Road to Nowhere

Royal Avenue Looking North 2013 (© Ellen Leslie)

Royal Avenue Looking South 2013 (© Ellen Leslie)

At weekends I like to explore little historic pockets of London. Yesterday I checked out the peaceful streets behind the bustling King's Road in Chelsea.  One of the curiosities I found was a beautiful avenue of Horse Chestnut trees lining a long gravelled open space with gullies either side. The trees were flanked by the fine stuccoed townhouses synonymous with this part of London. Usually, there is a private garden in the middle of these elegant spaces; but not here. What made it different? I checked the street name “Royal Avenue”.  Looking south the trees stopped opposite a fine set of gates that lead to Burton Court and The Royal Hospital (a 17th century home for army veterans established by Charles II and designed by Sir Christopher Wren).  At the other end it met with the buzzing and trendy Kings Road.

1797 Map by Cary, showing "White Stiles"

Looking into this curious yet pretty arrangement, I found that Royal Avenue also owed its existence to Sir Christopher Wren. When it was laid out in the late 17th century there were no houses lining it. But looking further into the history of this small stretch of road, there seems to be a discrepancy between when it was built, for whom and why.

Royal Avenue by William Evelyn Osborn 1900 (© Tate)

The plaque displayed on the site says the Avenue was sponsored by King Charles II, but that on his death in 1685 there was no more money to continue its development. Others say, and they are possibly more reliable sources, that it was built in the early 1690s for William III and Mary II as a direct carriageway  from The Royal Hospital to their new residence Kensington Palace (previously Nottingham House). However, why it went no further than the King’s Road is not known, although lack of funds is the most probable reason.

By 1748 the short road was known as White Stiles, because of the white fencing that lined the avenue, but was eventually renamed Royal Avenue in the early 19th century when the town houses were built around it. Famous residents of Royal Avenue include Fanny Cornforth artist's model and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti who lived there 1869-1877 and  the film director, Jospeh Losey who moved to the UK in the 1950s to avoid the McCarthy Witch Hunts. One little additional finding .... Avenue Road is the fictional home of James Bond.

Fanny Cornforth

Kew Palace

This weekend, I had the fantastic opportunity to go on a photographic course at Kew Palace, in Richmond. It was run by Historic Royal Palaces and led by photographer Emily Harris. I love taking pictures of architecture, as I hope my Facebook and Flickr pages show, but I was useless at photographing indoors and this course was specifically for learning how to capture historic interiors with a digital SLR camera. We were a select group of 7 and had the small but perfectly formed “Palace” to ourselves as the place is officially closed to the public in the autumn and winter months.

Kew Palace is one of HRP’s more recent restorations. I had the privilege of visiting it half way through the restoration/conservation back in 2006, so it was a pleasure to see the place in a more finished state. Not that it is has been completely returned to resemble a royal residence. While some rooms have been painstakingly decorated and furnished to show how the house may have looked in about 1808, there are whole rooms untouched, with bare floorboards and unfinished walls. These allow you to see how the walls were constructed, layer by layer and give a fleeting look at the earlier, 17^th century fabric of the building behind.

Kew Palace has its origins in the 16^th century, with a Tudor undercroft as testament. It used to be called The Dutch House as it is constructed in the unmistakeable Dutch style and inside is laid out over 3 floors with the undercroft below and servants living quarters in the attic.

The exterior structure we see today was built in the 17^th century, the home of a wealthy merchant and was then converted to be a home for King George III his wife Queen Charlotte and 10 of their 15 children. Spending my day there, I learned that the house was mainly for the children and the Queen. George lived in an extension to the house, long since demolished. This was because George III was the unfortunate monarch who suffered from the disease “Porphyria” which manifested itself mainly in apparent raving madness.

But in his moments of sanity George and his wife were a devoted loving couple, who enjoyed the relative simplicity and small scale living at Kew with their children. Not that it was much fun for 3 of their daughters who lived there; liking its remoteness and their lack of a social life to being in a nunnery!

When one’s abiding passions are historic buildings and photography there isn't much about an historic interiors photography day at Kew that I could fault. In fact there wasn't. As a result, I like to think I can now take a mean interior shot and that this’ll translate in the research I prepare for my clients. But above all, my abiding memory will be having such privileged access for a whole day in one of Historic Royal Palace’s most beautiful and remarkable buildings.

Some of the photographs I took from the day will be posted on the Historic Buildings Research Facebook page and on my Flickr page too.