A History of Cleveland Square

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The Victorian London populated by the characters in Dickens's novels was in reality largely Georgian, there were new highways, and railways cut through it, there were embankments and constantly shifting new styles but the substantial architectural inheritance was still largely Georgian, though the new London inhabited by people like the Veneerings in Our Mutual Friend was the early Victorian stuccoed Belgravia linking the old Regency street architecture to the new. For the most part however the first twenty years of the Victorian age saw no radical change in the previous Georgian principles, the whole of Bayswater, from Marble Arch to Notting Hill and beyond to Shepherd's Bush, the whole of Pimlico, the whole of North Kensington, South Kensington, Brompton and Earls Court were built in a recognisably Georgian style, though the Gothic element too played an increasing part, especially in the architecture of churches and homes in the 1840s and 50s.

Cleveland Square 1900 (sepiaviews.co.uk)

Unlike other large European cities London was not constructed on a preconceived plan. It grew from the random aglomeration of villages which were gradually absorbed as the population grew and as private enterprise provided housing solutions. The consequence was that, as Percy Hunter said in 1885, 'Architecturally, London may be said to represent chaos itself'. There were model dwellings for the working class, there were pretentious hotels, railway stations, domestic suburban Gothic. Elsewhere in the important manufacturing towns of the north like Manchester there were huge warehouses, municipal and commercial buildings, and still cheek by jowl with these buildings were the slums.

The most spacious and dignified avenue is Westbourne Terrace, begun c.1840 and 'unrivalled in its class in London or even Great Britain'. The houses form long stuccoed terraces of four storeys and attic over a basement, with pillared porches, many of them designed by T. Marsh Nelson. They face carriage drives and were separated on either side from the tree-shaded roadway by screen walls surmounted by railings. The parallel Gloucester Terrace is also mostly of the mid 19th century, longer but narrower; for much of its length each house, of three storeys and a basement, has a segmental bay and a shallow porch. Part of the western side has been replaced by modest brick neo-Georgian flats, including Devonshire Court, and the southern end consists of taller blocks: the seven-storeyed Maitland Court to the east and Garson, Gibray, and Carroll houses, from six to ten storeys, reaching to Craven Terrace, to the west. Although houses near the north-western end have made way for the Hallfield estate, Gloucester Terrace still provides a vista stretching north of Bishop's Bridge Road. In contrast Eastbourne Terrace has been entirely rebuilt by C. H. Elsom, whose higher and lower office blocks of 1957-9, 'a gaunt bit of plain speaking', have been praised as forming a sequence as unified as that of the stuccoed ranges to the west.

Between Gloucester and Porchester terraces there are many tall, tree-shaded rows, stuccoed and with pillared porches, with some discreet infilling. Cleveland Square, which rivalled Lancaster Gate as the most expensive address in Bayswater, has an unusually large private garden to serve the massive range of six storeys and basements on its north side. Less spacious enclosures are in Queen's Gardens and Craven Hill Gardens, to the south. Leinster Gardens is noted for two sham houses, opposite no. 23, whose façades mask a surfacing of the Underground railway. Beyond Porchester Terrace, part of the narrower Queensborough Terrace and much of Inverness Terrace are similarly made up of stuccoed four- or five-storeyed rows. Inverness Terrace has two symmetrical ranges facing each other, with centrepieces, Corinthian pilasters, and continuous balconies. The ornate Inverness Court hotel is a former private house, remodelled, with its own theatre, for Louis Spitzel (d.1906) by Mewès & Davis, architects of the Ritz.

From: 'Paddington: Bayswater', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume IX: Hampstead, Paddington (1989), pp. 204-12. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22666. Date accessed: 16 May 2005.

Lancaster Gate derives its name from one of the nearby entrances to Hyde Park. In the mid-Victorian era the area was transformed from open countryside to a scene of splendid architecture and became one of London’s most sought after addresses, steadily acquiring impressive alumni – from the likes of Samuel Montagu to Lytton Stratchey. Its remarkable position, that of being situated between Holland Park and Mayfair and next to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, ensured its enduring success.

It declined after the second world war and despite its many attractive garden squares and proximity to the West End and Hyde Park it became a transient area with numerous budget hotels. Growth in the number of city workers and overspill from Notting Hill means that Bayswater is again on the march. The Heathrow Express service from Paddington (15 minutes) and excellent tube links to the city has meant that the area has been rediscovered. Queensway offers a fusion of cultures with convenient late night eating and shopping.

Cleveland Square Late C19th