Earl's Court

Earl's Court and environs

A map showing the Earl's Court ward of Kensington Metropolitan Borough as it appeared in 1916

Earl's Court was once a rural area, covered in orchards, green fields and market gardens. The Saxon Thegn Edwin held the lordship of the area prior to the Norman conquest. For over 500 years the land, part of the ancient manor of Kensington, was under the lordship of the de Vere family, the Earls of Oxford, descendants of Aubrey de Vere I, who held the manor of Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, according to the Domesday Book 1086. By circa 1095, his tenure had been converted, and he held Kensington directly from the crown. A church had been constructed there by 1104.[3] The earls held their manorial court where the Old Manor Yard is now, just by Earl's Court tube station, eastern entrance.[4] Earl's Court Farm is visible on Greenwood's map of London dated 1827.

The name Earl's Court likely came from the fact that for a long time the owners of the land were an old English noble family, the Rich family and they were the earls of Warwick. When Edward Henry Rich, 9th Baron Rich, 7th Earl of Warwick and 4th Earl of Holland died young in 1721, the assets including the Jacobean Holland House, passed by marriage to the Edwardes family.

Brompton Cemetery and the Kensington Canal by William Cowen

Philbeach Gardens, Earl's Court, c1875, with St. Cuthbert's Parish Church

The original catalyst for development was the ill-fated vanity project by Lord Kensington (died 1852), which consisted of the two-mile conversion of the insanitary Counter's Creek into the Kensington Canal (1826 onwards), followed by its eventual replacement first by "Mr Punch's railway", opened in 1844 and next, by the Metropolitan District Railway in 1865–69, which eventually became London Underground's District Line and was joined after 1907 by the Piccadilly line.[5][6] Meanwhile, the congestion apparent in London and Middlesex for burials at the start of the century was causing public concern not least on health grounds. In 1837 a decision was made to lay out a new burial ground on the edge of Earl's Court in an outlying area of Brompton. The moving spirit behind the project was the engineer, Stephen Geary. It was necessary to form a company in order to get parliamentary permission to raise capital for the proposal. Securing the land – some 40 acres – from local landowner Lord Kensington and the Equitable Gas Light Company, as well as raising the money, proved an extended challenge.[7] After two years the cemetery was duly established by Act of Parliament and laid out in 1839, it opened in 1840, originally as the West of London and Westminster Cemetery. It was consecrated by Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, in June 1840, and is now one of Britain's oldest and most distinguished garden cemeteries, served by the adjacent West Brompton station.

In the quarter century after 1867, Earl's Court was transformed into a loosely populated Middlesex suburb and in the 1890s a more dense parish with 1,200 houses and two churches. Eardley Crescent and Kempsford Gardens were built between 1867 and 1873, building began in Earl's Court Square and Longridge Road in 1873, in Nevern Place in 1874, in Trebovir Road and Philbeach Gardens in 1876 and Nevern Square in 1880.[8] Earl's Court's only hospital was opened in 1887 on the corner of Old Brompton Road and Finborough Road. It was named in honour of Queen Victoria's youngest daughter. The hospital closed in 1978.[9]

Typical Earl's Court Mansion blocks

For most of the century, Earl's Court was home to three notable institutions, all now gone. The first and indeed oldest school of its kind is the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art founded in 1861. It was located on the corner of Cromwell Road and Earl's Court Road, until its move to the former Royal Ballet School in Talgarth Road. The next foundation dated 1892, was the London Electronics College (formerly the London School of Telegraphy), which was located at 20 Penywern Road and in its heyday did much to expand the use of Morse code throughout the world. Already in the 1990s it was threatened with closure as technology had moved on.[10] It finally closed in 2017 having served as a further education college offering electronic engineering and IT courses. The third institution was the Poetry Society, founded in 1909 and housed at 21 Earl's Court Square. It decamped to new premises in the recently refurbished Covent Garden district of Central London in the 1990s.

