Holland Park Living
Addison Road (part 1)
Addison Road takes its name from Joseph Addison who lived at Holland House. He was an essayist and poet of the late 17th Century whose main claim to fame now is as the founder of the Spectator.
This is a long road stretching from Holland Park Avenue to Kensington High Street. The southern part consists of a busy southbound one-way traffic system. At this end there are two large modern blocks of flats set back from the road. The middle part of the road is the most attractive. It is quiet, tree-lined and has mainly large detached and semi-detached villas, usually painted white. At the north end of Addison Road is Addison Court and unusual 1930’s style 8 storey block of flats.
Many of the houses have large front gardens with small sweeping driveways, and are well set back from the road behind high front walls and gates ensuring maximum secrecy. The grandest house in Addison Road is an ornate blue and green glazed-brick and tiled mansion known as ‘The Peacock House’. This Grade I listed mansion was recently on the market for around £20 million. (This price took into account the fact that it needed considerable refurbishment and repairs). It was built in 1906 for Ernest Debenham of the supermarket store of the same name.
Addison Road was the first street to be constructed for new house development on the Holland estate. Its purpose was to provide a connection between Holland Park Avenue and Kensington High Street. The road was constructed by William Woods, a builder, who began work in about 1824. There is a curve in the road where it goes round St Barnabas Church. This was not out of respect for the church but because the builders had to work round some extensive ponds called “the Moats”, which weren’t finally filled in until about 1900.
Woods built a number of houses on the east side of Addison Road in the 1820s. They consisted of large and small villas (Nos. 2-7 Addison Road), the church, and a short terrace. Nos. 2-7 Addison Road were replaced by the 130 houses of the Woodsford Square development built by Wates in the 1960s.
There was a building slump in the 1830s and it was 1839 before Woods returned to the estate to build Nos. 8-17 Addison Road on the east side of Addison Road, partly on land leased to him direct by Lord Holland, and partly on plots he took over from another developer, Nicholas Phillips Rothery. (Nos. 8-10 were knocked down in 1905 and the present No. 8 was built in their place.) They were all stucco-faced houses, with basements, but with different numbers of upper storeys. Nos. 11, 14 and 15 have two upper storeys; Nos. 12, 13, 16 and 17 have three. They are all semi-detached except for No. 11 which was built as a double-fronted house. Nos. 12 and 13 have porches and balconies at ground floor level. Nos. 14 and 15 display an elaborately decorated frieze at the top of the façade.
