2015–2016 SOCIETY E H T KENSINGTON THE KENSINGTON SOCIETY 2015–2016 KENSINGTON & CHELSEA The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea was created in 1965 with the merger of the two boroughs. Kensington, the area we watch over on your behalf, is north of Fulham Road and Walton Street, the frontier with Chelsea being marked with a red line on the map. Cover illustrations by Sir Quentin Blake, copyright the artist – for more about him see page 14 Editor: Michael Becket [email protected] Designer: Ian Hughes www.mousematdesign.com Chelsfield Partners Printed by Europa GOC Limited Supports preserving and improving the amenities of Kensington E H T KENSINGTON 23 St James’s Gardens, London W11 4RE www.kensingtonsociety.org SOCIETY 2015–2016 The objects of the society are to preserve and improve the amenities of Kensington for the public benefit by stimulating interest in its history and records, promoting good architecture and planning in its development, and by protecting, preserving and improving its buildings, open spaces and other features of beauty or historic interest. PATRON His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester, KG, GCVO PRESIDENT Nick Ross VICE-PRESIDENTS The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Snowdon, GCVO General, The Lord Ramsbotham of Kensington, GCB, CBE Sir Ronald Arculus, KCMG, KCVO COUNCIL Barnabus Brunner Peter De Vere Hunt Susan Lockhart The Hon. Laura Ponsonby Sir Angus Stirling TRUSTEES Amanda Frame, chairman Traci Weaver, secretary and events chairman Martin Frame, treasurer and membership secretary Michael Becket, annual report editor Charles Lutyens (resigned 28/04/2015) Holly Smith PLANNING COMMITTEE Hilary Bell (resigned 31/8/2015) Sophia Lambert, CB Henry Peterson, OBE Anthony Walker Michael Bach: chairman of the planning committee www.kensingtonsociety.org 23 St James’s Gardens, London W11 4RE 020 7193 8217 Registered charity 267778 CONTENTS President’s note 4 Chairman’s report 6 Annual general meeting 2015 10 Sir Peter Hendy 12 Sir Quentin Blake By Michael Becket 14 Retailers By Michael Becket 20 Blue plaques By Michael Becket 24 Maps 28 New MP By Victoria Borwick 33 Kensington Palace By Natasha Woollard 35 Frestonia By Michael Becket 38 From cars to stars: Ladbroke Hall By Richard Northedge 42 Planning reports 46 Where are workers supposed to live? By Michael Becket 55 Leisure Centre By Bobbie Vincent-Emery 58 Reports from affiliated societies 62 Statement of financial activities 76 Membership form 96 President’s note The Towers of London S AMANDA FRAME reports it’s been supported the application. Aa good year for the Kensington Yet towering though this Society. Yet in 2016 we face some proposal is, it is dwarfed by plans towering challenges. beyond the borough boundary. London needs lots of new The Kensington Society has affordable family housing and enough work to do with what it receives is lots of new developments big and small on unaffordable flats for singles, our own patch without many of them in high rise campaigning about what goes blocks. My guess is that some on elsewhere. But one proposal investors will burn their fingers. in Westminster is so very, very Well, that’s market economics and big that we have to be involved. the Kensington Society,like the Its impact will be felt not just planners, is mostly in reactive mode across surrounding communities trying to make the best of what private but across the capital. enterprise throws up. If only there were After all, who wants a 65-storey, stronger strategic plans of the sort the society has 224 metre, 735 foot tall skyscraper soaring urged repeatedly. But market economics being above Paddington and visible from North what it is, the price of land has skyrocketed – and Kensington down to the River? The answer is so have developers’ ambitions.As we all know, the veteran developer Irvine Sellar. If your first Notting Hill Gate is the battleground for a reactions were like mine you will have found skyscraping idea, now well-advanced, for twin the scheme not just disproportionate but one towers at the junction of Notting Hill Gate and of appalling ostentation. Tall buildings are fine Kensington Church Street. It would be a fortress and can be exhilarating when clumped half as high again as the Newcombe House block together as in Manhattan or Hong Kong. it is intended to replace. But Paddington Tower is not to be part of a Several objectors have complained that the gregarious collection; it is a lofty building out big towers might have come from outer space on its unsociable own. What so offended me, for all the reference they pay to the history and when I first saw the proposal, was how brazen community of Notting Hill Gate. Yet the it seemed when plonked into a low-rise proposal has many virtues, not least an townscape. The computer graphics make it exemplary consultation process. It would seem delicate and gleaming but they can’t replace a dismal example of 1960s mediocrity quite conquer the impression that this will give with much higher quality both in architecture London the finger. and materials and it would greatly improve the Even so, I’ve done my level best not to be public realm. Unusually, like the local reflexive and to give the scheme the benefit of residents’ associations, the society has the doubt. 