Evidently, after WWI, Earl's Court had already acquired a slightly louche reputation if George Bernard Shaw is to be believed, see his Pygmalion.[11] Following the Second World War a number of Polish officers, part of the Polish Resettlement Corps, who had fought alongside Allied Forces, but were unable to return to their homeland under Soviet dominance (see Yalta Conference), opened small businesses and settled in the Earl's Court area leading to Earl's Court Road being dubbed the "Polish Corridor".[12]

During the late 1960s a large transient population of Australian, New Zealand and white South African travellers began to use Earl's Court as a UK hub and over time it gained the name "Kangaroo Valley".[13]

• Jenny Lind (1820–1887), Swedish opera singer and teacher lived in Boltons Place in the latter part of her life.[15] A blue plaque at 189 Old Brompton Road, London, SW7, was put up in 1909.[16]
• Edwin Arnold (1832–1904), English poet and journalist, lived at 31 Bolton Gardens.[17]
• WS Gilbert (1838–1911), English dramatist and librettist, poet and illustrator, one of the two authors of the Savoy operas, lived in Harrington Gardens.
• Norman Lockyer (1836–1920), English scientist and astronomer credited with discovering the gas helium, lived at 16 Penywern Road
• Dame Ellen Terry (1847–1928), leading Shakespearian stage actress in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s, lived at 22 Barkston Gardens.
• Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby (1861–1936), British soldier and administrator famous for his role during the First World War when he led the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the conquest of Palestine and Syria, lived at 24 Wetherby Gardens.
• Beatrix Potter (1866–1943), English naturalist, children's author, grew up in Old Brompton Road. Hers is not a blue plaque, but a multicoloured plaque on the wall of Bousfield Primary School, near the spot where her house stood before it was bombed in the Second World War
• Howard Carter (1874–1939), English archaeologist, Egyptologist and primary discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, lived at 19 Collingham Gardens.
• Sir William Orpen (1878–1931), Irish portrait painter, lived at 8 South Bolton Gardens.
• Agatha Christie (1890–1971), English creator of Hercule Poirot, lived in Cresswell Place
• Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), English filmmaker and producer, lived at 153 Cromwell Road
• Mervyn Peake (1911–1968), painter and author of written works, such as the Gormenghast trilogy, lived at 1 Drayton Gardens
• Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), English composer, conductor, violist and pianist, lived at 173 Cromwell Road.
• Hattie Jacques (1922–1980), English comedy actress of stage, radio and screen including the Carry On films, lived at 67 Eardley Crescent. In November 1995 a blue plaque was unveiled at this house by Eric Sykes and Clive Dunn, who was a colleague from her Players' Theatre days.
• Willie Rushton (1937–1996), English satirist, cartoonist, co-founder of Private Eye, and much else, lived in Wallgrave Road.[18]

