Holland Park is an area of Kensington, on the western edge of Central London, that contains a street and public park of the same name. It has no official boundaries but is roughly bounded by Kensington High Street to the south, Holland Road to the west,

Holland Park Avenue Holland Park Avenue is a street located in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in west central London. The street runs from Notting Hill Gate in the east to the Holland Park Roundabout in the west, forms a part of the old west road c ...

to the north, and

Kensington Church Street Kensington Church Street is a shopping street in Kensington, London, England, designated the A4204, and traditionally known for its art and antiques shops. Buildings at the southern end date back to the early 1700s. It is named after Kensington ...

to the east. Adjacent districts are

Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road Ma ...

to the north,

Earl's Court Earl's Court is a district of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London, bordering the rail tracks of the West London line and District line that separate it from the ancient borough of Fulham to the west, the ...

to the south, and Shepherd's Bush to the northwest. The area is principally composed of tree-lined streets with large Victorian

townhouse A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residence ...

s, and contains many shops, cultural tourist attractions such as the Design Museum, luxury spas, hotels, and restaurants, as well as the embassies of several countries. The street of Holland Park is formed from three linked roads constructed between 1860 and 1880 in projects of master builders William and Francis Radford, who were contracted to build and built over 200 houses in the area. Notable nineteenth-century residential developments in the area include the Royal Crescent and Aubrey House.

History

The district was rural until the 19th century, and most of the area now referred to by the name Holland Park was formerly the grounds of a Jacobean mansion called

Holland House Holland House, originally known as Cope Castle, was an early Jacobean country house in Kensington, London, situated in a country estate that is now Holland Park. It was built in 1605 by the diplomat Sir Walter Cope. The building later passed ...

. In the later decades of that century the owners of the house sold off the more outlying parts of its grounds for residential development, and the district which evolved took its name from the house. It also included some small areas around the fringes which had never been part of the grounds of Holland House, notably the Phillimore Estate (there are at least four roads with the word Phillimore in their name) and the

Campden Hill Campden Hill is a hill in Kensington, West London, bounded by Holland Park Avenue on the north, Kensington High Street on the south, Kensington Palace Gardens on the east and Abbotsbury Road on the west. The name derives from the former ''Campden ...

Square area. In the late 19th century a number of notable artists (including

Frederic Leighton Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, (3 December 1830 – 25 January 1896), known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was a British painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subjec ...

, P.R.A. and Val Prinsep) and art collectors lived in the area, known as the

Holland Park Circle The Holland Park Circle was an informal group of 19th-century artists based in the Holland Park district of West London. George Frederick Watts, Frederic Leighton, Valentine Prinsep, Luke Fildes, Hamo Thornycroft and William Burges are consider ...

Lansdowne House

Lansdowne House, at Lansdowne Road. is a Grade II listed eight-storey building which was originally constructed in 1902-04 by Scottish architect William Flockhart, for South African mining magnate Sir Edmund Davis. The building contained apartments and artists' workshops. Among the artists who had studios in the building in the early decades of the 20th century were

Charles Ricketts Charles de Sousy Ricketts (2 October 1866 – 7 October 1931) was a British artist, illustrator, author and printer, known for his work as a book designer and typographer and for his costume and scenery designs for plays and operas. Ricketts ...

Charles Haslewood Shannon Charles Haslewood Shannon (26 April 1863 – 18 March 1937) was an English artist best known for his portraits. These appear in several major European collections, including London's National Portrait Gallery. Several authorities spell his mi ...

Glyn Philpot Glyn Warren Philpot (5 October 188416 December 1937) was a British painter and sculptor, best known for his portraits of contemporary figures such as Siegfried Sassoon and Vladimir Rosing. Early life Philpot was born in Clapham, London, but ...

Vivian Forbes Vivian Forbes (8 August 1891 – 24 December 1937) was an English soldier, painter and poet in the early 20th century, and the longtime partner of painter Glyn Philpot. Forbes was enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers and met Philpot at a trainin ...

