brick façades verging on neo-Georgian
to neo-Elizabethan fronts with squared-off stone
bays of a kind which were to become increasingly common
along commercial street frontages.
Three of the lessees of the buildings in this range were
the occupants of previous buildings on the site, namely
Charles Patrick Smith, upholsterer, James Hume, baker,
and Mrs. Caroline Corby, lodging-house keeper, while
another, Charlotte Adele Jeffreys, was presumably related
to Mrs. Harriet Jeffreys who also ran a lodging-house at
the old No. 219. (ref. 278) Neither the new shops nor any of the
flats above were, however, occupied by the lessees, all of
whom apparently undertook the rebuildings as speculations.
The builders were Smith for No. 209, G. and G.
Green of Hackney (who submitted the lowest tender at
£3,125 to execute a design by R. J. Worley (ref. 279) ) at No.
211, Samuel Chafen of Rotherhithe for Nos. 213 and 215, and
Mark Manley of St. Pancras for Nos.
217–225. (ref. 280) Manley was also the builder, at this time,
of Nos. 17 and 19 Egerton Terrace. (ref. 281)
Further along Brompton Road the range begun by
Thorn was completed in 1887–8 by the erection of Nos.
237–249 (odd) in a similar but simplified style retaining
the same storey heights and gabled roofline (Plate 25a,
right). The lessee here was William John Stuart of Thornton
Heath, builder, but the notices to the district surveyor
of the commencement of building operations were in the
name of the local builders, S. and R. Cawley of Hornton
Street. (ref. 282) As with the
other buildings in this range, the
flats above the shops are entered from the rear in Egerton
Gardens where they are numbered 53–65 (odd).
No. 251 Brompton Road, a sharply angled building on
the south corner of the short street opening from
Brompton Road into the middle of Egerton Gardens, was
built by Matthews Brothers in 1889 for The Working
Ladies' Guild which had been founded in 1877 ‘with the
aim of helping “necessitous gentlewomen” and encouraging
them to develop their own skills and sell their work’.
The building, which has thin Ionic pilasters between large
window openings and ornately decorated pediments, had a
showroom on the ground floor and presumably workshops
above. A handsome shop front originally stretched around
both street frontages, surmounted by a coat of arms at the
corner. The activities of the Guild were boldly advertised
on the showroom windows and included art needlework,
china painting, poker work, church work, tapestry repairs
and the making of trousseaux, layettes and emigrants' and
servants' outfits. The Guild's motto, ‘Bear Ye One
Another's Burdens’, is carved in the pediment above the
entrance from Brompton Road. The Guild retained the
premises until 1958. (ref. 283)
In Egerton Gardens Nos. 17–25 (odd) had been begun
by Thorn in 1886, (ref. 284) and have some features which are
common with Nos. 227–235 (odd) Brompton Road, but,
like those houses, they were handed over to Matthews
Brothers for completion. No. 17 was let, on their direction,
to Major-General Charles Edmund Webber, who was the
first occupant to move into the street in 1887, (ref. 285) and Nos.
19–25 were let individually to Rogers, Hulbert and
Matthews in the same year. (ref. 286) They then proceeded to build the
remainder of Egerton Gardens with great despatch.
By 1890 all of the houses were occupied with the
exception of No. 50, which was taken in the following
year. (ref. 287)
Maurice Charles Hulbert, who had recently joined the
building firm as a partner, was an Associate of the R.I.B.A.
and had latterly been in private practice as an
architect. (ref. 288) It seems inherently probable that he was the
architect of the houses in Egerton Gardens (Plate 60a, 60c)
with the exception of No. 31, where another architect was
certainly employed, and probably of Nos. 17–25, which
seem to have been designed, at least in part, by an architect
employed by Thorn. Hulbert was to design several buildings
for Matthews, Rogers and Company (as Matthews
Brothers were later called) on the Grosvenor estate in
Mayfair, where he later proved himself to be an architect
of some flair and distinction. (ref. 289) In Egerton Gardens,
however, there is little evidence of a talent much above the
average, and the rapid rate of occupancy may be testimony
more to the appeal of Brompton as a residential quarter
than to the attractiveness of Matthews Brothers' houses.
