Holland Park Living
Addison Road (part 2)
No. 63 on the west side of the road is the only other original house from the early period. It was built by Richard Stanham, a carpenter, in 1829 together with No. 62 which was rebuilt in 1852. Nos. 36-39 Addison Road (almost opposite Holland Park Road) were built by 1845 by James Mugford Macey of Drury Lane. The houses were called Vassall Cottages. There are brick-faced houses built as pairs and having two storeys and basements. Each pair of houses is topped with a pediment above stuccoed cornices.
Between those houses and Napier Road, Thomas Moore built Nos. 40-47 Addison Road, a terrace originally called Warwick Villas. Moore was also the builder of houses in Holland Place. The houses were built in about 1850. They are all in the Gothic style favoured by the Victorians at the time. The end houses, Nos. 40 and 47, are double-fronted. The six inner houses are built as matching pairs. The Gothic features are most evident in the elaborate bay windows with little buttresses and battlements.
Beyond Napier Road, the next range of houses are Nos. 50-59, opposite St Barnabas Church. They were built between 1852 and 1855 by John Parkinson, a builder from Hammersmith, and they were originally called Abbotsford Villas.
Nos. 48, 49 and 60-61 Addison Road are detached houses, built in 1856-7 by Nicholson and Son of Wandsworth. The rest of the houses on the west side of Addison Road were mainly built by the builder, James Hall. He built about 120 houses in the estate in the 1850s. He also built extensively in the Chepstow Villas and Pembridge Place area.By 1860 Hall had constructed Nos. 64-69 between the two ends of Addison Crescent. (No. 69 was later demolished).
Hall’s project continued on the other side of Addison Crescent where he built Nos. 70-84 at the same time as Nos. 64-69 and to a similar pattern. (No. 70, the corner property, was later demolished.) His most northern houses were Nos. 85 to 88 which are larger brick-faced houses.
Near Cardinal Vaughan School (where Holland Park Gardens begins) an 8-storey block of flats called Addisland Court was built in the 1930s. The land formerly occupied by No. 1 Addison Road, one of the large villas built by William Woods, became available for development in 1873 on the death of Charles Richard Fox, the owner. Fox was the elder son of Lord and Lady Holland. Since he was born before they were married, he could not succeed to the title. His father gave him No. 1 Addison Road. Being a bastard was not a problem in Georgian England. Fox married the daughter of the future King William IV and became a general. When he died in 1873 the house was demolished.
The first houses on Fox’s land were Nos. 94-100, built about 1880 on the west side of the Addison Road extension, just below Holland Park Avenue. (No. 96 no longer exists.) In around 1900, two blocks of flats, Holland Park Court and Carlton Mansions, were built on the remaining land.
