Pitt Estate, Kensington

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a large country house with spacious grounds, bearing the name ‘Campden House’ stood in this area. Sir Walter Cope had lived in it. About 1609 Sir Baptist Hicks bought the house and the estate. In 1628 he was made Viscount Campden (a name he took from a manor he owned in Gloucestershire.) So the house didn’t have that name previously. The family supported King Charles I in the Civil War, and the house and grounds were confiscated by Cromwell but restored to the third Viscount in 1647 in return for a payment of £9000.

Gainsborough to D’Oyley – split from the ‘Phillimore Estate’ land
The fourth Viscount of Campden was promoted to Earl of Gainsborough in 1682. His descendant, the third Earl of Gainsborough, sold the estate to Laud D’Oyley. (see history of Phillimore estate). D’Oyley’s son, Robert kept what was to be the Phillimore Estate but sold Campden House and thirteen acres of land to Robert Balle, a merchant. It was then sold on to the Lechmere family.

Lord Lechmere sold the house and grounds to Steven Pitt in 1751. Steven Pitts’ father, Samuel, already owned land near Kensington Church Street. When Steven Pitt died in 1793, the estate passed to his son, also named Steven. There was no scope for development for many years but in the 1840’s there was a recovery of the housing market in Kensington.

In 1844 Steven Pitt entered into an agreement with two builder-entrepreneurs from St Marylebone – William Eales, a timber merchant, and Jeremiah Little, a builder. The intention was that they would develop virtually the whole estate into residential housing. The deal was that in return for building the houses they would be granted 99 year leases, for which they would pay £900 per annum. Once built, they could let the houses to occupiers, or sell their leases to buyers, at a profit. The houses had to be built to the satisfaction of Thomas Allison, who was Pitt’s surveyor. (Allison did considerable work on the Ladbroke Estate in Notting Hill). In many cases Eales and Little would enter into sub-leases and agreements with individual builders for particular houses or terraces.

Steven Pitt died in 1848 and the leases after that date were granted by his widow and the trustees of his estate.


This article first appeared on the now defunct Kensington Living website. All rights and copyright to the original material is retained by that website which appeared at: http://www.kensingtonliving.co.uk 

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