These have basements, three or, more usually, four
main storeys and high attics behind gables of various
shapes and sizes. Their red-brick façades, treated with a
modicum of ornamental brickwork, arc sometimes relieved
by bands and voussoirs of Portland cement, and most of
the houses have canted bays through two or three storeys.
Although there is some repetition of house-types, and the
terraces are tied together by continuous iron-railed balconies carried on large brackets, symmetry is carefully
avoided. Nos. 18–50 (even) have their principal fronts on
the south side overlooking the communal garden which
serves all the houses (Plate 60a), and their street fronts are
of a familiar ‘back-to-front’ kind with split storey levels.
Some of the upper storeys have been disfigured by alterations and addition
and the brilliant-white painting of the
cement work has produced a striped effect which was not
intended originally, as early photographs testify.
No. 31 was designed by Thomas Henry Smith for
Lieutenant-Colonel William Wetherly, the lessee and first
occupant. (ref. 290) While retaining the storey heights and general disposition of its neighbours (Plate 60c), the house has
some individual features including a tall stepped and
scrolled gable, ornamental caning in brick and cement by
Gilbert Seale and lead-quarry glazing by Campbell, Smith
and Company. Inside, the principal feature was a large
inner hall and a wide open-well staircase decorated in
an early-seventeenth-century manner in dark wood with
ornamental plasterwork. Like the majority of houses in
Egerton Gardens, it has been turned into flats. No. 17,
which is lower than its neighbours, having only two main
storeys and a high double attic, also has several individual
characteristics. As it occupies a prominent corner position
next to Mortimer House, much attention is given to the
side elevation, which has exposed chimney-stacks, ornamental brickwork, a shaped gable and an octagonal
turret with a lead cupola at the rear.
Officers of the armed forces provided a substantial
core of the first occupants of Egerton Gardens. Besides
Webber and Wetherly there were three colonels, three
majors, two captains and an admiral (Sir Michael Seymour
at No. 1). Two barristers and a solicitor can also be
identified although there may have been more, as can two
stockbrokers and a civil engineer. Her Majesty's Consul-General in Bogota occupied No. 20 briefly, and there
were several merchants. A more sizeable upper-class
presence here than in Evelyn Gardens is reflected in a
number of aristocratic residents, including members of the
Cadogan family, a son of the ninth Earl of Galloway, the
fourth Earl of Kenmare and the second Baron Romilly,
who had only recently moved into No. 38 when a fire
broke out there in 1891, killing this unfortunate peer
and two of his servants. (ref. 291)
Egerton Place
The initial building agreement for the redevelopment of
the site occupied by Novosielski's houses in Michael's
Grove and the terrace immediately behind in Yeoman's
Row was concluded on 24 June 1891 with Harold Malet,
a retired colonel, who lived at No. 12 Egerton
Gardens. (ref. 292) Malet, who was a friend of the architect
(Sir) Mervyn Macartney, ‘had taste and knew people’. He
was involved with Macartney, Reginald Blomfield, W. R.
