Queen's Gate Living
Gore Street
Gore Street is an appealing mixture of styles in an area where long terraces of almost identical houses can seem monotonous. It’s not a long street. It runs between Queen’s Gate and Elvaston Place, with Petersham Place running off it.
At one end is a large white stuccoed mansion which combines classical pediments with an elaborate Dutch-inspired front gable. At the other end are more restrained brick-faced houses with a bare minimum of stucco (at least by Victorian standards of restraint).
There is at least one mansion block which goes to quite the opposite extreme. It is a wedding cake of a house with an entrance block the size of a bungalow and floors rising above it in tiers of white stucco (some ‘rusticated’ to look like painted stone work), leading to a huge cornice above the third floor with yet more floors above.
More modest houses on two floors with a basement nestle next to the arched entrance into Petersham Place.
Some original houses have been replaced by modern brick houses. But they fit in so well, mirroring architectural features in the neighbouring ‘period’ houses, that you really don’t notice. These houses are mostly on three floors above a basement.
There aren’t a huge number of trees, but just enough to give a friendly feel to the street.
Gore Street probably took its name from Gore Lane, which had been one of the country roads when Kensington was a rural area still well outside London. There had also been a Gore House nearby. Gore Street marked the boundary between the land of the Harrington family (on the west side) and land belonging to the 1851 Commissioners (on the east side).
In 1860 James Whatman took a lease from the 1851 Commissioners of their land on the west side of Queen’s Gate including this part. But he was having difficulties selling the houses he had already built in Queen’s Gate so no building took place in Gore Street. In about 1865 Charles Aldin, who had built most of the surrounding area but had sold out to Whatman when his own finances were shaky, was in a position to return the favour and he took over the contract on this section of land. The houses in Gore Street were built in about 1868.