James Pryde James Ferrier Pryde (1866–1941) was a British artist. A number of his paintings are in public collections, but there have been few exhibitions of his work. He is principally remembered as one of the Beggarstaffs, his artistic partnership wi ...

, and

Frederick Cayley Robinson Frederick Cayley Robinson (18 August 1862 – 4 January 1927) was an English artist who created paintings and applied art, including book illustrations and theatre set designs. Cayley Robinson continued to paint striking Pre-Raphaelite and ...

, who are commemorated on a blue plaque on the building. "Lansdowne House", ''Buildington.co.uk''
Retrieved 23 May 2020 The building underwent significant alterations. When, in 1957, record producer

Denis Preston Sidney Denis Preston (''né'' Prechner, 16 November 1916 – 21 October 1979) was a British record producer, recording studio owner, radio presenter and music critic. He was particularly influential in the British jazz and associated skiff ...

was looking for a property in which to set up a recording studio, his assistant engineer

Joe Meek Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 – 3 February 1967) was an English record producer, sound engineer and songwriter who pioneered space age and experimental pop music. He also assisted in the development of recording practices like over ...

found the premises, which had unusually high ceilings and a basement

squash court Squash is a racket-and-ball sport played by two or four players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow, rubber ball. The players alternate in striking the ball with their rackets onto the playable surfaces of the four walls of the court. Th ...

, suitable for conversion into a studio. Preston, Meek and engineer Adrian Kerridge then established the studio, and made their first recordings there in 1958. The studio was London's first independent music recording studio. In 1962, an enlarged control room overlooking the studio floor was opened. Kerridge later became the studio's owner. Howard Massey, ''The Great British Recording Studios'', Hal Leonard Corporation, 2015, pp.
/ref> The studios closed in 2006 and the building was subsequently converted into 13 self-contained apartments, while retaining a small recording studio.

The public park

The park covers about , with a northern half of semi-wild woodland, central section of formal garden areas, and southernmost section used for sport. Holland House is now a fragmentary ruin, having been devastated by incendiary bombing during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

in 1940, but the ruins and the grounds were bought by London County Council in 1952 from the last private owner, the 6th Earl of Ilchester. Today the remains of the house form a backdrop for the open air Holland Park Theatre, which is the home of

Opera Holland Park Opera Holland Park is a summer opera company which produces an annual season of opera performances, staged under a temporary canopy in front of the remains of Holland House, a Blitz-damaged building in Holland Park, west central London. The venu ...

. To the immediate south of the park is the former site of the

Commonwealth Institute The Commonwealth Education Trust is a registered charity established in 2007 as the successor trust to the Commonwealth Institute. The trust focuses on primary and secondary education and the training of teachers and invests on educational pro ...

, now home to the Design Museum. The park contains a café, as well as the Belvedere Restaurant that is attached to the

orangery An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very lar ...

, a giant

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

set, a

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

pitch, tennis courts, two Japanese gardens - the Kyoto Garden (1991) and Fukushima Memorial Garden (2012), a

youth hostel A hostel is a form of low-cost, short-term shared sociable lodging where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed in a dormitory, with shared use of a lounge and sometimes a kitchen. Rooms can be mixed or single-sex and have private or shared ...

, a children's playground, squirrels and

peacock Peafowl is a common name for three bird species in the genera '' Pavo'' and '' Afropavo'' within the tribe Pavonini of the family Phasianidae, the pheasants and their allies. Male peafowl are referred to as peacocks, and female peafowl are r ...

s. In 2010, the park set aside a section for pigs whose job was to reclaim the area from nettles etc., in order to create another meadow area for wild flowers and fauna. Cattle were used subsequently to similar effect. The Holland Park Ecology Centre (2013), operated by the borough's Ecology Service, offers environmental education programs including nature walks, talks, programs for schools and outdoor activity programs for children.

References

External links

The local council's page on the parkFriends of Holland ParkOpera Holland ParkHolland Park Chess
{{Authority control Districts of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Parks and open spaces in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Nature centres in England Gardens by Capability Brown Grade II listed parks and gardens in London