Lethaby, Sidney Barnsley and Ernest Gimson in the
famous but short-lived design firm of Kenton and Company which was formed in February 1891 with Malet
holding, ‘as it were, a watching brief on the whole proceeding’. (ref. 293)
In August 1891 another new company, The Estates
Improvement Company Limited, was formed with Malet
as secretary, to carry out the building agreement. Among
the subscribers were Macartney and his father-in-law,
Charles Thomson Ritchie, later Baron Ritchie of Dundee,
who was President of the Local Government Board and, as
such, had been responsible for the Local Government Act
of 1888. Other subscribers included Edward L. Tomlin of
Angley Park, Cranbrook, a client of Macartney, and
William Henry Collbran, a local architect, surveyor and
house agent, who had designed blocks of shops and
residential chambers in Earl's Court Road, Old Brompton
Road and Gloucester Road. (ref. 294)
Early in 1892 Macartney applied to the London County
Council on behalf of The Estates Improvement Company
for permission to lay out a new street in the form of a tight,
deep crescent off Michael's Grove to be called Egerton
Place, and in May 1892 John Grover and Son of Wilton
Works, New North Road, gave notice of their intention to
build the first houses there. (ref. 295)
Nos. 1–7 (consec.) Egerton Place (Plate 60b, left side, fig.
34a) were built by Grover to Macartney's designs and at
once introduced a higher quality of architecture to the
generally undistinguished ensemble of the Egerton Gardens area. They have the usual four main storeys with
basements and garrets characteristic of most other houses
in the development, and are finished in costly two-inch
bricks of red and orange, with copious brown stone dressings. Their decorative features are spare and refined—a
bold but plain linking cornice in stone at third-floor level,
stone doorcases with open segmental or triangular pediments, shallow canted stone bays, and rubbed brick dressings with keystones to other windows. The overall effect
is of a suave neo-classicism well in advance of its time,
exemplified particularly in the long flank frontage to Egerton Terrace of Nos. 1 and 2 with its central pedimented
window at first-floor level.
Leases of all seven houses were granted by the Smith's
Charity trustees in 1894, that of No. 3 to the house's first
occupant, Sir Evan MacGregor, permanent secretary to the
Admiralty, and the remaining six to shareholders in The
Estates Improvement Company. (ref. 296) Nos. 3 and 7 were
occupied in 1894, the latter by another son-in-law of
Ritchie, Thomas Barclay Cockerton, a barrister, but either
the rate of completion or of occupancy of the other houses
was slower than that of the houses in Egerton Gardens.
Nos. 1 and 2 were used successively as the company's
office before attracting private residents in 1895 and 1896
respectively, and in the latter year Nos. 4, 5 and 6
were also inhabited for the first time. The occupants
were, however, invariably people in high stations. Besides
MacGregor and Cockerton, they included the Dowager
Lady Lawrence, probably the widow of the first Baron
Lawrence, at No. 5, Henry Arthur William Hervey, chief
clerk of the Foreign Office, at No. 6, (Sir) Henry
Fielding Dickens, Q.C., son of the novelist, at No. 2,
and a stockbroker at No. 4. (ref. 297)
Figure 34:
Comparative elevation of houses in Egerton Place
a. No. 3. Mervyn Macartney, architect, 1894 b. No. 9. Amos Faulkner, architect, for W. Willett, builder. 1895
The original agreement with Malet had, for an unknown
reason, been superseded by another in July 1893, and in
November 1894 Malet obtained a licence from the trustees
to allow William Willett of Sloane Gardens, Chelsea, to
take over the ground on which the southern half of Egerton Place was to be erected. (ref. 298) Willett's was an established building firm with its own architect, Amos Faulkner,
and by the end of 1894 it had begun the construction of
Nos. 8–13 (consec.) Egerton Place to Faulkner's designs (ref. 299) (Plate 60b, right side, fig. 34b). All six houses were
completed and occupied by 1897. (ref. 91)
Faulkner retained the general storey heights of Macartney's houses and he completed No. 8 as a pair to No. 7
with common pediments over the doorcases and above the
attic storey. There are differences, however, in the size of the window openings and the thickness of the glazing bars,
and Faulkner could nor resist the addition of a stone
balcony in front of the central window on the first floor.
