Atomik: Studio Conversations #2.2

Three Houses and a donkey

By Derek Draper - Director, Atomik

It’s always fascinating, the history we uncover when studying buildings we work with. The more so when we work on houses of different origins within the same area. This case study looks at three houses we are restoring in west London and how together, they reveal snippets of a wider story of change in the nineteenth century. The change was dramatic, and wide reaching. London’s population grew from 1m to 6m, fields were drained and turned into the city, and a race between the Cadogan and Grosvenor Estates to the forefronts of taste gave us the distinctive area we see in and around SW1.?

53 Cadogan Place (1807)

Cadogan Place runs up the South East part of Sloane Street and was agricultural land until the last part of the 18th Century. Henry Holland leased the land from the Earl of Cadogan and laid the roads which make up the Cadogan Estate. The houses along Cadogan Place were completed by 1807. These were substantial brick faced properties and attracted a number of wealthy families. Number 53 was listed as the residence of slaveowner Sir Fitzroy Maclean at the time of his death in 1847. Two decades after the terrace was built, Grosvenor Estate’s Belgravia was forming to the east. To compete, the brick faced terraces were re-fronted in a more fashionable style, with white painted stucco and glazed verandas.

5 Eaton Place (1828)

With the establishment of the Cadogan estate to the West, the rural area of Belgravia was an attractive opportunity for Lord Grosvenor. In the 1820s an act of parliament allowed the area to be drained and Thomas Cundy laid out a plan for the area.

Thomas Cubitt bought the leases, built the roads and developed the area. Changing urban lifestyles of the upper classes requiring a larger household of staff. The rear of the houses were full of outbuildings (instead of gardens) with a direct connection to the stables at the rear. Something which was not the case at the earlier houses at Cadogan Place, where the garden led to a rear lane and stable opposite. We have a photo of the Suffragettes visiting our house at number 5 in 1914, visiting the “uncrowned King of Ulster”, politician Edward Carson.

73 Cadogan Gardens (1880)

Cadogan Gardens lies just south of Sloane Square, and by the 1870s was lagging behind as lower middle-class housing. The 1874 Cadogan and Hans Place Improvements Act was passed to carry out improvements to the Hans Town area. As a result, the West side of Cadogan Gardens was rebuilt. The 25 terraced houses were replaced with 12 larger red brick and terracotta homes. These were at the forefront of taste and ahead of the stucco Italianate style that existed in neighboring Belgravia. We have a news clipping about resident Captain Neil W. Haig of the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons. He and his passenger, the Duke of Westminster, were fined after driving into a herd of donkeys near Cannock Chase. In his defense he stated ‘I did all that a soldier, a gentleman and a sportsman could do in the circumstances’. Haig went on to serve during the Second Boer and First World wars.

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The need for these large townhouses was in decline by the twentieth century. The social change that resulted from the world wars put an end to many of them. When the WW2 rationing of building materials ended in 1954, all three of these houses were converted into apartments. Delving deep into the history of these houses, not only their origins but how they have been adapted over the last 200 years, has helped inform how we can adapt them for the future.