4 We know that monstrously out-of-scale he has already done to stunning effect at buildings are often awesome and sometimes London Bridge. The Shard has its detractors, gloriously splendid. Think of the pyramids, not least Historic England with whom I rarely and not just the Egyptian ones out in the disagree, but to me it is magnificent, desert but those like in Peru which acted as effortlessly transcending my doubts about administrative and social centres. Europeans disproportionate high-rise. Up close it is too lived with incongruous titans, including beautifully detailed – one of the hallmarks of the one that took its name from looming over Piano is his quest for perfection. our own medieval city, the Tower of London. What’s more the Shard, like the Such castles and palaces were intended to Paddington proposal, is an Irvine Sellar project power, and so, of course, were development. He ruffled feathers when he cathedrals. St Paul’s was the tallest structure in said, “the only reasons to go to Paddington the world for five centuries before the steeple today are to catch a train or to meet someone was hit by lightning, and a hundred years later, in hospital,” but there’s some truth in his after the rest of the Norman building was description of the site as, “a 50s time warp”. consumed in the Great Fire, Christopher Wren The Tower promises to streamline transport replaced it with something even larger. So links, rebuild the tube station – not before time maybe big buildings don’t always stick out like – and create a public square. a sore thumb. Maybe it’s sometimes a matter Yet even after reflection, and despite my of getting used to them. Oversized structures admiration for the Shard, I can’t shake off my despised or ridiculed at their conception often doubts. Yes, it’s Renzo Piano. The gossamer come to define a city, like Eiffel’s tower in Paris ribbon of glass they promise might not be so or Gaudi’s masterpiece the Sagrada Familia in diaphanous after all. Computer generated Barcelona. Who’s for knocking down the images can be beguilingly misleading. London Eye, the BT Tower or, come to that, Apparently the PR graphics made Vauxhall Nelson’s Column? Tower look good but it is one of the most And in London maybe we are too timid, hideous and lonely stumps to sprout out of a too unimaginative, too set in our ways. city anywhere. And even great architects make Elsewhere skyscrapers are all the rage. This mistakes, as with Rafael Viñoly and his ghastly year alone China will add six leviathans Walkie-Talkie which disfigures views across the around three times the height of the City. Unless Sellars, Piano and Westminster Paddington proposal. More whoppers are planners make this project perfectly right it will soon to open in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, be an eyesore not just for Paddington but for us Bangkok, Seoul, Tangier and Mumbai. all. It might deliver on social amenity, it might Another, more than twice the height of even be a magnet for other investment but, Paddington, is rising amid the history of St above all, since literally it will be above all, it Petersburg and even dainty Copenhagen has needs to inspire an exquisite sense of splendour just approved a mammoth pair of towers from right across London – and I’m going to which will soon characterise the city. need a great deal of persuading that it can. Perhaps it’s also a matter of who designs So, sorry Irvine and Renzo. This does and builds them. There’s no denying one affect Kensington and I suspect the society and thing about the Paddington Tower – the one all its members will take a great deal of factor above all that makes me waver: it’s convincing too. designed by Renzo Piano. Architecture like art is a matter of taste, of course, but in my Just before printing this annual, word came book Piano is sublime. He is one of the very through that communal objectors managed to few people I might consider worthy of get the proposal for the Paddington Pole building a solitary skyscraper, which indeed withdrawn. 5 Chairman’s Report Amanda Frame I always face writing the annual report with some trepidation. There is the obvious need to report the activities of the Kensington Society throughout the year.