The remaining houses broke from the original line of the
crescent and progressively departed from Macartney's
design by omitting the linking cornice and adding various
features which placed the houses firmly in the context of
the 1890's; balconies appeared of the type fashionable at
this time, with stone balustrades carried on heavy brackets,
and at No. 13 gables were given to both the front and side
elevations. (No. 13 has been disfigured by the addition of a
five-storey tower at the north-west corner to accommodate
a staircase, carried out with the Smith's Charity trustees'
consent as recently as 1960–1. (ref. 300) ) A. E. Street commented
in 1906 on the disparity between the two halves of Egerton
Place and thought that the southern half which had been
built by Willetts was ‘anything but an improvement’, a view
with which one may certainly concur even though Street
was writing in The Architectural Review, then under the
editorship of Macartney. (ref. 301)
Nos. 4–28 (even) Yeoman's Row
The west side of Yeoman's Row between Egerton Gardens
Mews and the present No. 28 was included in the
ground taken under Malet's agreement and was intended
to be used for stabling, one set of stables (which survive in
a converted state) being quickly erected at Nos. 6–10
(even). In 1896, however, the remaining frontage was
released by The Estates Improvement Company in a
subsidiary agreement to William Henry Collbran, who had
taken over from Malet as secretary of the company and was
by then its principal shareholder. (ref. 294) Collbran erected one
more stable and coach-house at No. 12 (ref. 302) (rebuilt in
1957–8 to the designs of M. Howard-Radley (ref. 303) ), but, even
though the short Egerton Gardens Mews provided the
only other stabling in the area, there seems to have been
little demand for such buildings at a time when the practice
of keeping one's own carriage in London was decreasing,
and Collbran decided to utilise the remainder of the
ground for studios.
In 1898 The Estates Improvement Company (then in
voluntary liquidation) surrendered its remaining interest in
the land, and the Smith's Charity trustees concluded a new
building agreement with Collbran. Recognising an already
existing state of affairs, this permitted the erection of
studios or residential buildings provided that they were no
higher than thirty-three feet (in effect three storeys) and
that any windows at the rear were glazed with opaque glass
unless they lit reception rooms, when clear glass was to be
allowed. These and other specifications limiting the extent
to which the windows could be opened were no doubt
framed with the susceptibilities of the occupants of Egerton
Place in mind. (ref. 304)
Collbran was granted leases of the main group of
studios, originally designated Nos. 1–8 Egerton Place
Studios but quickly renumbered 14–28 (even) Yeoman's
Row, in 1898–9, (ref. 305) but he promptly sub-let Nos. 14–22 to
Charles E. Brassington of Camberwell, builder, who
had erected the buildings. (ref. 306) No 22 (Plate 25d) was
designed by Alfred J. Beesley of Tufnell Park (ref. 307) in a
simple red-brick manner with bay windows, a roof light
and a pedimented brick-and-terracotta doorcase, but the
author of the designs for No. 20 and the simpler group
with large factory-style windows at Nos. 14–18 (Plate
25c) is not known.
Figure 35:
No. 18 Yeoman's Row. plans and sections of flat. Based
on original drawings by Wells Coates, architect, 1935
Nos. 24, 26 and 28 (Plate 25b, 25d) were sub-let by
Collbran to a trio of spinster artists, Ida Lovering, Emily
McCallum and Sarah Vaughan, who jointly employed
William Barber of No. 3 Brick Court, Temple, as architect:
Brassington was the builder. (ref. 308) Barber employed a
number of motifs in red brick and tile (to which weatherboarding
has been added in an extension to the top storey
of No. 26) and a variety of window openings in an
exuberant manner no doubt thought appropriate for a
residential studio. There is perhaps a hint, though, of the
more serious-minded studio architecture of Philip Webb
or E. W. Godwin at No. 24, but even this is more
apparent in design than execution.
