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 house in 1744 and demolished it to construct a brick field (In those days bricks had to be made on site, so the housing developed in Kensington required local brick fields.) But a house was rebuilt on the site by the end of the 18th Century, only to be destroyed in the mid-19th Century to make way for the houses there today.
The adjoining land on which Palace Gardens Terrace now stands was glebe land. This was land belonging to successive vicars of Kensington from at least 1260. ‘Glebe’ was any land or buildings of a rectory or vicarage. (The freehold was finally sold to the Church Commissioners in 1954.)
In 1853 the two estates came together. Thomas Robinson, who was then the owner of Sheffield House, also had a lease on the glebe land with 40 years to run. He did a deal with the vicar of St Mary Abbotts, the local church, under which he could build houses on the glebe land and would be given 99 year leases of the houses, which he could sell on.
Robinson began building work on the site of Sheffield House. It seems he financed his estate scheme by selling the freeholds of houses built on his land (rather than just granting building leases on them) and then using the money to pay for the construction of the roads and sewers as well as the construction costs of some of the houses, which he would sell himself. The rest of the plots were sold on building leases under which a long lease would be granted to the builder when the houses was built, which could then be sold on to a buyer at a profit. Most of Robinson’s profit came from granting sub-leases to builders at improved ground rents. For example, some property were leased to him for £5 but with houses on the plots, were leased on for £110 per annum.
Much of Palace Gardens Terrace and Brunswick Gardens were built in the 1850s. One builder, Jeremiah Little, purchased most of the Sheffield House plots which Robinson was selling. He built Strathmore Gardens and the top part of Palace Gardens Terrace between 1868 and 1870.
In 1877 a new vicarage was built and this allowed the creation of Vicarage Gate and the construction of more houses there. They were built by Joseph Mears and completed in 1877. In the 1930s Vicarage Court, a block of flats, was built on the east of Vicarage Gate. In 1966-8 the old vicarage was pulled down and a block of flats called Hamilton House put up in its place.
When the Vicar of St Mary Abbotts entered into the agreement with Robinson in 1854 to allow him to build houses on the glebe land, he arranged for a temporary church to be built at the lower end of Palace Gardens Terrace. This was built of corrugated galvanised iron – apparently the height of fashion at the time. But by 1895 it had rusted so badly it had to come down. It was also too close to the Vicarage Gate and Palace Gardens Terrace houses. A new church was built in 1887 to designs by Arthur Baker, who had worked for Sir George Gilbert Scott. That church was destroyed in the last war.
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