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Updated: May 3, 2025
The part of Kensington lying to the west of Church Street and extending to Notting Hill Gate was that formerly known as the Gravel Pits, and considered particularly healthy on account of its dry soil and bracing air. Bowack says that here there are "several handsome new-built houses, and of late years has been discovered a chalybeate spring."
Bowack says: "Two houses, called Holland and Campden Houses, were built ... by Mr. Cope ... erected before the death of Queen Elizabeth." He adds that it was a "very noble Pile and finished with all the art the Architects of that time were capable of." The mere fact of such a prize being won at a game of chance was likely enough in the days when gaming ran high.
It is now divided into two tenements. In the year 1598 it was in the tenure of Sir Francis Walsingham's widow." Bowack, in 1705, wrote that it was old and much decayed. He says an old stone building adjoining seemed to be 300 or 400 years old, and might have been used for religious services by the Rectors and their households.
One of the comparatively old houses of the neighbourhood of Earl's Court, that has only recently been demolished, was Coleherne Court, at the corner of Redcliffe Gardens and the Brompton Road. It is now replaced by residential flats. This was possibly the same house as that mentioned by Bowack : "The Hon. Col.
Sir Godfrey Kneller lived for a time in the Upper Mall; and Bowack tells us that "Queen Katherine, when Queen-Dowager, kept her palace in the summer time" by the river. This was Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II. She came here after his death, and remained until 1692. She took great interest in gardening, and the elms by the riverside are supposed to have been of her planting.
It was he who pulled down the old house and built a new one, calling it Villa Carey. Carey's daughter married Viscount Mordaunt, younger son of the Earl of Peterborough. The house recently demolished only dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Bowack describes the old house as a "very large square regular Pile, built of brick, and has a gallery all round it upon the roof."
Dean Swift, who lodged here, is perhaps one of the best-known names, and his friend Atterbury, who first had a house facing the Embankment, afterwards came and lived opposite to him. Thomas Shadwell, Poet Laureate, was associated with the place, and also Bowack, whose "Antiquities of Middlesex," incomplete though it is, remains a valuable book of reference.
Bowack says: "The limits of this chapel was divided from Fulham before the year 1622, as appears in a benefaction to the poor of Fulham." The chapel of ease to the parish of Fulham was founded in 1628, and opened in 1631. The whole cost was about £2,000, of which Sir Nicholas Crispe gave £700. This church was the last consecrated by Archbishop Laud.
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