Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
MUSEUM OF BRANDS
LEIGHTON HOUSE
12 Holland Park Rd High Street Kensington 020 7602 3316,
www.rbkc.gov.uk/museums
.Daily except
Tues 10am-5.30pm.£7.
MAP
Leighton House was built by the architect George Aitchison for Frederic Leighton, Presid-
ent of the Royal Academy and the only artist ever to be made a peer (albeit on his
deathbed). “It will be opulence, it will be sincerity”, the artist opined before construction
commenced in the 1860s. The big attraction is its domed
Arab Hall
. Based on the banquet-
ing hall of a Moorish palace in Palermo, it has a central black marble fountain, and is decor-
ated with Saracen tiles, gilded mosaics and latticework drawn from all over the Islamic
world. The other rooms are less spectacular but in compensation are hung with excellent
paintings by Lord Leighton and his Pre-Raphaelite friends Edward Burne-Jones, Lawrence
Alma-Tadema and John Everett Millais.
HOLLAND PARK
Holland Park or High Street Kensington.Daily 7.30am-dusk.
MAP
Holland Park is laid out in the former grounds of the Jacobean mansion of Holland House -
sadly only the east wing survived the war, but it's enough to give an idea of what the place
looked like. Several formal gardens are laid out before the house, drifting down in terraces
to a café, a restaurant (the former Garden Ballroom) and an art gallery. The most unusual of
the gardens is the
Kyoto Garden
, a Japanese-style sanctuary to the northwest of the house,
peppered with modern sculpture and complete with koi carp and peacocks.
KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY
Harrow Rd Kensal Green 020 8969 0152,
www.kensalgreencemetery.com
.Daily: April-Sept Mon-Sat
9am-6pm, Sun 10am-6pm; Oct-March Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 10am-5pm.Free.
MAP
Opened in 1833, Kensal Green Cemetery was the first of the city's commercial graveyards,
and contains some of London's most extravagant Gothic tombs. The cemetery is vast, so it
makes sense to join one of the
guided tours
that take place most Sundays at 2pm (£7), and
include a visit to the catacombs (bring a torch) on the first and third Sunday of the month.
Graves of the more famous incumbents - Thackeray, Trollope, Siemens and the Brunels -
are less interesting architecturally than those on either side of the
Centre Avenue
, which
leads from the eastern entrance on Harrow Road. Worth looking out for are Major-General
Casement's bier, held up by four grim-looking turbaned Indians; circus manager Andrew
Ducrow's conglomeration of beehive, sphinx and angels; and artist William Mulready's neo-
Renaissance extravaganza.
