CHAPTER X - Hereford Square Area: The Day Estate
The streets and houses described in this chapter (fig. 65)
were laid out and built, mostly between 1845 and 1885,
on land belonging to the Day family. Situated at the west
corner of Old Brompton Road and Gloucester Road, this
portion of the Day estate in Old Brompton was traditionally known as the ‘six acres’, though in actual area it was
closer to ten. The rest of the estate consisted of a three-acre
field on the south side of Old Brompton Road formerly
called Rosehall. This is now occupied by the northern end
of Drayton Gardens whose development is described in
volume XLI of the Survey of London.
Both parts of the Day estate were formerly copyhold
lands of the manor of Earl's Court. They had been held
in common since at least 1661, when they were in the
ownership of James Dyson, from whom Rosehall and the
‘six acres’ descended in the Dyson family until the early
years of the eighteenth century. (ref. 1)
The estate came into the possession of the Day family
through the marriage, in 1743, of Benjamin Day of
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, the son of a worsted
weaver in Norwich, to the heiress Ann Dodemead. Ann's
father, Walter Dodemead, had acquired the land in 1735,
by foreclosing on a mortgage, and when he died in 1744
it was inherited by his three daughters, each of whom
received a one-third share. But in 1753 Ann Day and her
sister Susanna Vincent surrendered their two-thirds interest to their sister, Elizabeth Brent, under whose will the
whole estate eventually passed, in 1772, to Benjamin and
Ann Day's second son, James Frapwell Day. He never
married and when he died in 1819 he left it to his nephew
James Day of Horsford near Norwich. (ref. 1) The subsequent
owners have all been the direct descendants of James Day,
two of whom still retain an interest in parts of the estate. (fn. a)
Villa Building in the Eighteenth Century
The first houses to be built on the estate were a group
of five villas erected near the Old Brompton Road over
a period of some twenty years starting in the mid 1760s
(fig. 64). The oldest was a largeish detached house, later
called Hereford Lodge, whose site is now covered by the
roadway of Brechin Place (between Nos. 19 and 20). The
evidence of the ratebooks suggests that it was built in the
mid 1760s, and that its first inhabitant, from c. 1766 until
1772, was Benjamin Day himself. (ref. 2) In the early leases it
is usually described as being ‘behind or at the bottom of
a walk or grove of chestnut trees from Hogmore Lane
[Gloucester Road]’. (ref. 3) The grounds, which extended to
more than five acres, comprised a large paddock to the
north of the house, where Hereford Square was laid out
in the 1840s, a walled kitchen garden to the west, and
pleasure gardens to the east and south. No illustration of
the house is known.
Apart from Benjamin Day the inhabitants of Hereford
Lodge included Gertrud Elisabeth Mara, the diva, 1797–8;
Lady Essex Ker, eldest daughter of the second Duke of
Roxburghe, 1809–19, and her sister Lady Mary Ker (died
1818); and the Rev. George Stokes, a former chaplain to
the British residents in Rouen and later minister at the
Thurloe Chapel in South Kensington, who used the stable
and coach-house for a schoolroom, 1849–58. (ref. 4) The Dowager Duchess of Argyll succeeded Stokes as ratepayer here
in 1858, for ‘the Choral Sunday School’. (ref. 2)
In 1869 Walter Woodbury, the inventor of the Woodbury type process of reproducing photographs, set up a
studio for his Photo-relief Printing Company in the
grounds of Hereford Lodge. Later numbered 9A Hereford
Square, the studio survived until 1876, the firm by then
being known as the Woodbury Permanent Photographic
Printing Company. (ref. 5)
The building of Hereford Lodge was soon followed by
the erection in about 1770 of another large detached house
further to the west on a site now covered by the roadway
of Rosary Gardens (between Nos. 2 and 11). Later known
as Brompton Villa, this stood in just over two acres of
ground. It had no frontage to Old Brompton Road, and
the entrance was in Love Lane, the long-established pathway connecting Old Brompton Road and Kensington
Road whose southern end is now represented by Dove
Mews. A nineteenth-century illustration of the house
(Plate 65d) shows it to have been a neat four-bay Georgian
brick box, three storeys high, flanked by lower wings, each
one bay wide, with a single-storey extension in front of
the main block. In 1820 the house contained nine bedrooms, two dressing-rooms, a ‘handsome’ drawing-room,
breakfast-room and dining-room, a ‘good’ kitchen, larders,
store room, wash-house and cellaring; and the outbuildings comprised a double coach-house, six-stall stable, cowhouse and piggeries. The premises were then said to be
‘peculiarly adapted for the residence of a Family who wish
for retirement and yet near town’. (ref. 6) By 1859 the house and
stables had become, in the opinion of the estate surveyor,
‘very old and dilapidated’, although the garden was still
‘nice and pleasant’. (ref. 7)
Figure 64:
Villas on the Day estate in c. 1835
The best-known occupant of Brompton Villa was the
poet Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, who lived here from 1817
to 1820, the house being let to her father, John Landon,
a partner in a firm of army agents in Pall Mall. (ref. 8) A later
inhabitant, from 1837 to 1859, was the tenth Baron
Cranstoun. (ref. 9)
Shortly after James Frapwell Day inherited the estate
in 1772, a pair of villas was erected in the grounds of Hereford Lodge close to the corner of Gloucester Road and
Old Brompton Road, which provides an early instance of
