Queen's Gate Living
Elvaston Place
Elvaston Place, which runs from Petersham Lane to Queen’s Gate, has striking similarities to Onslow Gardens in the colour of the brickwork and the Italianate feel of the design. It is an exclusively residential street but it is very close to the shops and restaurants in Gloucester Road. The street is wide with additional parking available in the middle of the road as well as on both sides. Due to the width of the street there is a particular feeling of space and light.
The houses are grand and are built as unified terraces from one street junction to the next. Like most grand Victorian terraces, all the houses have basements with separate entrances (for tradesmen and servants) down some stairs behind the front paved area. The main entrances on the ground floors have porticoed entrances. These are paired so that three columns support the two porticoes. In between the porticoes are the main ground floor rooms which have large bay windows also projecting into the area between the building façade and the street.
Running right along the top of the porticoes and the bay windows is a balustrade which serves as a balcony outside the first floor windows. The first floor windows themselves are particularly striking on some of the terraces (reflecting the era when the main living rooms of a rich family would be on that floor). They are triple windows with a main central window topped with a pediment and smaller windows on either side.
The second and third floors are only slightly less ornate, with perhaps a curved rather than a triangular pediment, and a string course in between floor levels. An elaborate cornice generally runs above the third floor, with a fourth floor below the roof level. In some cases there is an attic floor in the roof itself.
The buildings are mainly light milky-coloured brick. The ornamentation is provided by the surrounds of the doors and windows which are all stuccoed with varying quantities of moulding and pediments.
The Earl of Harrington owned most of the land on which Elvaston Place was built. However, the Queen’s Gate end (east of Gore Street) belonged to the 1851 Commissioners.
The Earl of Harrington had a building agreement with the William Jackson under which Jackson was to erect houses on Harrington’s land in Elvaston Place. But Jackson was temporarily in financial difficulties and another contractor, Charles Aldin, took over the project in 1856.
In the early 1860s Aldin built Nos. 1 to 20 (the north side) and 32 to 46 Elvaston Place (the south side between Gloucester Road and Queen’s Gate Place). When he started work Elvaston Place ran from Gloucester Road only as far as Gore Street since that was the boundary of the Earl of Harrington’s land. So all Aldin’s houses of that time were built in that section. The houses on the north side were quickly sold by 1867. The markets slowed down and it was 1872 before all the houses on the south side were sold.
Nos. 26 to 31 (on the east side of Queen’s Gate Place) were built in between 1866 and 1888 along with Elvaston Mews.
Later the 1851 Commissioners, who owned the land between Gore Street and Queen's Gate, agreed to the extension of Elvaston Place to join Queen's Gate on the east and in about 1868 Aldin built Nos. 21 and 22 on the north side and Nos. 23 to 25 on the south side.
For many of his houses Aldin did not use stucco, but faced the properties with gaults or white Suffolk bricks. The architect may have included W J Mayhew and C J Richardson, who was the Harrington estate surveyor as well as an architect on his own account.
