History of the Smith’s Charity Estate
In his will Henry Smith instructed his trustees to buy land to provide incomes of £60 a year for the two charities he had set up. He didn’t say where the land should be, and the trustees didn’t look very far. They simply bought land from individual trustees. The Charity’s property was not all in London. The trustees bought land in Leicestershire and Hampshire from William Rolfe, and land in Essex from Sir Christopher Neville, both trustees.
Rolfe’s brother-in-law (and another trustee) was Sir William Blake, an old friend of Henry Smith’s. He owned eighty five and a half acres of land in the parishes of Kensington, Chelsea and St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Either he sold it to the Charity, or his beneficiaries did after his death, but the result was that in 1630 Henry Smith’s Charity became the owner of the London estate. It was essentially open farm land and it would be 150 years before anyone thought of building houses on it.
No steps were taken to find tenants for the land during the Civil War and Commonwealth period. But business life returned to normal after the Restoration. The trustees continued to keep things in the family and in 1664 they granted a lease of the whole London estate to Christopher Blake, Sir William Blake’s grandson. He agreed to pay a rent of £130 a year and to spend £500 on new buildings and improvements in return for a seventy year lease. There was one large house which a former tenant, Robert Sewell, had built and there were a number of cottages. Christopher Blake died in about 1672 and his sister, Maria Dorney, inherited the lease. She left it to her son by her first marriage, John Harris. John Harris sold the lease to Richard Galloway, who was a Knightsbridge innkeeper. Francis Galloway (presumably his son) was the owner of the lease when it finally expired in 1734.
Galloway was allowed to stay on although no new lease was signed. In 1749 he sold his interest to a Doctor William Bucknall. Dr Bucknall had recently bought Brompton Hall, a mansion on the other side of Old Brompton Road, opposite the Smith’s Charity estate. The trustees promptly granted a new twenty one year lease to Dr Bucknall so it seems likely that Galloway’s sale to Bucknall had been done under an arrangement with the trustees, to clear Galloway arrears of rent. But if the trustees hoped Bucknall would be an improvement, they were to be disappointed. He also fell behind with his rent and by 1759 he owed the trustees £800. The trustees were forced to do another deal to recover their arrears. In return for rent being paid up to date, the trustees agreed to cancel Bucknall’s lease and to grant his son, Samuel Bucknall, a new seventy year term at the same £151 a year rent.
William Bucknall died in 1763 and his son, Samuel, died in 1770, and Samuel’s two sisters inherited the lease. When they too died, their husbands, the Reverend Joseph Griffith and Morgan Rice, inherited it and Joseph Griffith moved into Brompton Hall.
In 1785 there occurred the first hint of the estate’s future destiny as an exclusive residential neighbourhood. Michael Novosielski, an architect and speculative builder, took an underlease of fourteen acres for house building, in the corner of the estate nearest London, which roughly is now the site of Egerton Crescent, Place and Terrace. The lease was for the forty-five years which remained to Griffith and Rice under their own lease. It was agreed that they would give him a further sixteen years if they could obtain a new lease for themselves from the Smith’s Charity trustees.
Along Brompton Road, Novosielski built a terrace of forty four four-storey houses which he called Michael’s Place, after himself. (William Cobbett lived at No. 11 in 1820.) In the middle of the terrace he built Michael’s Grove, a new road with ten houses, running south, and Brompton Crescent with twenty five houses. He also built himself a very grand mansion called Brompton Grange. None of his Kensington houses have survived. The rent the Charity derived from letting Novosielski’s houses at a market rent once Novosielski’s underlease came to an end provided the lion’s share of the Charity’s income during the first three decades of the 19th century.
Griffith and Rice’s hopes of getting a new lease were wildly over-optimistic. In fact, in 1801 a court action was launched against them to have their existing lease set aside. The reason was that the rent of £151 a year was now far too cheap. But the case was pursued on the technical grounds that the trustees had not been empowered to grant such a long lease and only seven of them had signed it. In 1807 the lease was declared void. The various sub-leases which Griffith and Rice had granted were upheld, including Novosielski’s lease, but the tenants were now required to pay their rent direct to the Smith’s Charity trustees.
