Although the march of new housing was approaching North Kensington by the 1820s, there was a serious practical impediment to development. The upper classes no longer expected to throw their human and household waste out of the windows, or into local streams. Closed sewers were an essential requirement for a successful building enterprise, but they were expensive to create.

However, a piece of good fortune came along. In 1836 the Birmingham Bristol and Thames Junction Railway was set up to provide a railway line between Willesden and the Thames. Railways were the “internet bubble” of the age and started up and went bust in rapid succession. The proposed route ran just to the west of the Norland Estate and through the Holland Estate near Addison Road. This happened to be the route of Counter’s Creek, a stream which served as the local sewer and rubbish dump. The Commissioners of Sewers insisted the railway company had to divert the stream and build a covered sewer further east, and Lord Holland refused to sell them the land they needed unless they agreed to it.

The company had to submit. The new sewer was built in 1838-9 along the line of the future St Ann’s Road, St Ann’s Villas and the Royal Crescent on the Norland Estate and down through the centre of the Holland Estate.

For Lord Holland and the Vulliamy family, the infrastructure for future development was provided free of charge. This would greatly increase the ability to develop the area, because the developers would be spared the cost of putting in the sewers.


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