the semi-detached arrangement of two villas. As ‘Day's
2 new houses’ they were entered in the ratebook in 1774,
although not inhabited until the following year. (ref. 2) The
eastern house, later known as The Rosary, is shown in a
picturesque view of about 1845 (Plate 65b) which, however, omits altogether the adjoining house to the west. The
single-storey wing with Gothic windows on the east side
of the house was probably added in the 1840s for Samuel
Carter Hall, the author, editor and critic, and his wife
Anna Maria Hall (née Fielding), the novelist and miscellaneous writer, who lived here from 1839 to 1849. (ref. 10) The
Halls had their library in this wing, which was decorated
internally in the baronial style (Plate 65c). S. C. Hall may
perhaps have been his own architect here. He was the
author of The Baronial Halls and Picturesque Edifices of
England, and is reputed to have been the model for Mr.
Pecksniff. (ref. 11)
The adjoining house was inhabited from 1784 until 1788
by a Henry Holland, possibly the architect. (ref. 2)
The last of the five villas to be erected on the estate
in the eighteenth century was Clareville, which is
designated a ‘New House’ in the ratebooks of 1784. (ref. 2) This
too was built in the grounds of Hereford Lodge, squeezed
in between the kitchen garden, on the west, and the front
garden abutting on Old Brompton Road, to the east. A
drawing by T. H. Shepherd of 1852 shows a plain but
nicely proportioned house of two storeys and three bays
with what appears to be a stuccoed front (Plate 65a). The
Swedish soprano Jenny Lind stayed at Clareville during
her visits to London in 1848 and 1849. (ref. 12)
Figure 65:
Hereford Square area: the Day estate. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1976–7
All five villas were pulled down in the early 1880s, but
three of them are commemorated in local street names:
Hereford Square and Rosary Gardens, on the Day estate,
and Clareville Grove (and Street) on the nearby Lee estate.
The Building of Hereford Square
The nineteenth-century development of the Day estate
was begun in the 1840s by James Day, who inherited the
property from his uncle in 1819. One of the earliest
developments in this part of Old Brompton had been on
the Lee estate, a similar property to Day's on the opposite
side of Gloucester Road, which was laid out for building
in 1820. (ref. 13) But the slow rate of progress there was not
encouraging for other landowners in the vicinity and Day
waited until 1845 before agreeing to let any of his land
for building. He may, however, have had it in mind since
1835, when he purchased the enfranchisement of the
copyhold. (ref. 14)
In January 1845 Day concluded an agreement with two
speculators to let the whole of Rosehall for building; (ref. 15) and
six months later he made another agreement to let part
of the grounds of Hereford Lodge to a builder. (ref. 16) The area
in question was a piece of pasture of about four acres
known as the ‘paddock’ which had a frontage to Gloucester
Road of over 550 feet.
The builder who agreed to take this piece was Thomas
Holmes of Lower Belgrave Street. Still only in his early
twenties, Holmes was already a seasoned speculative
builder who had gained most of his experience in the
Brompton area, particularly on the Alexander estate,
where he built parts of Thurloe Square, Thurloe Place
and Thurloe Street. (ref. 17)
On the Day estate Holmes contracted to lay out and
build Hereford Square which he undertook to complete,
with all the houses ‘ready for occupation’, by Christmas
1849. Originally there were to have been forty-three
houses, for in addition to thirty-five in the square proper
Holmes agreed to build four semi-detached pairs in the
so-called ‘angle plots’ at the west end of the north and
south ranges. Under the terms of the agreement Holmes
was to make the roads and sewers and lay out the ornamental garden in Hereford Square. The latter was to be
enclosed with iron railings on dwarf brick walls, and to
have entrances on the north, south and west sides. The
agreement also allowed for the erection of up to nineteen
stables and coach-houses behind the west range of the
square. These were never built, but an access road was
laid out, and survives as the pathway leading out of
Wetherby Place behind the gardens on the west side of
the square. (ref. 16)
As soon as the houses were finished they were to be
leased by Day to Holmes or his nominees on ninety-nine-year terms, from Christmas 1844. The sum total of the
individual ground rents was to be £130 a year, equivalent
to over £32 per acre. (ref. 16) This was £50 a year more than
Day was getting for the undeveloped site in 1843. (ref. 18)
The architect of Hereford Square was John Blore, the
estate surveyor, whose authorship was formerly attested
by a notice on the wall of the now-demolished No. 1. (ref. 19)
(fn. b)
Blore's houses have fully stuccoed fronts—the ‘best description of Roman Portland or other approved cement’
being specified—richly composed in what the architect
himself described as the ‘Italian Style of Architecture’
(Plate 66, fig. 66). (ref. 20)
The ‘square’ comprises three ranges of houses: a long
north-south range of seventeen houses on the west, and
two shorter east-west ranges each of nine houses to north
and south. Only the north range has survived intact (Plate
66a). Most of the houses have three full storeys, a basement
and garrets, but in the centre of the ranges are one or more
houses with a full attic storey. The roofs and dormer
windows of the three-storey houses were originally hidden
behind balustrading, which nowhere survives. The houses
are two windows wide except for the corner houses which
have three windows at the front.
