1 Drayton Gardens, Kensington and Chelsea (5492246012)

Drayton Gardens is a residential street linking the areas of

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

and

South Kensington South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...

, London SW10. It runs roughly north to south from

Old Brompton Road Old Brompton Road is a major street in the South Kensington district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It starts from South Kensington Underground station and runs south-west, through a mainly residential area, until i ...

Fulham Road Fulham Road is a street in London, England, which comprises the A304 and part of the A308. Overview Fulham Road ( the A219) runs from Putney Bridge as "Fulham High Street" and then eastward to Fulham Broadway, in the London Borough of Hamme ...

History

Drayton Gardens was once a "rustic lane" in the hamlet of Brompton, lined with a mix of

market garden A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under to ...

s and country houses, until more suburban villas began to be built in the early 1800s. Later, some of the older houses were demolished, and

mansion block An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are man ...

s appeared, including Drayton Court in 1902, and Onslow Court in 1935. The northern half (1-39 and 4-56) formed part of the Day Estate, and was a three-acre field known as Rosehall or Rose Hawe, which the Day family acquired by the marriage in 1743 of Benjamin Day, the son of a wealthy Norwich weaver, to Ann Dodemead, daughter and co-heir of Walter Dodemead of Covent Garden.

Notable buildings and residents

Scientist Rosalind Franklin, who discovered the structure of DNA, lived at number 107 (Donovan Court) until her death, and in 1992,

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

placed a commemorative blue plaque. The socialite Dorothy Fellowes-Gordon and her lifelong companion, the gossip columnist

Elsa Maxwell Elsa Maxwell (May 24, 1883 – November 1, 1963) was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, screenwriter, radio personality and professional hostess renowned for her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day. Max ...

lived there from 1912."Inventing Elsa Maxwell: How an Irrepressible Nobody Conquered High Society"
By Sam Staggs, St. Martin's Press, Oct 16, 2012 In 1926,

Margery Blackie Margery Grace Blackie CVO MD, FFHom (4 February 1898 – 24 August 1981) was a British Doctor of Medicine who was appointed as the first woman royal physician to Queen Elizabeth II. Early life Blackie was born at Redbourn, Hertfordshire, o ...

homeopath Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a dise ...

to Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

, established a practice there. Bolton's Picture Playhouse, which opened in 1911, gave way to

Bolton's Theatre Club Bolton's Theatre Club in Drayton Gardens, Brompton, London launched in 1947 in a building originally opened in 1911 as the ''Radium Picture Playhouse''. By operating as a club where membership was obligatory, the theatre was able to stage plays w ...

in 1947. Until the passage of

Theatres Act 1968 The Theatres Act 1968 abolished censorship of the stage in the United Kingdom, receiving royal assent on 26 July 1968, after passing both Houses of Parliament.West End. After closure and conversion, the building was reopened in 1955 by James Quinn as the Paris Pullman Cinema, which showed art-house films. The final closure came in 1983, when the building was demolished and replaced by a block of flats. From 1960 until his death in 1968, the author and artist

Mervyn Peake Mervyn Laurence Peake (9 July 1911 – 17 November 1968) was an English writer, artist, poet, and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the '' Gormenghast'' books. The four works were part of what Peake conceived ...

lived at no 1. His widow

Maeve Gilmore Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore (14 June 19173 August 1983) was a British painter, sculptor and writer, and the wife of author Mervyn Peake. Early life Gilmore was born in 1917 and brought up in Brixton, south London, where her father, ...

, artist and memoirist, continued to live there until her death, having decorated the house with murals. Adelaide Hall, the jazz singer and entertainer, lived at no 74, with her husband Bert Hicks.

Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 1st Baronet Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 1st Baronet, CB, FRCS (4 July 1856 – 16 January 1943) was a British surgeon and physician. He mastered orthopaedic, abdominal, and ear, nose and throat surgery, while designing new surgical instruments towa ...

and Lady Frittie Arbuthnot Lane lived next door at no 72. St John Philby, the orientalist and explorer, lived in Grove Court in a flat belonging to his wife Dora. It was there that his son

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secr ...

, the notorious NKVD/KGB agent, betrayed Erich Vermehren to the Russians after his defection from the German Abwehr to MI6 in 1944; and where ten years later he organised a press conference at which he temporarily convinced the public that he was not the "Fourth Man".

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drayton Gardens

Drayton Gardens Drayton Gardens is a residential street linking the areas of Chelsea, London, Chelsea and South Kensington, London SW10. It runs roughly north to south from Old Brompton Road to Fulham Road. History Drayton Gardens was once a "rustic lane" in t ...

South Kensington 1800s establishments in England Streets in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea