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Kensington Gardens

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Barrie Street

Bombed flat

Bathhurst Mews

Horses still kept there. Bathhurst riding stables Royal Toxopholite Society used to be site for archers, archery Terrace in the Bathhurst Street and collection of engravings

Bathurst Street

4 Archery Tavern. Built in 1839 on the site of an archery range, the pub is a peaceful escape from the busy Bayswater Road. The front bar is connected by an aisle to the bar at the back where a TV and darts are available. 

Bayswater Road

Low point in the road. There was a bridge here, with a coaching inn called the Swan.  The bridge has gone, but the Swan, opened in 1775, is still very much in existence.

100  Sir James, M Barrie. 1860-1937 plaque 'novelist and dramatist, lived here' 

Hyde Park Towers, 1980

120 Hilton Hyde Park - Cobourg Court Hotel, a big, symmetrical brick-and-terracotta affair with Byzantinizing cupolas, c. 1910.  

Orme Court is in the same materials, but with a corner turret. Edward Orme was the developer of Bayswater

150 London Embassy Hotel

Clarendon Place

Chester House,Sir Giles Gilbert Scott 1880-1960 'architect designed this house and lived here 1926-1960'  

Connaught Place

2, Lord Randolph Churchill, 1849-1895 'statesman, lived here 1883-1892' 

Craven Gardens

Lord Craven gave a piece of land to be used as a plague pit and after many swaps and mucking about this is it, still waiting.

Craven Hill,

Was a little hamlet, Owned by Lord Craven. Picturesquely undulates through the area as the main local thoroughfare, starting with stately stuccoed villas and ending with plenty of small Victorian shops

Corporation of London conduit house until about 1820

London toy museum, Victorian House, train room

Craven House

9 Cowden Clarke

Craven Hill Gardens

Hempel Hotel

Craven Road

Picturesquely undulates through the area as the main local thoroughfare, starting with stately stuccoed villas and ending with plenty of small Victorian shops

11 Ascot

34 plaque to Tommy Handley. He ran the wartime radio show ITMA.

Craven Terrace,

Badly bombed

25-6 The Walkabout Club for Australians

27 Bayswater Books

Devonshire Terrace

1 Charles Dickens,  London County Council plaque. the home from 1839 to 1851 of Charles Dickens. 

114 Cordon Bleu

53 Constance Spry

100 London College of Dance and Drama

Hyde Park Street,

12 W.H. Smith, 1825-1891 'bookseller and statesman lived here' 

Gloucester Square,

35, Robert Stephenson 1803-1859 'engineer died here' Stephenson spent his final twelve years here. 

Kensington Gardens

Kensington Gardens.  275 acres.In 1605 Sir George Coppin Clerk of the Crown to James I built a house here in 36  acres of grounds. It became known as Nottingham House. In 1689 it was acquired by William and Mary.  George I extended it.Once the private domain of Kensington Palace, but now accessible to the public. a more elegant and intimate and somehow more feminine atmosphere. royal women have strong links with this park: With Hyde Park an open space of well over 600 acres, the largest in London.It has can boast Britain's tallest manna ash.

Memorial Playground to Ms. D.Winsor . featuring a pirate ship, wigwams, a treehouse and crocodile .

Loggia and Italian Water Gardens up at the north-east corner, decorated with stone urns overflowing with red pelargoniums in summer. The water from the four pools and fountains spurts down into the wilder Long Water below,

stone circle by Ian Hamilton Finlay

Flower Walk. This is at its best in spring and summer, when the herbaceous beds are at their peak, 

Temple. Built in the 18th century for Queen Caroline, the wife of George II by Charles Bridgeman. She also ordered the digging of the Serpentine, and of the Round Pond

Fountain pump house,

Modern sculpture by Henry Moore (called the Arch).

Long Water. created in the 1730s by damming the Westbourne. There is a long canal outfall into the Long Water with the tops of its three brick-lined arches poking up through the grass. It is filled by rainwater run-off from the surrounding slopes.  Shelley's wife Harriet killed herself in it.  naturalistic planting along the banks creates habitats for wildlife. 

Westbourne. Flows not into Long Water but into the Ranelagh Sewer, Victorian conduit constructed beneath the lake's left bank.

Peter Pan.pretty statue with woodland figures by George Frampton. J M Barrie was living near Kensington Gardens when he wrote the Peter Pan story and he reputedly had the statue erected overnight so that when children arrived the next morning they would think the fairies had brought it.  The model was actress Nina Boucicault. 

Victoria Gate

Keepers Lodge,

Dogs' Cemetery. burial ground for dogs Duke of Cambridge as Ranger of Hyde Park in 1880 wanted to bury wife's pet dog.  Closed. 

Italian water garden with, at Head of the Serpentine, statue of Jenner.  site of dirty duck pond into which the Ranelagh sewer discharged, 1860 diverted and filtration scheme set up.  John Thomas did the carving. Line of the Westbourne

Round Pond.  sailing boats. It was probably made by James Horne who was contracted for work on the Westbourne by the Department of HM Woods and Forests. In 1726-8 60,000 cubic yards were excavated for the 7 acre basin. 

Physical energy by G.F.Watts. This is a replica of the central portion of Rhodes Memorial at Capetown originally made for the Marquis of Westminster for Eaton Hall. That it is only four feet from the ground makes it the more impressive. Erected 1906.  

John Speke obelisk to the African explorer and equestrian group memorial Speke was the first explorer to trace the source of the Nile to Lake Victoria in 1864.  He shot himself the morning he was due to present his findings on the Nile to the British Association. Granite obelisk 1966.

Serpentine Art Gallery set up in 1970 in the refreshment rooms of 1934, themselves replacing a rustic tea room

74 Francis Bret Harte

Statue of Churchill and his wife.  They lived at Hyde Park Gate. Sculpture of them seated 1981 by Oscar Nemon.

Cast Iron Gates, by the Coalbrookdale 'Company for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The Fountains – also called The Italian Garden. 

West Carriage Drive Restaurant 

Kensington Park Gardens

7 plaque to Sir William Crookes 1832-1919.  'Scientist, lived here from 1880 until his death'    

26 Newbolt

Lancaster Court

8 Lane

Lancaster Gardens

7 Frankau

17 Yeats

Lancaster Gate

Bayswater was originally a village in this area.   In the 17ththis was just acouple of houses, a pub and some tea gardens.  The name was originally applied just to the square around Christ Church.

The monumental planned composition dates from 1856-7. Tall well-to-do houses later than the earlier developments, and hence in architectural style more mid c 19, with English Baroque details. Facing the park are long stuccoed terraces by Sancton Wood, with two storeys of colonnaded balconies. All converted to hotels, but exteriors complete. Fine piece of town planning on site of Hopwoods Nursery and Victoria Tea Rooms. Bayswater Tea Rooms were previously physic garden of Sir John Hill 1857

1-7reconstructed as a hotel with a facsimile facade in 1970.

16 Once the Football Association HQ. 

56 Craigie

69 Lytton Stracey

74 Francis Brett Harte. 1836-1902. The plaque says  'American writer lived here'.  Harte was an American short story writer. 

108 Eugene Bonaparte

109 Harte

Barrie House flats, 1936

Dominion Hotel

Flats 1938 requisitioned for Gibraltar refugees

Flats end of the west   terrace, modern flats of 1936 by O.H. Leicester.

Hammet and Norton

Lancaster Court Hotel

Lancaster Gate Station.  30th July 1900. Between Queensway and Marble Arch on the Central Line. LT. original Central Line station was called ‘Westbourne’.  Rising gradient of 1:60 at the approach to help braking and fall of 130 for 100 yards going out to help acceleration. Original station by Harry Bell Measures. 1965 demolished and rebuilt below the Royal Court Hotel.

Meath Memorial, which is a monument to Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of March, 1929. Portrait medallion below a figure of a naked boy. By Herbert Crawtha 1934 ‘One King One Empire’.

Palace Hotel

Park Court Hotel tall. But plainer terrace set back behind gardens; a 'back-to-front' plan, with a two-storey range and projecting porches to the street behind.

Spire House. Centrepiece was a Gothic church. Only tower and spire survive. The rest was replaced in 1983 by Covell Afatfah Partnership, Christ Church built in 1855 was Gothic with spire demolished 1978 because of structural damage

Terraces by John Johnson, 1865.

Whites Hotel

War Memorial. Listed Grade II. First World War Memorial c 1919-20 by Sir Walter Tapper. Removed to storage after being blown down in the Great Storm of 1987.

Lancaster Place

Lancaster Terrace

Maitland Court bombed.

Leinster Gardens

23-24 a curiosity. Sham fronts built to preserve the respectable monotony of the terrace against the intrusion of the Metropolitan Railway which emerges here. Dummy houses. False fronts 1865 No more than walls propped up by heavy timbers.

Caesar’s Hotel. 

Leinster Place

2 Spencer

Porchester Gate

1 1988 by Green Lloyd & Adams. Curved glazed roofs make a striking silhouette when seen from the park

Porchester Terrace

3-5. The outstanding survival - J. C. Loudon's  'double detached villa' built for himself and his mother in 1823-5 and  illustrated in his ‘Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion’, 1838. 

Handsome arch to Fulton Mews.

Portsea Place

16, Olive Schreiner 1855-1920 'author lived here' Olive Schreiner lived here for only a few months, during 1885-6. 

Queen's Garden

Queen's Gardens

37 Spencer

Queensborough Terrace

Plenty of the more overpowering stuccoed terraces mid to later c19, apart from its unpleasant corners to Bayswater Road,

Stanhope Terrace

Entrance to the mews by an archway from Clarendon Place

11 Lord Baden-Powell the founder of the Boy Scouts, wasborn in 1857

Sussex Square

2 Churchill

Victoria Gate

Westbourne Square?

18 home of Matthew Maris Dutch painter London County Council plaque Cemetery c Laurence Sterne buried there.

Westbourne Street

On the side a series of bow-fronted houses. The windows are angled for a glimpse of the park, a device which first appeared in 1835 and is probably due to Matthew Wyatt.

Royal Lancaster Hotel.  Built in 1968 with a concrete-framed tower overlooking the park, by R. Seifert & Partners.  reception area by Gordon Bowyer & Partners. Top-floor restaurant by L. Manasseh & Partners; function rooms by Margaret Casson, etc. 

St. James. The expansion of the London Hydraulic Power Company's network in Central London enabled some organs to be fitted with high pressure hydraulic blowers. These included one here.



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