In the west range the five central houses (Nos. 16–20)
project slightly to form a quasi-palatial frontispiece decorated with an applied order of giant Corinthian pilasters
and engaged columns (Plate 66b). In the northern range
(and originally also in the southern) the central house
(No. 31) rises to a full attic finished with a pediment. This
house has a Venetian window at first-floor level flanked
by pairs of giant Corinthian pilasters. Throughout the
ranges the first-floor windows open on to balconies which
have cement parapets pierced with a pattern of intersecting
circles. The entrances have arched porches with lesser
round-headed openings at the sides. Except at the corners,
the plans follow the conventional arrangement for two-bay
houses with the entrance hall and staircase on one side
(fig. 66).
The specifications required that the houses be built of
good hard well-burnt stock bricks bonded with ‘stout iron
hoops’, and roofed with slates. All the timber-work, except
where English oak was used, was to be of Baltic fir or red
pine. For supervising the construction Blore was to be paid
a fee of £3 per house by the builder. (ref. 16)
Holmes started building in Hereford Square in August
1845 and by the end of the year he had six houses (Nos. 1–3
and 33–35) under construction. Another fifteen houses
(Nos. 4–9, 21–26 and 30–32) were started during 1846 and
a further three (Nos. 10–12) in March 1847. (ref. 21) But in June
1847 Holmes was declared bankrupt and all building work
in the square came to a halt. Except for Nos. 10–12, the
houses already under construction were sufficiently well
advanced for the leases to have been granted, though none
was yet occupied. Some had been leased to Holmes himself
(Nos. 1, 9, 30 and 31), but most of the leases were, at his
request, granted to his financial backers, principally
George Pinckney Whitfield. (ref. 22)
Holmes's bankruptcy was doubtless precipitated by a
sharp financial crisis in the spring of 1847 which disrupted
building operations and brought many builders to bankruptcy. (fn. c) But he was already under pressure from his
creditors as a result of a building accident in Thurloe
Street which he himself described as ‘one of the principal
causes of his misfortunes’. This was in November 1846,
when some of his houses collapsed while under construction, killing a workman. Although the inquest cleared
Holmes of any blame some of his creditors ‘pressed upon
him immediately after’, forcing Holmes ‘to seek refuge in
the Gazette’. (ref. 23)
Far and away the biggest of his creditors was George
Pinckney Whitfield, who had lent £5,000 for the development of Hereford Square, of which nearly £4,000 was still
owing. Whitfield was a Yorkshireman in his early sixties,
who in the census of 1841 described himself as an ‘independent’, and ten years later as ‘proprietor of houses’. He
had been Holmes's principal financial backer from the outset of the latter's career in the early 1840s, and had previously lent money to Holmes's builder father. On the
Alexander estate he provided much of the finance for the
development of Thurloe Square (where from 1847 to 1854
he occupied No. 27), as well as for Holmes's houses in
Thurloe Place and Thurloe Street. (ref. 24) When, in the wake
of Holmes's bankruptcy, Whitfield was faced with the
prospect of being unable to recover any more of his loan
he decided to foreclose, take over the building agreement
and complete the development himself. But by then the
agreement was in the hands of assignees appointed to
administer Holmes's affairs, and it was not until July 1848,
when they released it to Whitfield, that he was able to
proceed.
His first priority was to complete the central garden,
which under the terms of the agreement should have
already been finished. In July 1848 he placed contracts
for laying out and planting the garden and for erecting
the iron railings around it, and the work was completed
by the end of the year, at a cost of between £1,200 and
£1,300. (ref. 25)
Meanwhile Whitfield had instructed his solicitors to try
and secure some relaxation in the terms of the agreement
since the development was by now well behind schedule.
