SOUTH KENSINGTON STATION has two street entrances connected by an arcade with a glazed roof. Its subsurface ticket office and foyer gives access to three of London’s Underground Lines: Circle, District, and Piccadilly. But this has not always been the case. People standing outside the southern entrance to the arcade will notice that to its right there is a building faced with the blood red glazed terracotta tiles typical of many London Underground stations. Above the façade are the words “South Kensington Station”, but there is no public entrance to this building.
The arcade used to be the entrance to the station at which passengers could embark and disembark from trains operating on the District and Circle lines, which were part of the Metropolitan Railway. This station was opened in 1868. In 1906, a station on the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (now the Piccadilly line) was opened at South Kensington. Its platforms are far deeper beneath the surface than those of the District and Circle lines. Lifts inside the building with the red façade carried passengers to and from the Piccadilly line platforms. This building was then the entrance to the Piccadilly Line station, which was separate from that (with the arcade) which led to the shallower subsurface Circle and District platforms.
In the early years of the 1970s, the lifts to the Piccadilly Line were replaced by escalators. Access to these was made from the concourse that serves the District and Circle line platforms, and then the entrance via the building with the blood red façade was taken out of use. So, what had been two stations became one.
With his back to the former entrance to the Piccadilly line station at South Kensington and standing at the corner of Pelham Street and Old Brompton Road, is a sculpture depicting the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945). He visited Britain at least sixteen times, often staying in London. To save money, he stayed with his friend the diplomat Sir Duncan Wilson at least twelve times between 1922 and 1937. Wilson owned a house (designed by Basevi) in South Kensington, number 7 Sydney Place, which is just south of Onslow Square. The sculpture, depicting the composer standing on what looks like a pile of fallen leaves, was created by Imre Varga (1923-2019) and unveiled on a traffic island in 2004. This, Varga’s fourth sculpture of the composer, was moved to its present location in 2011.
Bartok statue in South Kensington
Moving northwards, possibly passing the residential Onslow Squares, we reach Queensbury Place, which connects Harrington Road with the section of Cromwell Road that runs past the Natural History Museum. A 20th century brick and concrete building on Harrington Road is home to part of a French school, the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle de Londres. This educational institution for both French- and English-speaking children was created in 1915. After several changes of location, it moved into a building facing the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road in about 1958. In 1980. the school was named after Charles de Gaulle.
At the east corner of Harrington Road and Queensbury Place, there is a French library. The southern half of the east side of Queensbury Place is occupied by the French Institute, whose building has an imaginatively decorated brickwork façade. This building houses cultural facilities including a library and an auditorium, which hosts the Ciné Lumière. There is also a café. It was designed by Patrice Bonnet (1879-1964) in the Art Deco style and ready for use in 1939. The edifice contains artworks by Sonia Delaunay and Auguste Rodin.
Facing the French Institute is number 16 Queensbury Place, home of The College of Psychic Studies. Founded in 1884, this organisation does the following (according to its website http://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk):
“The College of Psychic Studies offers courses, workshops and talks on all aspects of healing, self-development, spirituality, and psychic and mediumship training.”
The College moved into its current premises in 1925. A plaque attached to its building commemorates the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Apart from being a prolific author, he was President of the College from 1926 until 1930. The College’s website reveals much about his interest in spiritualism. He:
“… published his two volume History of Spiritualism and his novel, The Land of Mist, while he was the College’s President … [he] was tireless in helping the bereaved and spreading the word of spiritualism including urging people to join the Alliance and read the latest news in Light.”
Unlike Sherlock Holmes’s fictional address in Baker Street, this townhouse in South Kensington has a real connection with Holmes, at least with his creator.
PEOPLE USUALLY ASSOCIATE South Kensington with its magnificent set of museums. However, there is far more than that in the district, and within a few yards of the museums. Here are a few places of interest near to the Victoria and Albert Museum (the ‘V&A’).
The V&A stands on the northeast corner of Exhibition Road and Cromwell Gardens (a short stretch of the A4) and faces the Ismaili Centre on the southeast corner. This attractive building built for the religious community that is led by the Aga Khan was designed by the Casson Conder Partnership and completed in 1985. According to the website of the Ismailis, https://the.ismaili, the building’s pleasing exterior:
“… has used materials and colours which are compatible with those of the surrounding buildings while at the same time in keeping with the traditional Islamic idiom and its colours of whites, light greys and blues.”
Monument in he Yalta Memorial Garden
An open space, The Yalta Memorial Garden, on the east side of the centre contains a monument to remember “… the countless men, women, and children, from the Soviet Union and other East European states, who were imprisoned and died at the hands of Communist governments after being repatriated at the conclusion of the Second World War…” The memorial consists of a column on the top of which there is a sculpture by Angela Conner (born 1935) depicting 12 faces of men, women, and children. Nearby, a house on the northeast corner of Thurloe Square and facing the V&A, bears a plaque informing that the museum’s first Director Henry Cole (1808-1882) lived there.
The Brompton Oratory, or to give its full name, the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, is a huge Roman Catholic church with a neoclassical façade and a dome. It stands east of the V&A. It was designed by the architect Herbert Gribble (1846-1894), a convert to Roman Catholicism, and constructed between 1880 and 1884. The architectural style is mainly Roman Baroque. This enormous edifice was the largest Roman Catholic church in London until Westminster Cathedral was constructed in the first decade of the 20th century.
Cottage Place runs along the east side of the Oratory towards the Holy Trinity Brompton church north of it. A building that looks like many of the older Underground station entrances on the Place has a façade decorated with blood-red glazed terracotta tiles. Between 1906 and 1934, when it was closed, it was the entrance to Brompton Road station on the Piccadilly Line. It was a stop between the still functioning Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations. It was closed because it was hardly ever used by passengers. An article in the Guardian newspaper, published in February 2014, related that during WW2, the disused station was used as a command centre for anti-aircraft batteries. It also suggested that the Nazi Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) was interrogated here. Between the station’s closure and about 2014, the building was owned and used by the Ministry of Defence.
The Holy Trinity Brompton Church, a gothic revival structure, was designed by Thomas Leverton Donaldson (1795-1885), and completed in 1829. It was established to accommodate the growing population of this part of Kensington, which until then had to worship in the church of St Mary Abbots in Kensington, almost one mile away. In 1852, a part of the church’s land was sold for building the Oratory upon it. The large grassy space north of Holy Trinity, now a park, was formerly the church’s graveyard.
Although none of the places I have described rival the splendour of the V&A and especially its fantastic collection of artefacts, they are worth exploring if you happen to be in the neighbourhood. A problem in London is that there are so many places of the greatest interests to visitors, which often means they have so little time to explore the lesser-known curiosities that form part of the rich tapestry of London’s past and present.
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