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Gore House

Former houses in the City of WestminsterHouses completed in the 18th century
Image taken from page 135 of 'Old and New London, etc' (11188030456)
Image taken from page 135 of 'Old and New London, etc' (11188030456)

Gore House, built in the 1750s, with its 3-acre (1.2 ha) grounds was in Middlesex, England in a large exclave of St Margaret Westminster, Kensington Gore. Until its west wing soon became Grove House it was set apart from the east end of a row of 18th-century houses running from Palace Gate (near Kensington Palace) to the east, and was part of a phase of such houses facing Kensington Gardens as far as Knightsbridge, a broad bridge across the West Bourne. As the 1831 map, inset, shows: Upper Kensington Gore was the short-lived name for a short section of Kensington Road/Gore which was fronted by grand houses with large grounds and by Kensington Gardens. Its interiors were planned and supervised by leading architect Robert Adam. Between 1808 and 1821 William Wilberforce lived in it; he co-led the abolition of the slave trade and then slavery in the British Empire. It was occupied by the Countess of Blessington and the Count D'Orsay from 1836 to 1849. In May 1851, certain floors were converted to restaurant by the chef Alexis Soyer, with the aim of competing with and catering for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park to the north. After the exhibition, it was bought by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, for the Albertopolis cultural and educational sites. Today the Royal Albert Hall takes up its site.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Gore House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Gore House
Kensington Gore, London Knightsbridge

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N 51.5011 ° E -0.1774 °
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Royal Albert Hall (Albert Hall)

Kensington Gore 4
SW7 2AP London, Knightsbridge
England, United Kingdom
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royalalberthall.com

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Image taken from page 135 of 'Old and New London, etc' (11188030456)
Image taken from page 135 of 'Old and New London, etc' (11188030456)
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Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall

The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It can seat 5,272.Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 151 year history the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings by Suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein, fights by Lennox Lewis, exhibition bouts by Muhammad Ali, and concerts from regular performers at the venue such as Eric Clapton and Shirley Bassey.The hall was originally supposed to have been called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but the name was changed to the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences by Queen Victoria upon laying the Hall's foundation stone in 1867, in memory of her husband, Prince Albert, who had died six years earlier. It forms the practical part of a memorial to the Prince Consort; the decorative part is the Albert Memorial directly to the north in Kensington Gardens, now separated from the Hall by Kensington Gore.

Frieze of Parnassus
Frieze of Parnassus

The Frieze of Parnassus is a large sculpted stone frieze encircling the podium, or base, of the Albert Memorial in London, England. The Albert Memorial was constructed in the 1860s in memory of Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria. The frieze is named after Mount Parnassus, the favorite resting place in Ancient Greek mythology for the muses. It contains 169 life-size full-length sculptures, a mixture of low-relief and high-relief, of individual composers, architects, poets, painters, and sculptors from history. The depictions of earlier figures necessarily, were imaginary, although many of the figures were based on materials contained in a collection of artworks and drawings gathered for the purpose of ensuring authentic depictions, where this was possible. The total length of the frieze is approximately 64 metres (210 feet). The frieze was intended to be the 'soul' of the memorial, and the memorial's designer, George Gilbert Scott, stated that he was inspired by the Hémicycle des Beaux Arts by Paul Delaroche. The memorial was not laid out precisely to directions of the compass, however, closely enough that the sides are referred to by direction. Musicians and poets were placed on the south side, with painters on the east side, sculptors on the west side, and architects on the north side. Henry Hugh Armstead carved the figures on the south and east sides, the painters, musicians, and poets (80 in total), and grouped them by national schools. John Birnie Philip carved the figures on the west and north sides, the sculptors and architects (89 named figures, plus two generic figures), and arranged them in chronological order. The carving was executed in situ, and was said by Scott to be "perhaps one of the most laborious works of sculpture ever undertaken". The initial contracts, agreed around 1864, had specified that the work was to be completed in four years for £7,781 15s. The eventual cost, however, exceeded this by some £2,000 and the work was not finished until 1872. Large groups of figures of eminent persons from the past often decorate public buildings and monuments of the later nineteenth century, and some buildings such as the Walhalla temple in Bavaria and the Panthéon in Paris were dedicated to this purpose. Many figures of visual artists decorate the Victoria and Albert Museum close to the Albert Memorial at the other end of the "Albertopolis" complex. A mosaic frieze of more generalised figures from the arts runs round the circular Royal Albert Hall adjacent to the memorial. The Parnassus by Raphael (1511), opposite the philosophers of The School of Athens in the Vatican Raphael Rooms, is an earlier group portrait of great artists.