In the course of these discussions changes to the layout
were considered, among them a suggestion from Day himself that an opening should be left in the middle of the
western range of the square ‘so that a street might thereafter be formed’. Whitfield was asked by Day's solicitors
to consider ‘the advantage the property would derive’ from
the inclusion of a church in the development. ‘It has struck
us’, they wrote, ‘that a good scite might be obtained about
the Midway point between the north east and south east
ends of the square adjoining the Road’. He replied that
he thought it would be ‘hardly practicable’ to build a
church in the square, though he recognised the value of
having one in the immediate vicinity and promised ‘to join
in furthering such a desirable object’. (ref. 25) But in the end the
only significant change to come out of these discussions
was the abandonment of the eight semi-detached houses
in the two ‘angle plots’. (ref. 26)
Though protracted, the negotiations appeared to be
progressing smoothly and Whitfield was surprised when
in October 1848 Day served a Declaration in Ejectment
on him for breach of contract, on the grounds that Whitfield had failed to complete the square garden within the
stipulated time. Whitfield responded by filing a bill in
Chancery in which he argued that it had been informally
agreed that Day would not press this point, and on this
understanding he had gone ahead with the contracts for
the square garden which, moreover, was being laid out
under the supervision of Day's own surveyor. (ref. 25) All seemed
set for a legal battle when the two principals, ‘for the purpose of avoiding all future litigation’, decided to settle the
matter out of court. Whitfield surrendered Holmes's original building agreement, and in May 1849 he and Day
signed a new one by which Whitfield undertook to finish
the development of Hereford Square by Christmas 1851. (ref. 26)
Fourteen of the thirty-five houses in the square still
remained to be built (eleven in the western range) and
these were completed between 1849 and 1851. Thomas
Holmes, back in business after his bankruptcy, but without
responsibility for the development, was recalled to complete the three houses (Nos. 10–12) he had abandoned in
1847, and went on to build three more (Nos. 27–29) in
1850. (ref. 27) The other eight houses (Nos. 13–20) were built by
William Wells of Vauxhall in 1850–1. (ref. 28) All the leases were
granted to Whitfield, who in 1854 left his house in Thurloe
Square and took up residence at No. 27 Hereford Square,
where in March 1857 he died. (ref. 29) In his will he bequeathed
his freehold and leasehold property to two trustees to be
sold at public auction or by private contract. (ref. 30)
A few houses on the north and south sides of the square
were inhabited by the summer of 1847. (ref. 2) These included
the now-demolished No. 3 where the ratepayer was
Thomas Holmes, who had probably been using the house
as a site office while the square was in building. After his
bankruptcy Holmes removed to No. 33, where he continued as ratepayer until 1851. Most of the houses in the
square were inhabited within a year or two of being leased. (ref. 2)
They were intended to be occupied only as private
residences and were not to be used for any trade, sale,
exhibition, manufactory, asylum, school (except a young
ladies' school) or any business likely to cause a nuisance.
As well as having their own back gardens, the occupants
of the square enjoyed a right of access to the central garden.
This was maintained out of an additional annual rent
charge of £3 per house, part of which was also used to
pay for lighting the square. (ref. 31)
The cost of buying one of the new houses in Hereford
Square is not generally known, but in 1853 Whitfield sold
the now-demolished No. 26 to the first occupant for
£900. (ref. 32) This was probably on the high side, for No. 26
was one of the bigger corner houses with a uniquely large
L-shaped back garden which extended behind some of the
other gardens. The new owner added a conservatory, and
in 1865 No. 26 changed hands for £1,500. (ref. 33) In the previous year the corresponding house at the south end of
the range, No. 10, had been sold for £1,100. (ref. 34)
Despite the presence in the 1851 census of a baronet
at No. 12, the early inhabitants of Hereford Square were
mostly drawn from the professional middle classes. At the
time of the census twenty-two of the houses were in more
or less permanent occupation, sixteen by their original
inhabitants. Another three houses still in building or not
yet sold were temporarily occupied by workmen. (fn. d) The
callings best represented among the householders were the
law, medicine and commerce. There was also the usual
sprinkling of annuitants (mostly female) and ‘clerks’. At
No. 4 the householder was an artist, F. W. Hulme, and
at No. 9 an engineer, John W. Corpe, who although aged
only 44 was described as ‘retired’. Every household in 1851
had either one or two servants, except at No. 35 (a barrister's), where there were three. (ref. 35)
Twenty years later the census of 1871 shows that half
the householders in the square were then either retired
or were living off private incomes (including the income
from property and annuities). (ref. 36) Two of the houses, Nos. 9
and 33, were occupied as high-class preparatory boarding
schools for boys.
