The Area
According to Hermione Hobhouse’s splendid Survey of London, Volume 42 (published 1986 and available online), what is now Cheniston Gardens was part of a 15 acre freehold given to William Muschamp the younger on his marriage in 1650. This land was sold to Francis Barry, ‘citizens and mercer of London’. As Kensington became more prominent in the 1680s when William and Mary moved into Kensington Palace (1689), Barry divided up the property with a view to developing it. Two large parcels, now the sites of the tube station and Cheniston Gardens, were let on long term leases to gardeners. East of Wrights Lane, which was a footpath leading to Earl’s Court, he built what became known as Scarsdale House for himself.
Having borrowed heavily, Barry had to move out of Scarsdale House into a smaller dwelling at the south end of Wright’s Lane where he stayed until around 1705. He also had to surrender all his Kensington freeholds to trustees acting for his creditors. Most of the land was sold to John Brand, also a mercer.
Brand’s son Timothy split the freeholds further in 1720, selling three acres including what is now Cheniston Gardens to Sir Isaac Newton for £1712. Newton bought them on behalf of his niece and heir, Catherine Conduitt and her husband John, who gained possession shortly before Newton’s death in 1727.
In 1740, this land was part of the Conduitt’s daughter's marriage settlement to Viscount Lymington. Unfortunately, they fell into debt and in 1753 the land was sold Gregory Wright, a Fleet Street stablekeeper and coachmaster, for £1453.
Wright broadened the footway around 1770, now called ‘Wright’s Lane’ and created a few villas with generous gardens around them. This included what became Abingdon House on the site of Cheniston Gardens and four acres further south, the group called Scarsdale Place. The house became known as Abingdon in reference to Abingdon Abbey which owned Kensington Parish Church. This was a ‘good-sized house’ roughly located where no. 40-46 Cheniston Gardens are today.
Wright died in 1787, leaving his property to his grandchildren. The freeholds were passed to Ann Alexander and her son David Henry Alexander. The Alexanders let Abingdon House on short term leases. One tenant was the 14th Lord Teynham, another was Marmaduke Wyvill, MP 1861-62. He was followed by a Ranee, the widow of a high ranking Indian potentate. In the 1840s, it was a ‘ladies school’ and in the 1850s, owned by a William Nokes.
Herbert George Goldingham, a Worcester solicitor, took a long lease on the house from David Henry Alexander in 1869. He prepared plans to develop ‘Ravenhill Gardens’ on the site but this didn’t proceed and Abingdon House declined into ‘a neglected and ivy-covered ruin’.
In 1872, Abingdon House was given a brief respite, being bought by Thomas John Capel, a prominent Catholic prelate, to turn into a Catholic University College, which opened in 1874 with a formal inauguration the following year. David Alexander sold the freehold to supporters the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Petre and Cardinal Manning. Just west of the house was a ‘temporary but handsome’ chapel of corrugated iron and wood. Unfortunately, Capel resigned in disgrace in 1878 due to debt and scandal and the College disappeared. Capel left England and ended up in California, where he died.
This left the site ripe for development and Arthur Furneaux Taylor and Stephen Abbott Cummings, a pair of builders proposed a street to be called Kilmories Gardens. They went into partnership with then owners Norfolk, Petre and Manning. Taylor and Cummings has already some experience in Kensington, having done some speculative building projects in Oxford Gardens and Lancaster Road, North Kensington; then Nevern Place, Earl’s Court and Devere Gardens where they worked in partnership with CA Daw and Son.
At Cheniston Gardens, their primary backer was Samuel John Daw, a cousin of the builder Daws. Both the Daws and Taylor came from Devon which is where the association probably came from.
Building began in autumn 1879 and was complete by the end of 1882, except for Nos. 44 and 46 which were added in 1885.
Hobhouse was not a great fan of Cheniston Gardens, commenting that the houses:
“..were of very dry appearance. All but No. 46 still adhered obstinately to the stock-brick Italianate mode so long prevalent in Kensington, with cheese-paring cement dressed porticoes and tight double-storeyed bay windows. But above the first floor the designer (conceivably Charles M. Hudson, a 26 year old architect visiting Taylor at No. 13 at the time of the 1881 census) appears to have had a change of heart, aligning his windows without reference to the storeys below and admitting rubbed and cut brick dressings and even some ornamental arcading at the top, as if in grudging tribute to the Queen Anne movement. The ironwork too is cryptically ‘Queen Anne’ in character. Nevertheless, the costume of these squeezed-up, gardenless houses is bleak enough, in particular in the rectangular central block.
