Note: The following account was written by local historian Philip Sherwood in 2007, and featured on a lost website which campaigned against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. In recovering it and featuring it here, we make no claims on copyright which still lies with the original author. Before it was destroyed in 1944 Heathrow …
June 2017 archive
Sheffield House and Glebe Estate, Kensington
In 1603 Sir William Cope had a house with two acres of land in the area of present day Kensington Church Street. For at least a century it remained in the hands of the family of the Earls of Sheffield and became known as ‘Sheffield House’. Two builders, John Barnard and Thomas Callcott, bought the …
The Racks
The land now bounded by Notting Hill Gate, Kensington Church Street, Campden Hill Road and Sheffield Terrace was known as the Racks in olden days. It was part of the lands of Campden House in the early 18th Century. It was then bought by the Phillimore family. In 1774 Robert Phillimore gave the property to …
The Holland Estate, Kensington
In 1599 Sir Walter Cope, an influential courtier, bought Abbots Kensington manor from Queen Elizabeth I. He was collecting North Kensington manors. In 1591 he had bought West Town and in 1599 he also bought Notting Barnes, which later became Notting Hill. Cope built himself a grand home, known as “Cope’s Castle”. Cope’s daughter, Isabel, married …
The Norland Estate, Kensington
The owners of landed estates did not employ builders to construct houses for them. Nor did builders buy the land on which they built houses. In Victorian times, construction involved a kind of “joint venture”. The landowner entered into an agreement with a builder, permitting the builder to put up a specified number of houses …
Wood Lane (1914)
There was for a time a bewildering confusion of station names in the Shepherd’s Bush area, because the London & South Western Railway, which ran trains along the tracks of the West London Railway through Addison Road, in 1869 constructed a branch line which curved westwards from Addison Road down to Richmond with stations eventually …
The Fascination of Kensington
The Kensington District, by Geraldine Edith Mitton (First published 1903) Editor: Walter Besant Project Gutenberg THE KENSINGTON DISTRICT Herbert Railton HOLLAND HOUSE. The Fascination of London KENSINGTON BY G. E. MITTON Kensington When people speak of Kensington they generally mean a very small area lying north and south of the High Street; to this some …
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