The back garden of No. 9 is now occupied by a single-storey building erected some time between about 1872 and
1894. It was probably built either as a schoolroom, or as
a surgery for the ‘specialist in American dentistry’ who
took over No. 9 in 1890. (ref. 37) Another house to have its back
garden similarly built over is No. 27, where in 1883 the
occupant was allowed to erect a large room connected by
a corridor to the house. (ref. 38)
Figure 66:
Hereford Square, plans and elevations. John Blore, architect, 1845–51
Some residents of Hereford Square: No. 4. Frederick
W. Hulme, landscape painter and art teacher, 1851–63;
No. 6. Charles Alban Buckler, architect and Surrey
Herald Extraordinary, 1865–1905; No. 16. Rev. William
H. Brookfield, literary divine, 1874; No. 20. Robert Collinson, genre-painter, and his wife, Eliza Collinson,
flower-painter, 1857–93; No. 22. George Borrow, author,
1860–72. The L.C.C. Blue Plaque commemorating Borrow's residence was put up in 1911; No. 26. Frances
Power Cobbe, philanthropist and religious writer, lived at
No. 26 with her friend Mary Charlotte Lloyd, 1864–84;
Fanny Kemble, actress, 1884–90; No. 27. Acton Smee
Ayrton, Liberal M.P. and First Commissioner of Works,
1874–6; No. 35. John Arrowsmith, geographer and cartographer, 1861–73.
Brechin Place, Rosary Gardens and
Wetherby Place
After the completion of Hereford Square in 1854 and of
the northern end of Drayton Gardens in 1863 the only
part of the Day estate that remained to be developed was
the L-shaped area to the south and west of Hereford
Square still occupied by the five eighteenth-century villas.
Although some development here may have been in prospect in 1859 (ref. 39) this did not go forward, and the old houses
were still standing when James Day died in 1875. By his
will the estate was placed in the hands of trustees who
were to administer the property until all the children of
his son, Gerard, should come of age. (This happened in
1899.) The whole estate was then to pass to James Day's
eldest grandson, Herbert Allen Day (1860–1940). (ref. 40)
Development of the L-shaped area just referred to was
apparently being contemplated by the trustees as early as
1876, (ref. 41) but they did not go ahead until 1881, the work
being completed in 1885. The preliminary stages of the
development were undertaken by William H. Roberts of
Cromwell Road, a builder already active on the adjoining
Alexander estate, who in November 1881 secured the
necessary approval of the Metropolitan Board of Works
for his proposed layout of three new roads (now Brechin
Place, Rosary Gardens and Wetherby Place). (ref. 42) Once having obtained this consent Roberts ceased to play an active
role and the ground was parcelled out among three experienced builders of good standing. The firm of Taylor and
Cumming took the north side of Wetherby Place, and the
short return frontage at Nos. 34–40 (even) Ashburn Place;
William Willett was responsible for Rosary Gardens; and
George E. Mineard built Brechin Place. (fn. e)
Both Mineard and Willett began building houses in
their respective streets in May 1882, Brechin Place being
completed in 1884 and Rosary Gardens in 1885. (fn. f) Taylor
and Cumming's houses in Ashburn Place and Wetherby
Place were erected between 1883 and 1885. (ref. 45)
The new houses numbered 88, of which 40 were built
by Willett, 31 by Mineard, and 15 by Taylor and Cumming; and two were erected under contract by other
builders (see below). The estate trustees leased them to
the builders or their nominees for ninety-nine years from
Midsummer 1881. When completed the development,
which also included two blocks of flats mentioned below,
yielded £1,800 a year in ground rents. (ref. 46)
Architecturally the houses fall within a run-of-the-mill
range of up-to-date red-brick styles (Plate 67). The estate
surveyor when they were begun was Charles Moreing, an
elderly man whose career stretched back to the 1830s and
who (unlike his predecessor) figures in the estate records
doing only routine work. He was active until his death in
1885 (ref. 47) but is perhaps an unlikely candidate as designer
of the houses. These differ, moreover, from street to street,
corresponding with the identity of the builder, which
rather suggests it was the builders, not the estate surveyor,
who brought architects on to the scene. Willett certainly
is known to have employed architects, but of these J. T.
Smith would seem to be precluded from Rosary Gardens
on stylistic grounds, while his successor, Harry Measures,
mentions no work for Willett here in a curriculum vitae,
although he does not omit other work for Willett in this
neighbourhood. (ref. 48) The locally-active architect William H.