“In the awkward angle at the north-west corner of the site, the remote touch of aestheticism becomes palpable. Here Taylor and Cumming in 1882 built the hidden-away Nos. 1–3 Cheniston Gardens Studios, a pleasant group in red brickwork with round-arched porches (Plate 45b). In No. 46, Cheniston Lodge, an afterthought of 1885, Queen Anne of a rigid kind comes fully into its own, with a shaped gable, stereotyped panels of aesthetic decoration and patterns in the glazing bars. Surprisingly in view of its special appearance, this house seems to have been speculatively built.
“The houses of Cheniston Gardens filled up quickly enough. Six were in occupation early in 1881, with Sydney Ponting close to his shop at No. 1 and A. R. Pennefather, the future Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, at No. 7. Taylor had an address at No. 13 from 1881 to 1883 and Cumming at No. 2 in 1882. Thereafter the partners had a joint office first at No. 35 and then at No. 27, which continued to be used by Taylor as an address for many years. In 1880, ownership of the property, which was heavily mortgaged, passed to five spinsters named Colvile with SJ Daw as trustee. Taylor and Cumming received long leases on some of the houses while freeholds of others were sold to prospective residents.”
Individual house histories
Information here has been compiled from a variety of sources – please do get in touch with the secretary of the Cheniston Gardens Residents Association if you have something to add – information is very much appreciated.
Number 1
Sydney Ponting was the first occupant in 1881, close to his shop
Number 2
Stephen Abbott Cummings, of Taylor and Cummings which built Cheniston Gardens, was registered here in 1882.
Number 3
Number 4
Number 5
Number 6
Number 7
A.R. Pennefather, the future Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was the first resident, in 1881
Number 8
Number 9
Number 10
Sir Richard Garth, PC, QC (11/5/1820-23/3/1903) lived here from around 1888 until his death. Born Richard Lowndes, in Morden, Surrey, but his father, who was heir to the Manor of Morden, Surrey, changed his family’s name to Garth by royal license in 1837 as a requirement of the will.
Garth was educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford where he was captain of the university cricket team. He played cricket for Hampshire and Surrey between 1839 and 1844. He became a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn. In 1847 he married his cousin Clara Lowndes and they produced seven children.
Garth inherited Morden Hall in 1862 and sold it in 1872. He was instrumental in the early planning of parts of Raynes Park on land he owned in Merton. He practiced commercial law in London, often appearing at the Guildhall. He was made a Queens Counsel in 1866 and a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. That same year he became one of two members of Parliament for Guildford until his seat was abolished in 1868. He was made Chief Justice of Bengal in 1875 and received a knighthood that same year. He served at Fort William, Calcutta, until 1886. Garth was a supporter of the Indian National Congress and in 1888 wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘A Few Plain Truths about India’ in support of that organization. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1888. He died at 10 Cheniston Gardens on 23rd March 1903.
The Higher Thought Centre, a Bahai meeting place, under the direction of a Miss Rosenberg, was based at No 10 in 1911 and Abdul-Baha, a Persian Mage, is recorded as having lectured here.
This building was enfranchised in March 2009.
Number 11
Number 12
Number 13
Arthur Furneaux Taylor, half of Taylor and Cummings, the builders of Cheniston Gardens, had an address here from 1881 to 1883.
Number 14
Number 15
Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913) who wrote under the name of Baron Corvo, completed Hadrian the Seventh in 1904 while living at No. 15.
Number 16
Number 17
Number 18
Number 19
Number 20
Number 21
Number 22
Number 23
Number 24
Number 25
Number 25a
The Armenian Embassy is based here.
Number 26
The building of six flats was enfranchised in 2005 Details (pdf)
Number 27
This served as an office for Taylor and Cummings, the Cheniston Gardens builders for a short while and continued to be used by Taylor as an address for many years afterwards.
Number 28
Number 29
Number 30
Number 31
Number 32
Number 33
Number 34
Number 35
Number 36
Number 37
This served as an office for Taylor and Cummings, the Cheniston Gardens builders for a short while before they moved to No. 27.
Number 38
Number 39
Number 40
Number 41
Number 42
Number 43
Number 44
Number 45
Number 46
Miscellanea
In April 1996, the Evening Standard reported that three ladies resident in Cheniston Gardens were charged with assisting in the management of a brothel. Magistrate Miss Ros Keating conditionally discharged them for a year, advising them "You've got to go and do something more sensible with yourselves."