Two centuries of Kensington history on Scarsdale Villas

The Edwardes estate was once the largest estate in Kensington. At its peak, the estate contained 250 acres of market gardens and open farmland. But, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, its owner, William Edwardes needed money. So, he began leasing land for speculative building projects.

The first development was the modest Edwardes Square. However, once the railways reached this new London suburb, builders started constructing streets of terrace housing for the capital’s growing ranks of lawyers, bankers and civil servants.

The first railway station in Kensington opened in 1844, but closed just six months later due to a lack of demand. However, in 1868, two more stations opened – High Street Kensington and Gloucester Road – connecting the neighbourhood to the West London line.

By that point, the streets to the south of Kensington High Street had been laid out. One of the most impressive was Scarsdale Villas, which was built between 1850 and 1865 and lined with a mix of terrace houses and semi-detached villas.

These houses were constructed from London stock brick, with white stucco dressings and facades. They were also set back from the street with small front gardens, and decorated with columned porticos, classical architraves and decorative cornices in the Italianate style. Developers hoped the large layouts and lofty proportions of the houses would attract members of the professional classes from crowded addresses like Soho and Temple.

The street took its name from nearby Scarsdale House, a large manor with an entrance gate on Wright’s Lane. Constructed in the 1690s by Francis Barry, it was later acquired by the Curzon family, who had held the title Baron Scarsdale since 1761. The Edwardes family were linked to the Curzons by marriage, and they borrowed the name for Scarsdale Villas to emphasise this aristocratic inheritance.

For much of the nineteenth century, the manor house belonged to Edward Cecil Curzon and was used as a girls’ boarding school. But, soon after his death in 1885, the property was acquired by Pontings, a large department store on Kensington High Street. Originally, the house contained overflow stock from the shop, but by the early twentieth century, it had been demolished to make way for mansion blocks.

At the centre of the street stood St John’s Presbyterian church, completed as the last houses were finished. The church was constructed from brick and stone in the Gothic Revival style, with plain interiors intended for the neighbourhood’s substantial Scottish community.

Although the name of the street suggested an aristocratic connection, the early inhabitants of the Scarsdale Villas belonged to the professional and creative classes. As well as retired officers from the Indian army, the street was home to John William Waterhouse, the popular pre-Raphaelite painter who created famous pictures of Circe, Ophelia and the Lady of Shalott.

In the mid-twentieth century, that Bohemian reputation remained. The famous comedy duo, Flanders and Swann, lived and worked in the garden studio at No. 1A. As a ground-floor flat, it was convenient for Flanders’s wheelchair. The first ever edition of Private Eye – the best-selling current affairs magazine in Britain – was also laid out on the street. At the time, founder and cartoonist Willie Rushton occupied a bedroom in his mother’s home.

By this point, Kensington High Street had been transformed. Over the course of the twentieth century, it was lined with apartment blocks, council buildings and an Art Deco cinema. Nonetheless, Scarsdale Villas remained protected as a perfect example of elegant Victorian street design, moments away from the busy heart of Kensington.