Collbran similarly produced a list of his work that makes
no mention of any designs for houses in Rosary Gardens. (ref. 49)
Otherwise he would seem the likely architect there: he had
had a connexion with Willett (over an abortive scheme in
Hereford Square) in 1881, succeeded Moreing as estate
surveyor, and made additions to the houses in Rosary
Gardens in 1892 in their existing style. (ref. 50)
Only in Brechin Place (and at Nos. 2 and 4 Rosary
Gardens) do the houses have private gardens. In Ashburn
Place and Wetherby Place, Taylor and Cumming's houses
are provided with a communal garden at the rear, and the
occupants of Willett's houses at Nos. 25–43 Rosary
Gardens had the use of a similar garden laid out by Willett
on the adjoining Gunter estate. (ref. 51) The development did
not in the end include any stabling, although in 1882 Willett had planned to erect a small mews in the south-west
corner of Hereford Square, the intended site being subsequently used for a communal garden. (ref. 52)
The builders disposed of their houses either by selling
them, on long leases, or by letting them for short terms
(7, 14 or 21 years) at high rents, this latter method being
perhaps more generally preferred. Known rents ranged
from £145 a year for No. 36 Rosary Gardens, to £225 a
year for some of the houses in Brechin Place. To buy,
prices ranged from £2,300 for No. 30 Brechin Place to
£3,600 for No. 13, the average price for a house on this
development being about £2,700. (ref. 53)
An impression of the character of these houses is provided by sale particulars of No. 17 Brechin Place in 1889. (ref. 54)
Built by Mineard in 1883, this is a five-storey house over
a basement, with its own small private garden backing on
to Old Brompton Road. In 1889 it was described as a
‘Residence of pleasing elevation … fitted with all modern
improvements and conveniences’. The sanitary arrangements, a particular interest of Mineard's (see page 318),
were singled out as having received ‘special attention’.
Both hot and cold water were laid on from the basement
to the top of the house.
On the top floor there were two servants' bedrooms,
one of them fitted with a lavatory and housemaid's sink,
and a full-sized top-lit billiard-room. Below, on the third
floor, were four bedrooms and another two on the second
floor, where the ‘large’ back bedroom had an adjoining
dressing-room. Also on the second floor was a bathroom,
fitted with bath and lavatory, and a water closet. The first
floor was occupied by an L-shaped double drawing-room,
with bay windows at both front and back, and a French
casement opening on to a balcony at the front. The walls
here were finished with a coved cornice and ‘frieze rail’,
and the entire floor laid with ‘Parqueterie’. On the ground
floor there was an inner and an outer hall, both laid with
tessellated flooring, a lobby fitted with a lavatory and a
water closet, a ‘capital library’ at the front of the house,
and a ‘noble dining-room’ at the back with a panelled ceiling and a ‘Japanese embossed dado’. ‘Lincrusta Walton’,
by contrast, was used for the dado in the library, on the
staircase up to second-floor level, and in the billiard-room.
In the basement there was a kitchen with a range and dressers, a larder and scullery, a housekeeper's room, a butler's
pantry, a large box-room, wine and coal cellars, and a
servants' water closet.
A group of photographs taken in 1890 illustrates the
interior of an unidentified house in Rosary Gardens. (ref. 55) In
the dining-room, which is dominated by a heavy carved
wooden chimneypiece and overmantel, the upper part of
the walls is hung with a Morris-like paper having an overall
pattern of naturalistic leaves. This contrasts with the
geometrically patterned dado and ceiling. In the drawing-room the decorations are overpowered by the heavy Victorian furnishings (Plate 68b). The walls are papered from
skirting to cornice, but the pattern is subdued, suggesting
damask or watered silk. The ceiling is quite plain and the
main decorative feature is the cornice, which has pretty
neo-Adam urns and swags. In the one bedroom shown
the walls are hung from skirting to simple cornice with
a very attractive paper closely patterned with butterflies
(Plate 68a).
At No. 31 Rosary Gardens (where from 1886 to 1888
the occupant had been Beerbohm Tree) decorative work
of a doubtless rather different character was carried out
in 1890 to the designs of Mackmurdo and Horne, although,
as it cost only £220, it was probably not extensive. The
client was Charles Robertson, a stock-jobber and benefactor of the Servite Church in Fulham Road. (ref. 56)
The two houses built under contract are both at the
north end of Rosary Gardens, where Willett sold the corner sites to individuals who wished to erect houses for their
own occupation employing architects and builders of their
choice. They were both originally numbered in Rosary
Gardens but have been renumbered in Wetherby Place.
