Later Rebuildings
The first large block of flats to be erected on the Smith's
Charity estate was Sussex Mansions, built in 1896–1900 to
replace Sussex Terrace on the south side of Old Brompton
Road. Constructed in three sections, the outer ones of five
storeys and the centre of six, with shops on the ground
floor, Sussex Mansions is in a minimal ‘Queen Anne’ style
characteristic of the 1890's, with red-brick facades,
decorative iron balconies and three small Dutch gables
over the centre bays. The developer was William Henry
Collbran, architect, who was at the same time building
studios in Yeoman's Row (see above), and who may have
provided the designs here. (ref. 318) Under a building agreement
with the Smith's Charity trustees dated 14 December 1895
he paid an ultimate ground rent of £700 per annum; James
Carmichael of Wandsworth was the contractor. (ref. 319)
In 1899 Collbran let part of the ground behind the flats to
the National Telephone Company for a telephone exchange, which was built by William King and Son of
Vauxhall Bridge Road. To the south of the exchange a
‘Motor Car Warehouse’ was erected in 1901 for the Locomobile Company of America. (ref. 320)
The buildings erected in and near Pelham Street as a
result of the construction of the various railways which now
form part of the London Underground system have been
described on page 117. The present London Transport
offices at Nos. 63–81 (odd) Pelham Street were originally
built as a sub-station and workshops, with offices and a
board room on the street frontage, for the Kensington and
Knightsbridge Electric Lighting Company. The original
design, of 1924–5 by C. Stanley Peach, was for a two-storey building in stone, and this was duly erected on land
belonging partly to the Metropolitan District Railway and
partly to the Smith's Charity estate. The main feature of
Peach's design is a double-storey portico in antis with large
square columns capped by palm-leaf capitals drawing their
inspiration no doubt from Basevi's work nearby in Pelham
Crescent. Two further red-brick storeys were added to the
building in the 1950's by the successors to Peach's practice,
Stanley Peach and Partners, and in 1975 the building was
taken over by London Transport. (ref. 321)
Shortly after the completion of the original building the
Kensington and Knightsbridge Electric Lighting Company
found that it needed more land for its works, and in
December 1930 it entered into a building agreement with
the Smith's Charity trustees for the redevelopment of a
large site on the north corner of Pelham Street and Fulham
(now Brompton) Road. Peach drew up a scheme for the
extension of the engineer's department on the ground floor
with shops on the street frontages and the erection of flats,
partly intended for the company's employees, above. In May
1933 he commented that ‘The flats are intended to be fitted
throughout with the most modern development of electricity. My clients hope to demonstrate on a large scale in these
flats, that the use of electricity for labour-saving appliances,
heating and lighting, is a practical and economical commercial proposition, even for small houses, and the size and
accommodation of the flats has been carefully considered
with this end in view.’ (ref. 322)
In July 1933 the building agreement was assigned to a
subsidiary company, Kenbridge Estates Limited, and the
flats, named Crompton Court, presumably after R. E. B.
Crompton, who was a pioneer in the development of the
electrical supply industry, were virtually completed by April
1935. The builders were W. Moss and Sons Limited. (ref. 323)
Crompton Court is a six-storey block of flats (with additional penthouses on top) in red brick and cement. A wide
opening at ground-floor level in Brompton Road allows
access to the works behind, and the fenestration is given a
horizontal emphasis by the unusual use of outside shutters.
A short distance to the north of Crompton Court
another six-storey block of flats named St. George's Court
was erected at the same time in a neo-Georgian style in
red brick and stone with shops and showrooms on the
ground floor. Together with a service station and garage
called St. George's Garage, the building replaced the
remaining houses of Onslow Terrace. The architects were
Robert Angell and Curtis and the contractors were Sir
Lindsay Parkinson and Company Limited. (ref. 324)
At the west end of Pelham Street, where the junction
with the northward extension of Onslow Square forms an
acute angle, seven houses which had been built by (Sir)
Charles James Freake in the late 1840's were demolished
for the erection of Malvern Court in 1930–1. Designed by
H. F. Murrell and R. M. Pigott, Malvern Court has seven
main storeys and an additional floor within the roof and is
in a neo-Georgian style with multi-coloured red bricks,
stone dressings including two canted stone bays on the
main frontage to Onslow Square, and a tiled roof. The
contractors were J. Knox and Dyke. (ref. 325)
Opposite to Malvern Court the demolition of Onslow
Crescent for redevelopment in 1935 provoked an exchange
of letters in The Times. Arthur Dasent, the author of several
books on the history of London, who lived nearby in
Cromwell Place, was particularly concerned at the loss of
the garden enclosure in front of the houses in Onslow
Crescent, remarking that ‘not only was this unobtrusive
Victorian crescent doomed to be blotted out but that its
entire garden was marked out for destruction. And for what
purpose, it may be asked, has this act been set in motion? It
is to erect a huge cinema with rows of shops and towering
flats, which, so far as I can gather, are not desired by anyone
living in the immediate neighbourhood. (ref. 326)
The cinema failed to materialize, and Melton Court, an
eight-storey block of flats with ground-floor shops, was
erected in 1936–8 under a building agreement of 23 July
1936. (ref. 327) The agreement was made with Edmund
Howard of St. James's Street, ‘architect’, who was
described as a man of'substantial means’, but the building,
which is faced with brown bricks and cream-coloured
stone or faience, was designed by Trehearne and Norman,
Preston and Company. The contractors were Harry Neal
Limited. (ref. 328) Most of the former garden enclosure was
used by Kensington Borough Council to create the
complex road junction between Old Brompton Road,
Onslow Square and Pelham Street.
The building of Melton Court was intended to be
followed by the further redevelopment of parts of Onslow
Square and Gardens. The outbreak of the war of 1939–45
and the Smith's Charity trustees’ subsequent change of
policy in favour of the rehabilitation and conversion of the
houses built by Freake has been described above (sec page
112). In pursuit of this policy the unexpired leases of 154
houses and mews dwellings were acquired in 1949 from
the Freake family for £110,000, a move thought advisable
by the trustees as ‘it would put us in closer touch with the
occupiers at a time when the character of the Estate is
changing and needs close attention if the property is not to
deteriorate too badly’. (ref. 329)
Elsewhere on the estate, the present office of Cluttons,
the estate surveyors, at No. 48 Pelham Street and the flats
above numbered 42–46 (even) Pelham Street were built
in place of numbers 44 and 46 Fulham Road (formerly
Nos. 7 and 8 Onslow Place), which were destroyed during
the war. The small neo-Georgian houses at Nos. 9–11
(consec.) Crescent Place also replaced war-damaged
buildings in 1956. (ref. 330) In Yeoman's Row the houses which
had been built in the 1840's on the site of Novosielski's
Brompton Grange were in turn replaced in c. 1953 by a
small three-storey red-brick block of flats numbered
38–62 (even). (ref. 331)
(fn. a) These modest and restrained rebuildings of the post-war period were all designed in the
architect's department of Cluttons, headed by John V.
Hamilton.
The policy of restoration and rehabilitation of the
original nineteenth-century building fabric, coupled with
piecemeal small-scale rebuilding instead of comprehensive
redevelopment under building leases, bore fruit in the
1960's and 1970's as the rise in the income from rents
outstripped inflation. In 1964 the total rental income
amounted to £290,000; by 1977 this had been increased
to £1,464,000, and when a further £440,000 received from
interest on investments is added to this, the total income
from the Kensington and Chelsea estate was little short of
£2,000,000. (ref. 5)