Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
with modern sculpture, is the
Kyoto Garden
, a Japanese-style sanctuary to the
northwest of the house, complete with koi carp and peacocks.
Holland Park artists' colony
Several wealthy Victorian artists rather self-consciously founded an
artists' colony
around the fringes of Holland Park, and a number of their highly individual mansions
are still standing. First and foremost is
Leighton House
, now a museum (see below).
Leighton's neighbours included G.F. Watts and Holman Hunt, Marcus Stone,
illustrator of Dickens, and, in the most outrageous house of all, architect William
Burges, who designed his own medieval folly, the
Tower House
, at 29 Melbury Rd, now
owned by Led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page. Slightly further afield, at 8 Addison Rd,
is the Arts and Crafts
Debenham House
, designed by Halsey Ricardo in 1906 for the
department-store Debenham family. The exterior is covered with peacock-blue and
emerald-green tiles and bricks; the interior, which features a wonderful neo-Byzantine
domed hall, is even more impressive. Sadly, both houses are closed to the public.
19
Leighton House Museum
12 Holland Park Rd • Daily except Tues 10am-5.30pm • £5 •
T
020 7602 3316,
W
rbkc.gov.uk •
!
High Street Kensington
Leighton House
, the “House Beautiful”, was built for Frederic Leighton, president of
the Royal Academy and the only artist to be made a peer (albeit on his deathbed). “It
will be opulence, it will be sincerity”, the artist opined before starting work on the
house in the 1860s.
The entrance hall, with its walls of peacock-blue de Morgan tiles, is wonderfully
lugubrious, but the star attraction is the remarkable domed
Arab Hall
, built in 1877.
Based on a Moorish palace in Palermo, it resounds to the trickle of a central black marble
fountain, and is decorated with Saracen tiles, gilded mosaics and latticework drawn from
all over the Islamic world. The other rooms are less spectacular in comparison, but are
hung with excellent paintings by Lord Leighton and his Pre-Raphaelite friends, Burne-
Jones, Alma-Tadema, Watts and Millais - there's even a Tintoretto. Skylights brighten the
upper floor, which contains a lovely gilded boudoir looking down onto the Arab Hall and
Leighton's vast studio, where he used to hold evening concerts.
18 Stafford Terrace
18 Stafford Terrace • Guided tours Wed 11.15am & 2.15pm, Sat & Sun 11.15am, 1, 2.15 & 3.30pm • £8 •
T
020 7602 3316,
W
rbkc.gov.uk •
!
High Street Kensington
18 Stafford Terrace
is
where the successful
Punch
cartoonist, Linley Sambourne, lived
until his death in 1910. A grand, though fairly ordinary stuccoed terrace house by
Kensington standards, it's less a tribute to the artist (though it does contain a huge
selection of Sambourne's works) and more a showpiece for the Victorian Society, which
helps maintain the house in all its cluttered, late-Victorian excess, complete with
stained glass, heavy furnishings and richly decorative William Morris wallpaper. The
ninety-minute guided tours are great fun, and, on weekend afternoons, are led by an
actor in period garb; there are also occasional evening tours which re-create a night in
with the Sambournes.
Bayswater and Paddington
It wasn't until the removal of the gallows at Tyburn (see p.241) that the area to the
north of Hyde Park
began to gain respectability. The arrival of the Great Western
Railway at Paddington in 1838 further encouraged development, and the gentrification
of
Bayswater
, the area immediately north of the park, began with the construction of
an estate called Tyburnia. These days Bayswater is mainly residential, and a focus for
London's widely dispersed Arab community, who are catered for by some excellent
restaurants and cafés along the busy
Edgware Road
.