At the west corner (No. 7 Wetherby Place) the building
owner was Captain William de Wiveleslie Abney of the
Royal Engineers, who gave £924 10s. for the site. (ref. 57)
Designed by W. H. Collbran, No. 7 was erected in 1882–3
by H. Toten and Sons of Richmond Road, Kensington,
builders; their tender price was £2,825. (ref. 58) In 1883, when
Abney moved in, his taste in ‘aesthetic’ window blinds
was gently mocked by the building owners at the opposite
corner. (ref. 59)
There, at No. 5 Wetherby Place, the site had been
acquired, for £756, by Richmond Ritchie, an official in
the India Office, and his wife Anne, Thackeray's eldest
daughter. (ref. 60) The Ritchies wanted a house planned to their
own specifications, and although they evidently employed
an architect his identity remains unknown. One of their
special requirements was the provision of a speaking tube
from the drawing-room to the nursery. (ref. 61) The house was
erected in 1883–4 by Stimpson and Company of Brompton
Road. (ref. 62) Built of red brick, with gables on the west and
north sides and a bay window at the north-east corner,
it is in a plain, even severe, architectural style which
eschews all ‘aesthetic’ ornament (Plate 67a). The Ritchies
did, however, allow themselves a double monogram of
their own initials (RR and AT) on the porch. They moved
into their ‘beautiful new house’ in August 1884. But the
upkeep was greater than they could afford and in March
1886 they left to live with Richmond's mother in
Wimbledon, having let No. 5 at £200 a year. (ref. 63)
Although large single-family houses predominated, the
development of the estate in the 1880s also included two
blocks of residential flats, for which there was a growing
demand. The earlier of the two is Roland Mansions at the
southern end of Rosary Gardens (Plate 69c). Built in 1882–3, it includes three shops at Nos. 142–146 (even) Old
Brompton Road. The developers, who bought the site
from Willett for £1,806, were two local shopkeepers, William Glover, a dairyman, and Robert King, a wine merchant. Their architect was W. H. Collbran, and the
contractors were Perry and Company of Bow, whose
several tenders amounted to £15,187. (ref. 64) The developers
were granted separate leases of the block, Glover taking
the western third, including No. 146 Old Brompton Road,
and King the rest. (ref. 65) Thus Glover's initials, with the date
1883, appear on the return front in Dove Mews, while
King's initials, with the same date, are on the return front
in Rosary Gardens.
A second block of flats called Cranley Mansions (and
numbered 160 Gloucester Road) was erected in 1883–4
at the eastern end of Brechin Place (Plate 69d). Collbran
was again the architect, but here he was also the developer
and lessee. (ref. 66)
By the time of the 1914–18 war the demand for large
single-family houses of the type built in southern Kensington in the 1880s had greatly weakened and many estate
owners adjusted to this change by allowing their houses
to be converted into flats. On the Day estate this tendency
was resisted, and in 1919 a successful action for breach
of covenant was brought against a tenant who had converted a house into three maisonettes. (ref. 67) By 1929, however,
if not before, the estate had accepted the situation and was
licensing conversions. (ref. 68)
Wetherby Studios
These two Victorian studios at the back of Nos. 20–22
Hereford Square face the pathway leading out of
Wetherby Place (Plate 69b). The earlier, now No. 2
Wetherby Studios, was built in 1867 for the painter Robert
Collinson in the back garden of his house at No. 20 Hereford Square. It is a two-storey brick building, stuccoed
on the west side, with a slated mansard roof. Collinson's
studio was on the first floor, which was originally lit by
a large, centrally positioned, north-facing window-cum-skylight (removed in 1946–7). The approved drawings for
the studio in 1867 also show an unexecuted scheme for
an adjoining single-storey top-lit picture-gallery and
reception-room. (ref. 69) Later occupants of No. 2 (or Wetherby
Cottage, as it was sometimes called) have included Baron
Jean Cassell, and the portrait and figure painters Beatrice
Malcolm and William H. Robinson.
Figure 67:
Elevations and plan of a proposed studio in Wetherby Place. E. L. Lutyens, architect, 1891. Unexecuted
No. 1 Wetherby Studios was erected, probably in the
1870s, for the occupant of the now-demolished No. 26
Hereford Square, Mary Charlotte Lloyd, an amateur
sculptor and Welsh landowner. It is a single-storey brick
building, top-lit in factory style. The site was part of Miss
Lloyd's back garden, which then extended behind the
gardens of Nos. 21–25 Hereford Square. (ref. 70) Also known as
Hereford Square Studios, No. 1 was later occupied by the
sculptors William H. Tyler, Charles J. Pibworth and
Septimus A. Bennett, and by the portrait painters Thomas
M. Ronaldson and Reginald H. Campbell. Since 1945 it
has been modernized and extended to make ‘a good studio
dwelling’. (ref. 71)
In 1892 the lease of No. 26 Hereford Square was bought
by a house agent in Gloucester Road, Charles Saunders,
who obtained a licence from the estate trustees to erect
a large studio of superior character on the back part of
the garden, which, had it gone ahead, would have involved
the demolition of the existing No. 1 Wetherby Studios.