• William Edwardes, 2nd Baron Kensington (1777–1852), Irish peer and British Member of parliament, original developer of the Edwardes estate, where part of Earl's Court now stands. The family originated in Pembrokeshire which accounts for Earl's Court street names such as, Nevern, Penywern and Philbeach etc.
• Augustus Henry Lane-Fox (Pitt Rivers) (1827–1900), Yorkshire-born army officer, ethnologist and archaeologist lived in 19-21 Penywern Road with 11 servants from 1879 to 1881 when he inherited a vast fortune that enabled him to upgrade to Grosvenor Gardens, London, on condition he adopted the surname, Pitt Rivers.[19] He is the founder of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
• Major Sir William Palliser (1830–1882), Irish-born politician and inventor, Member of Parliament for Taunton from 1880 to his death, lived in Earl's Court Square.
• Sir Robert Gunter (1831–1905), army officer, confectioner, developer and MP and his Yorkshire ancestry left their stamp on the area not merely as builders of the huge Gunter estate, but by conferring so many West Riding of Yorkshire names through part of Earl's Court, i.e. Barkston, Bramham, Collingham, Wetherby, Knaresborough etc.
• Howard Spensley (1834–1902), Australian lawyer and British Liberal politician, lived in Earl's Court Square.
• William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet and pillar of the literary establishment, Nobel Prize winner lived at 58 Eardley Crescent during 1887 when he returned to London with his parents. His mother suffered several strokes that year.[20]
• Horace Donisthorpe (1870–1951), English myrmecologist and coleopterist, lived at 58 Kensington Mansions, Trebovir Road. Memorable for championing the renaming of the genus Lasius after him as Donisthorpea, and for discovering new species of beetles and ants, he is often considered the greatest figure in British myrmecology.
• H. G. Pelissier (1874–1913), English theatrical producer, composer and satirist, lived at 1 Nevern Square.
• Adelaide Hall (1901–1993) American jazz singer and entertainer lived at 1 Collingham Road with her husband Bert Hicks.[21]
• Stewart Granger (1913–1993), British actor, was born in Coleherne Court, Old Brompton Road, and spent most of his childhood there.[22]
• Ninette de Valois (1898–2001), founder of The Sadler's Wells, later The Royal Ballet, lived in Earl's Court Square.[23]
• Jennifer Ware (1932–2019), social activist co-founder of the Earl's Court Society among other local bodies, dubbed "The Mother of Earl's Court".[24]
• Dusty Springfield (1939–1999), popular British singer and record producer, once lived in Spear Mews.
• Syd Barrett (1946–2006) English, of Pink Floyd lived at 29 Wetherby Mansions, Earl's Court Square, from December 1968 to some time in the 1970s.[25][26][27]
• Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997), member of the British Royal Family, and the first wife of King Charles III, lived at 60 Coleherne Court, Old Brompton Road, from 1979 to 1981.[28][29][30]
• Sophie, Countess of Wessex (born 1965), like Princess Diana lived in Coleherne Court.
• Michael Gove (born 1967), British Conservative Party politician.[31]
• Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (1971–2017), English socialite and 90s It Girl lived (and died) in a flat in Bramham Gardens.[32][33]

• Michael Morpurgo (born 1943), English author, poet and playwright
• Rita Ora (born 1990), Kosovo-born British singer and actress

The introduction of two Underground stations, and a mass network of railways trapped a triangle of land on the border of the original parishes of Kensington and Fulham. After an unsuccessful attempt to build a Catholic school on the site, the idea of expanding entertainment in the area was probably inspired by the existence of the Lillie Bridge Grounds popular sports facility, just inside the Fulham boundary, next to West Brompton station. The person who was to bring it to fruition was John Robinson Whitley, an entrepreneur from Leeds who used the land as a show-ground for a number of years from 1887. Whitley did not meet with business success, but his aspirations for Earl's Court took hold for others to fulfil.

In 1895 the Great Wheel, a Ferris wheel, was created for the international impresario, Imre Kiralfy's Empire of India Exhibition. A plaque in the former Earls Court venue commemorated some of these events and that the reclusive Queen Victoria was an occasional visitor to the many shows put on at the site. In 1897 Kiralfy had the Empress Hall built to seat 6,000 in neighbouring Fulham and he had the Earl's Court grounds converted into the style of the 1893 Chicago White City for the Columbian Exposition. More was to come.

Not until 1937 was the Earls Court Exhibition Centre opened, with its striking Art Moderne façade facing Warwick Road. A new entrance to Earl's Court tube station was constructed to facilitate easy access to the Exhibition Centre, including direct entrance from the underground passage which connects the District and Piccadilly lines. This was however closed in the 1980s at around the time the capacity of the Exhibition Centre was expanded by the construction of a second exhibition hall, Earl's Court 2, which was opened by Princess Diana, herself a former Earl's Court resident.

