The Streets Of London – Part Ninety Three
Kensington Gore, SW7
Kensington Gore is to be found on the southern side of Hyde Park, running either side of the Royal Albert Hall, then running northwards to where it splits eastwards and westwards, imposing itself between the two sections of Kensington Road, now the A315. A gore is a triangular piece of land and so the name is particularly apposite here.
In the mid-seventeenth century the area stretching from where the Albert Hall now is to Ennismore Gardens, some fifty acres in all, formed the estate of Sir Robert Fenn, the Clerk of the Green Cloth to Charles I. His duties included planning the King’s itineraries and administering the royal household. Following the Civil War the estate had several owners but by the early 18th century much of the land was rented by Henry Wise and was incorporated into his vast Brompton Park Nursery which occupied some 100 acres in total. Six acres of Fenn’s original estate were occupied by some market gardeners and several large houses were built on the land adjacent to the road running from Kensington to Knightsbridge.
Of these the principal was Gore House, built in 1750 for Robert Mitchell of Hatton Gardens. William Wilberforce lived there between 1808 and 1821 but its most flamboyant resident was undoubtedly the Count D’Orsay, one of the foremost dandies of the 1830s. In 1849 pressure of debts forced the Count and his wife (at least in name), Lady Blessington, to flee the country for Paris. The sale of their effects at Gore House attracted some twenty thousand visitors to the house.
The celebrated French chef, Alexis Soyer, had the bright idea to transform Gore House into a restaurant, up-market of course, to cash in on the demand caused by the 1851 Great Exhibition for a superior dining experience. The grandiloquently named The Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations consisted of the house, now garishly decorated, and a Baronial Banqueting Hall and a four-hundred-foot long Pavilion of All Nations in the grounds. The total cost of the refurbishment was £28,000. Proving that the restaurant trade was no easier then than it is today, Soyer only took in £21,000 and his enterprise collapsed under a pile of debts. The house was demolished in 1857 after it had been purchased by the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 and used as a school.
The other principal house to be built on what was Fenn’s estate was Grove House, built around 1749 and occupied initially by the surgeon, Caesar Hawkins. Horace Walpole wrote disparagingly of the house, describing it as “a vile guinguette that has nothing but verdure, and prospect, and a parcel of wild trees that have never been cut into any shape, and as awkward as if they had been transplanted out of Paradise”. Its last occupant, John Aldridge, sold the house in 1852 to the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 who used it as an office before demolishing it in 1857.
[image error] Photograph of the Royal Albert Hall’s North Entrance taken from Kensington Gore
Why were the Commissioners buying up property in the area and demolishing it? It was all to do with Prince Albert’s masterplan to capitalise on the success of the Exhibition and develop a scientific and cultural quarter known as Albertopolis. Albert died in 1861 before he could see his vision completed but it was decided that a hall be built in his memory on the very spot once occupied by Grove House. When laying the red foundation stone, now to be found under seat 87 of row 11 in stall K, on May 20, 1867 Victoria declared “it is my wish that this Hall should bear his name to whom it will have owed its existence and called the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences”. Her wish was their command and four years later she returned to open it.