Probably intended as a speculation, it appears to have been
designed by the young Edwin Lutyens, who at the time
was still living in his father's house in nearby Onslow
Square, and would have been the earliest example in
London of Lutyens's work. Two versions of the scheme
were approved, the final choice being left to Saunders. One
was for a building nearly eighty feet in length, and the
other a reduced version just over fifty feet long (fig. 67).
In both, however, the elevation of the north-facing
entrance front is the same, and is all but identical with
Lutyens's surviving sketch for a studio in Wetherby Place
dated 27 February 1891 (Plate 69a). (ref. 72)
A third studio, ‘of a somewhat temporary character’,
erected on the site of the present No. 1 Wetherby Place,
probably in the early 1920s, was destroyed by bombing
in 1940. Known as No. 1A Wetherby Studios it had been
occupied in the early 1930s by a portrait painter, Mrs.
Henrietta Thorburn. (ref. 73)
The Day Estate since 1945
As a result of enemy action during the second World War
eight houses in Hereford Square and two in Brechin Place
were either completely destroyed by bombing or damaged
beyond repair. (ref. 74) At the less severely damaged Nos. 22 and
23 Hereford Square the reinstatement of the building in
1949 preserved the original façades (shorn of their crowning balustrade), behind which the houses were reconstructed as four flats and two maisonettes, the two biggest flats,
on the first and second floors, being carried horizontally
across both houses. They were designed by Arcon, with
Marshall Andrews and Company as the principal
contractors. (ref. 75)
Replacement of the demolished houses began in 1953–4
with the rebuilding of Nos. 1–5 Hereford Square and
Nos. 2 and 4 Brechin Place. These very plain predominantly brick houses were designed by Alexander
Flinder. (ref. 76) At Nos. 24–26 Hereford Square a proposal in
1954 to erect three houses on the site, one of them in
Wetherby Place, was turned down by the planning
authorities as ‘detrimental to the appearance of the square
as a whole’. Another scheme by the same architects,
Chesterton and Sons, for three neo-Georgian-style houses
facing the square and a ‘studio dwelling’ in Wetherby
Place was, however, approved but did not go ahead. In
1956 it was superseded by a proposal from Planning and
Development of Knightsbridge for a block of flats and
maisonettes on the site of Nos. 24–26 and a little flat-roofed house behind in Wetherby Place (the present
No. 1). Designed by Colin Wilson and Arthur Baker, these
were in an uncompromisingly modern style, the architects'
only concession to the original buildings in the square
being to line up the top of their block with the main cornice
of Blore's houses. Official approval for the scheme was,
nevertheless, quickly forthcoming and building was completed in 1958. (ref. 77)
The main block (Plate 66c) has external walls of deep-buff flint facing bricks with eaves and exposed beams of
wire-brushed granite aggregate. (ref. 78)
Wilson and Baker's work here was particularly admired
by Ian Nairn, who in 1966 wrote that it was worth a special
visit ‘to see how a modern building can fit into one corner
of a stucco Kensington square without forced compromise
or forced individuality either, just by being itself’. (ref. 79) But
an earlier comment of his that ‘four flats and two maisonettes [are] indicated with such ease in the elevations that
you wonder why it can't be done every time’ misapprehends the distribution between flats and maisonettes,
which is, moreover, actually contradicted by the elevations. (ref. 80) There are in fact four maisonettes and only two
flats, the latter being on the top floor.
In 1961–2 an additional house was built on land previously used for a tennis court, behind Nos. 10–15 Hereford Square. A proposal to develop this site was made in
1955, when Chesterton and Sons, on behalf of the estate's
owner, J. A. Day, sought permission to build two studios
here. But these plans, though acceptable in principle to
the local authority, did not go forward, and in 1957 the
L.C.C. approved a scheme by the architect J. J. de Segrais
for a single-family dwelling-house here, which in a slightly
modified form was carried out in 1961–2. Known as White
Lodge or No. 9A Hereford Square, it is a single-storey
house, neo-Georgian in style with white-painted rendered
walls and a shallow pitched slate roof. (ref. 71) The house and
its garage were extended in 1983–4.
In recent years there has been a considerable erosion
of the Day family's freehold interest in the estate. This
has been due in part to the operation of the Leasehold
Reform Act (1967) under which some residents, particularly in Hereford Square, have been able to acquire the
freeholds of their houses. At the time of writing (1985)
only ten houses in the square remain in the possession of
the Day family. (ref. 81) Other parts of the estate not affected
by this Act have also been sold, most notably in 1972, when
twenty-eight properties in Brechin Place, Rosary Gardens
and Wetherby Place, and the communal garden at the back
of Wetherby Place, were sold on the orders of Mr. Simon
Day. (ref. 82)