The flurry of building west of Hyde Park in the 1780s, characterised by Henry Holland’s Hans Town development in Chelsea and Novosielski’s venture in Kensington, had quickly died down. England’s efforts were concentrated on the wars against Napoleon. It was to be thirty years before peace, and the demand for new houses, made people again look west to agricultural Kensington.
In the 1820s the Smith’s Charity's Kensington estate was occupied almost entirely by horticultural nurseries. Samuel Harrison owned a nursery occupying present day Pelham Crescent, Place and Street and part of the Alexander Estate to the north. He had acquired the lease from the trustees in 1815 but by the 1820’s he was in partnership with William Bristow. Thomas Gibbs had a nursery of six acres to the west, where Onslow Square was built. To the west, and occupying part of the present site of Onslow Square and down to the Brompton Hospital, was a nursery owned by William Malcolm. Until at least 1825 Malcolm was also the main lessee of the fourteen and a half acre Quail Field estate in Chelsea. Finally, even further west, in an area detached from the main part of the estate and called Brompton Heath, a Mr Street of Old Brompton owned the largest nursery of all, covering twenty seven acres.
Between Gibbs’ and Malcolm’s nurseries, next to Old Brompton Road, stood the house which Robert Sewell had built, and which Samuel Bucknall had later occupied. This was now occupied by Henry Cowper (who renamed it Cowper House). His lease was renewed in 1821 for fourteen years, but he seems to have moved out in 1829, after which it was a private lunatic asylum until it was demolished in 1850.
In 1829, the Smith’s Charity’s trustees appointed George Basevi as their London architect. His appointment coincided with the second boom in housing development which started in earnest in the 1830s.
There had already been some sporadic house building under Basevi’s prececessor, John Booth. In 1822 the trustees had entered into a contract with James Bonnin, a builder who was already working on the development of Brompton Square. The contract required him to build a small terrace of houses on the west part of what is now Brompton Road. The terrace was named Onslow Terrace, after the second Earl of Onslow, who was one of the trustees at the time. It no longer survives. Some of it was knocked down to make way for the Metropolitan line, and the remaining houses were demolished in 1934.
Basevi’s first task was to reorganise Michael’s Place and the surrounding properties. He re-let many of the houses on twenty one year leases, at a much higher rent. He squeezed twenty new houses into Yeoman’s Row by taking land from the back gardens of the houses in Michael’s Place, which were let on sixty three year leases. (They were demolished in 1893 when the leases expired.)
In 1832 eight and a half acres of land unexpectedly became available for development when Samuel Harrison and William Bristow went bankrupt and their lease was forfeited. Pelham Crescent, Pelham Place and most of Pelham Street were then built on the land under building agreements which Basevi made with James Bonnin, and later with his son, James Bonnin junior. Basevi designed many of the houses himself, and the drawings have survived. But even where design was left to others it is clear that he exercised very close architectural control of what was built. There are records of the fees paid to him for inspections of building work, and supervision of paving, fencing and lighting.
Mr Malcolm, who owned the nursery next to Thomas Gibbs’ nursery, was also the tenant of the land known as Quail Field on the other side of Brompton Road. Malcolm died in 1836 and his executors surrendered the leases of the land he had occupied. One of the first things the trustees did with the newly vacant land was to build a church. The Commission for Building New Churches opened negotiations with Smith’s Charity in late 1836 and in February 1837 the trustees agreed to sell them a plot for a church. The Metropolitan Church Fund paid £300. It would seem that Smith’s Charity had agreed to sell the land with a church on it, because Basevi then set about designing and building the church. Uncharacteristically Basevi adopted a Tudor rather than a Gothic style. In 1878 E P Loftus Brock supervised the addition of a north aisle, and further alterations were carried out in 1890. The trustees gave up some more land in 1861 to allow a church school to be built.