No. 4 Yeoman's Row, at the corner of Egerton Gardens
Mews, which originally had a bicycle workshop on the
ground floor and studios above, was erected in 1900–2 for
Collbran by W. Mitchell and Son of Dulwich. (ref. 309)
In 1935 the architect Wells Coates, searching for a
suitable ‘pied a terre’ which he could adapt to embody his
ideas of ‘planning in section’, settled on No. 18 Yeoman's
Row. As he had to share the building with other tenants
the space available was limited and he created an ingenious
flat on the 2:1 principle out of the top-floor studio, which
measured some thirty-six by eighteen feet with a ceiling
height of twelve feet (fig. 35). He double-glazed the large
studio window and planted a ‘window garden’ between the
two skins of glass. The main living space had a hearthscene
‘a la japonais’ with matting and large cushions and
easily moveable furniture elsewhere. The principal manifestation
of Coates's ideas, however, was in the placing of
a double-bed and a single-bed ‘cabin’ above the bathroom
and kitchen respectively, with ladders for access. Part of
the upper-level storage space could also be used as a
projection room for films. A radio, which was uncased and
had its chassis exposed, and a gramophone occupied a
prominent place in an illuminated niche at the side of the
hearth-scene to complete a highly personal interior. Apart
from the war years, Coates lived here until 1955. (ref. 310)
Mortimer House
This large, detached mansion with spacious grounds at the
southern junction of Egerton Gardens with Brompton
Road (Plate 61, fig. 36) was built in 1886–8 for Edward
Howley Palmer, a merchant with Dent, Palmer and Company
of Gresham House, Old Broad Street, City, and a
director and former governor of the Bank of England. (ref. 91)
His father, John Horsley Palmer, had also been governor
of the Bank. (ref. 311) Palmer's builder was William Goodwin of
Hatton Garden, (ref. 312) but neither the identity of his architect
nor the reason for his choice of name for the new house is
known.
Since about 1881 Palmer had been living at Crescent
House, which stood on the site of Mortimer House, and in
1885 or 1886 he had entered into an agreement with the
Smith's Charity trustees to rebuild the mansion, paying a
rent of £100 for the first year and £240 per annum
thereafter. (ref. 313) Palmer had recently commissioned Richard
Norman Shaw to design a house for him at No. 62
Cadogan Square and Shaw had exhibited his designs for
that house at the Royal Academy in 1883, (ref. 314) but Palmer
had either built it speculatively or decided not to live in it.
The extent of his commitment to Mortimer House is also
uncertain. In the lease of the house from the trustees to
Palmer, dated 8 May 1889, he is described as of Mortimer
House, (ref. 315) but except for 1892, when he is given as the
occupant, the house is not entered in the directories, and
by that date he also had another London home an
ordinary late-eighteenth-century terraced house at No. 16
Lower Seymour Street (now 126 Wigmore Street), St.
Marylebone. (ref. 91) In 1896 he sold Mortimer House (ref. 316) and
continued to live in Lower Seymour Street where he died
in 1901 leaving effects of over £110,000. (ref. 317)
Largely secluded behind a high brick wall, Mortimer
House exudes an air of mystery and surprise amid the
surrounding terraces of South Kensington. Perhaps most
surprisingly of all, it is still in private occupation. Its style is
an amalgam of Tudor and Jacobean in red brickwork
diapered with blue, with stone mullioned-and-transomed
windows, a multiplicity of gables of various shapes, some of
them stepped, crested with statuary of griffins or bears
supporting shields, and clusters of tall, decorated brick
chimneystacks. Inside there is a predictable eclecticism of
style, ranging from Jacobean in the long hallway containing
an oak open-well staircase with twisted balusters and wide
handrail to Adamesque in the double drawing-room at the
front. The fittings include fine marble chimneypieces in a
late-eighteenth-century manner. A room on the first floor
may originally have been used as a chapel. Several changes
have been made to the decorative schemes since the house
was built, some of them quite recently, and a long
conservatory-cum-swimming-pool has been added to the
west side of the house, where the detached stables (now
converted into garages) with stepped gables and a turret
with a conical roof are also situated.
Figure 36:
Mortimer House, Egerton Gardens, ground plan as built in 1886–8 and elevation to street