In its heyday the Earls Court Exhibition Centre hosted many of the leading national trade fairs, including the annual British International Motor Show (1937-1976) and Royal Smithfield Show, as well as Crufts dog show and the combined forces Royal Tournament, which gave its name to the public house (now demolished) on the corner of Eardley Crescent. The biggest trade fairs migrated to the National Exhibition Centre at Birmingham Airport when it opened in 1988. The longest-running annual show was the Ideal Home Show in April, which attracted tens of thousands of visitors. Otherwise, it was increasingly used as a live music venue, hosting events such as the farewell concert by the boy-band Take That. At the other end of the scale, it was also used for arena-style opera performances of Carmen and Aida. Archive Movietone newsreel footage (which can be seen on YouTube) captures a unique and powerful rehearsal of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler playing the end of Brahms' Fourth Symphony during a post-war reconciliation visit to London.

The Prince of Teck is a Grade II listed pub at Earl's Court Road.[36]

A located in the Earl's Court Road, is a nursery and garden shop backing onto Pembroke Square where most of the signs, especially for spring bulbs, are still hand-written and knowledgeable staff mingle with the customers.

An early 1940s and 50s Bohemian haunt in the Earl's Court Road was the café, el Cubano, which had piped music and an authentic Italian steam Gaggia coffee machine <ref>https://www.gaggia.com/legacy </ref> a rarity in those days. It was few doors down from the bakery, Beaton's, whose only other outlet was on the King's Road, Chelsea. Also from that era was the theatre club, Bolton's that in 1955 transformed into arthouse cinema, the Paris Pullman in Drayton Gardens.

The Troubadour is a coffee house and a small music venue, which has hosted emerging talent since 1954 – including Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix[37] and Elvis Costello.

The Drayton Arms is a Grade II listed public house at 153 Old Brompton Road, which is also a theatrical venue.[38]

The Finborough Theatre, which opened in 1980, is the neighbourhood's local theatre.

Earl's Court Village is the centre of the British Filipino community, with a number of restaurants (including the UK's first Jollibee location), supermarkets (many of which also serve take-away food) and banks.

The area also has a police box of the type used for the TARDIS time machine in the BBC Television series Doctor Who. The blue police box located outside Earl's Court underground station in Earl's Court Road is actually a replica of the traditional GPO police telephone boxes that were once a common sight in the UK from the early 1920s.[39]

Wetherby Mews, Earl's Court

Earl's Court adds to the Royal Borough's tally of almost 50 garden squares. Within SW5 they include:

• Barkston Gardens
• Bina Gardens
• Bolton Gardens
• Bramham Gardens
• Collingham Gardens
• Courtfield Gardens
• Earl's Court Square
• Gledhow Gardens
• Nevern Square
• Philbeach Gardens
• Wetherby Gardens

The mews include:

• Courtfield Mews
• Dove Mews
• Farnell Mews
• Gasper Mews
• Hesper Mews
• Kramer Mews
• Laverton Mews
• Morton Mews
• Old Manor Yard
• Redfield Mews
• Spear Mews
• Wetherby Mews

Earl's Court station Warwick Road entrance1

• Earl's Court tube station, served by the District and Piccadilly lines
• West Brompton station, served by the District line's Wimbledon branch and London Overground
• Gloucester Road tube station, served by the Circle, District and Piccadilly lines

328, 430, 74, C1, C3.

These have replaced the former routes 31 that used to run from World's End to Kilburn and the old bus route 74B that ran from Hammersmith to London Zoo.

When Ernest Marples was transport minister (1962-1964), it was decided to turn part of Earl's Court Road, from the junction with Pembroke Road, into a southward one-way arterial road and the parallel Warwick Road as the northward arterial road, going past the then Earl's Court Exhibition Centre. A third arterial road at right angles to the former two is the Cromwell Road, designated as the A4 that carries traffic between central London and Heathrow Airport and beyond to the West. A fourth road that creates a box with the other three is the A 3218, Old Brompton Road, better described as a trunk road.

• Chelsea
• South Kensington
• West Brompton
• West Kensington
• Fulham