Construction carried on round the new church. In 1841 William Pocock was given permission to develop a row of houses on the south east of St Saviour’s Church . By 1843 Basevi was supervising the building of Walton Place, just to the north east of the church. In 1847 the local authorities decided to turn the road where Pocock had built his houses into a proper main road to connect Sloane Street and Fulham Road. Half of it was on Lord Cadogan’s land and the north east part between St Saviour’s Church and Pocock’s row of houses was on Henry Smith’s estate. This was named Walton Street. (Walton Street and Walton Place were named after George Walton Onslow, a trustee at the time.)
In the early 1830s Sussex Terrace on the south side of Old Brompton Road was built by Thomas Rice, a mason, of Brompton. But the houses were too far out from the most fashionable area to be in demand and he went bankrupt in 1833. The houses were later demolished and Sussex Mansions now stands on the site.
By 1843 the trustees had gained possession of Brompton Grange (Michael Novosielski’s former house) because of the financial problems of the owner at the time, a well-known singer called John Braham, who had to sell it to meet debts. The house and grounds provided six acres of new building land. The result of the development was Egerton Crescent (originally called Brompton Crescent), Egerton Terrace (originally Michael’s Grove) Yeoman’s Row and Crescent Place. The Bonnins were the builders. Basevi clearly designed the houses in Egerton Crescent
In the 19th century tuberculosis was a major disease. In 1844 the governors of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, which was operating out of a small hospital in Chelsea, persuaded the charity trustees to let them build a new hospital on three acres of land just north of Fulham Road. This land had previously been part of the nursery owned by Malcolm. The trustees granted a lease for 99 years and advertised for architects to produce designs. Frederick Francis won the competition. The hospital governors agreed to build the hospital in accordance with elevations and specifications approved by the charity’s architect, who was Basevi at the time. Prince Albert laid the foundation stone in 1844. It was built and ready to receive patients by 1846. In 1868 the governors persuaded the trustees to let them buy the freehold, for which they paid the charity about £65,000.
On 16 October 1845 Basevi fell from western tower of Ely Cathedral, which he was inspecting, and was killed. His seventeen years as the estate’s surveyor were a high point in the history of the estate’s development. The Bonnins departed the scene too in 1847 when they both went bankrupt.
From 1845 to 1884, Charles James Freake was the dominant figure in the development of the Smith’s Charity estate. He was a builder who had already carried out projects in Belgravia and Westminster. Over forty-odd years his firm built 330 large houses, about a hundred coach-houses and stables, and two churches, in the estate. As well as building the houses, his firm often took responsibility for the infrastructure and constructed the roads and sewers and laid out the communal gardens.
Freake’s first opportunity came when Thomas Gibb’s lease came to an end in 1843 and the trustees decided to permit building on this land west of the Pelham development. In 1844 Freake began work on Sydney Place, Onslow Square and Sumner Place. There was also an Onslow Crescent where Melton Court stands today.
Freake was an entrepreneur. If the trustees were too slow to see an opportunity, Freake would make it impossible to ignore. Some land adjoining the estate came on the market in 1851 and Freake snapped it up, then sold it to the trustees. He was given the building contracts to build Cranley Terrace and Sydney Mews on the new land.
In 1852 Freake organised an exchange of land between the trustees of Smith’s Charity and The Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851. This produced the land for Freake’s next westwards expansion. Cranley Place and Onslow Gardens were built on it
When Freake died in 1885 he was in the course of building Evelyn Gardens on the estate’s westernmost land. C. A. Daw and Son took over the construction.
Most of the Smith’s Charity’s income came from the market rents they were receiving from short leases on. In the mid 1880s, having exhausted all other development land on the Kensington estate, the trustees decided to relinquish Michael Novosielski’s houses in Michael’s Place, Michael’s Grove and Brompton Crescent, which had been the Charity’s main source of income throughout the century, and to demolish the houses and make the ground available for new buildings.
