Colville Gardens is a

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

cul-de-sac street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, located north of Colville Terrace and east of the

Portobello Market is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from South to North, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobell ...

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 wikt:cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan and multiculturalism, multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting ...

, London, England. It is bordered on the north side by

All Saints' Church All Saints Church, or All Saints' Church or variations on the name may refer to: Albania * All Saints' Church, Himarë Australia * All Saints Church, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory * All Saints Anglican Church, Brisbane, Queensland *All ...

. Colville is also a ward of the Royal Borough. The population of the ward at the 2011 Census was 8,377.

History

Colville Gardens was initially laid out in the 1870s by the builder George Frederick Tippett, who also developed much of the rest of the neighbourhood. It is possible that the street was named after the Colville Family, Scottish steel magnates. The houses were intended as single family homes for the well-to-do but, from the beginning, it proved difficult to attract wealthy buyers to the area and as early as 1888, the buildings began to be subdivided into flats.O'Malley In 1885, Tippett was declared bankrupt. He attributed his failure to "his inability to let a large portion of his property and to the pressure of secured creditors". Gradually, the character of the buildings changed as wealthier tenants left the area.O'Malley By 1928, the neighbourhood was described as "rapidly becoming poorer" and, by 1935, as a "largely slum area...large houses turned into one-room tenements and small flats".O'Malley Further decline set in as residents moved away during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

to escape

The Blitz The Blitz (English: "flash") was a Nazi Germany, German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, for eight months, from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941, during the Second World War. Towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940, a co ...

and, indeed, one of the buildings at the end of the street was destroyed by bombing, which also damaged numerous other buildings including All Saints' Church. The street continued to deteriorate in the 1960s and 1970s, along with the rest of Notting Hill, and the neighbourhood became notorious for the predatory business practices of

slum landlord A slumlord (or slum landlord) is a slang term for a landlord, generally an absentee landlord with more than one property, who attempts to maximize profit by minimizing spending on property maintenance, and usually rents to tenants that they can ...

Peter Rachman Perec "Peter" Rachman (16 August 1919 – 29 November 1962) was a Polish-born landlord who operated in Notting Hill, London, England, in the 1950s and early 1960s. He became notorious for his exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanis ...

. However, from the 1980s onwards, the street gradually improved, reflecting the general revival of Notting Hill in recent years. 1-9 Colville Gardens, formerly a notorious slum building, was rebranded as

Pinehurst Court Pinehurst Court is a portered Victorian mansion block at 1-9 Colville Gardens, just off Colville Terrace and near the Portobello Market in Notting Hill, London, England. The terrace was initially built in the 1870s by the builder George Frederi ...

in the 1970s and now comprises around 105 one and two bedroom flats, mostly leased to private tenants on long leases of 100 years or more.

Notable residents

John Gawsworth Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong (29 June 1912 – 23 September 1970), better known as John Gawsworth (and also sometimes known as T. I. F. Armstrong), was a British writer, poet and compiler of anthologies, both of poetry and of short stories. He a ...

(1912–1970), writer, poet and compiler of anthologies, grew up in Colville Gardens. He was crowned the king of the tiny

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

island of

Redonda Redonda is an List of uninhabited regions, uninhabited Caribbean island which is a dependency of Saint John, Antigua and Barbuda, in the Leeward Islands, West Indies. The island is about long, wide, and is high at its highest point. It lie ...

in 1947, and became known as King Juan I. His real name was Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong.Richard Tames, ''The Notting Hill & Holland Park Book Past and Present'', Historical Publications, 2004

References

*''The Politics of Community Action in Notting Hill'', Jan O'Malley, Spokesman Press, 1977 *''The Portobello and St. Quintin estates'', Survey of London: volume 37: Northern Kensington (1973)
History of the Portobello and St Quintin Estates
Retrieved 20 February 2010

History

Notable residents

References

Notes

See also