Alexander Thorn, a Chelsea builder, was awarded the main building contract, covering most of modern-day Egerton Gardens, Egerton Gardens Mews, as well as land in Brompton Road and Egerton Terrace. But by 1887 Thorn was virtually bankrupt and he had to pass the contract to Matthews Brothers and Company, who quickly completed the construction of Egerton Gardens.
A similar development in Brompton Road which had been started by Thorn, was taken over by a builder named William John Stuart of Thornton Heath, but the actual work may have been done by S and R Cawley of Hornton Street. It was completed in 1887-8.
In 1891 Harold Malet, a retired colonel, who lived at No. 12 Egerton Gardens was awarded the building contract to build part of a new crescent to be called Egerton Place on Michael’s Grove and the surrounding land. His only qualification seems to be that he had “connections”. John Grover and Son of Wilton Works, New North Road were appointed to carry out the construction to the designs of Mervyn Macartney. Mallet had another building agreement for the southern half of Egerton Place. In 1894 he was allowed to pass this to William Willett of Sloane Gardens, Chelsea. Willett’s constructed Nos. 8-13 (consec.) Egerton Place to designs of its own architect, Amos Faulkner, which were completed in 1897.
Malet’s agreement also included the west side of Yeoman’s Row where stables were to be constructed. Stables were constructed which have since been converted as Nos. 6-10 (even) Yeoman’s Row. William Henry Collbran, who was part of Malet’s consortium, took over the contract and built studios there.
In 1881 the trustees were asked if they could provide some land on the Old Quail field for a Scottish church. The plans were approved in late 1882. However, the vicar of St Saviour’s in Walton Street began a local fight to stop the new church. In the end the church was built in Pont Street and was called St Columba’s Church. It was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War and replaced by a church designed by Sir Edward Maufe in 1955.
In 1886 a private Act of Parliament authorised the extension of Pont Street from Sloane Street to Walton Street where it would then link with Beauchamp Place. Most of the necessary land was part of the Cadogan Estate but the part just to the north of St Saviour’s Church was in Henry Smith’s Estate.
The land on which Lennox Gardens, Lennox Gardens Mews, Pont Street and Claybon Mews, were to be built was part of the Quail Field. When Malcolm’s executors had surrendered the property to Smith’s Charity shortly after his death in 1836, the land was let by Basevi to a Mr Cattleugh, who continued to own it until he died in 1874. His executors sold it to a Mr Prince, who sold it to a Mr Rithendon in 1875. He must have sold it or surrendered it, presumably for a profit, because he was not directly involved in the subsequent development. In fact, the Cadogan and Hans Place Estates, which owned the neighbouring land, paid Smith’s Charity ground rents on some of the houses, so it would seem that they were involved in a joint venture from which the new development emerged.
The building agreements for Lennox Gardens have been lost, so there is no clear record of their construction. It seems that Smith’s Charity adopted a new policy towards house building. In the past, they had designed, or approved the designs, for an area, and then entered into a contract with a builder to construct the houses. But there was a growing tendency for prospective buyers to want to have a hand in the design of their proposed new house. So the Charity began adopting the policy of selling or letting individual plots and allowing the prospective buyer to employ his own architect and builder.
Various blocks of flats have been constructed on the estate. Between 1896 and 1900 Sussex Mansions was built on the south side of Old Brompton Road on land which had previously contained Sussex Terrace. St. George’s Court, a six-storey block of flats to the north of Crompton Court, was built in the 1930s. In 1930-1 seven of Freake’s houses at the west end of Pelham Street were demolished to make way for Malvern Court. Melton Court was constructed opposite.
After the war the Smith’s Charity trustees adopted a policy of rehabilitation and conversion of existing houses, as opposed to new development. In 1949 they paid the Freake family £110,000 to buy back the unexpired leases of its 154 houses and mews properties.