Holland Park

Holland House, originally known as Cope Castle, was an early Jacobean country house in Kensington, London, situated in a country estate that is now Holland Park. It was built in 1605 by the diplomat Sir Walter Cope. The building later passed by marriage to Henry Rich, 1st Baron Kensington, 1st Earl of Holland, and by descent through the Rich family, then became the property of the Fox family, during which time it became a noted gathering-place for Whigs in the 19th century. The house was largely destroyed by German firebombing during the Blitz in 1940 and today only the east wing and some ruins of the ground floor and south facade remain, along with various outbuildings and formal gardens. In 1949 the ruin was designated a grade I listed building and it is now owned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Opera Holland Park is a summer opera company which produces an annual season of opera performances, staged under a temporary canopy in front of the remains of Holland House, a Blitz-damaged building in Holland Park, west central London. The venue is fully covered but is open at the sides. The canopy was installed in 1988 and was initially used for a variety of music. Concerns about noise levels led to an increasing focus on opera from 1989, with productions staged by a variety of small opera companies. For the 2007 season, the theatre was expanded by the addition of a spectacular new canopy underneath which is new seating and other improved facilities. There are now 1,000 seats. As part of a drive to improve artistic standards "Opera Holland Park" was established in 1996 to produce all future productions, and in recent years the company has enjoyed a long string of hits with major achievements in productions of more obscure repertoire such as Mascagni's Iris, Cilea's L'arlesiana, and many others. It is now considered one of the most accomplished non-state opera companies in the UK. The resident orchestra is the City of London Sinfonia. Each season around half a dozen operas are staged. Most of them are well known classics but the company has developed a reputation for producing works from the verismo repertoire and an adventurous production policy. They are sung in the original language and surtitling is used. Opera Holland Park was named Best Opera Company 2010 by The Sunday Times (London).

Ilchester Place is a street in the Holland Park area of London. It runs from Abbotsbury Road to Melbury Road, and houses on the north side of the street back onto Holland Park itself. In December 2021, it was named the sixth most expensive street in the UK, with an average house price of £16.3 million.

Abbotsbury Road is a residential road in the Holland Park area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, West London, England.The road links the street Holland Park to the north with Melbury Road to the south, known for the Holland Park Circle of artists. There is a junction with Ilchester Place to the east. The parkland of Holland Park itself runs along the east side of the street for much of its length, with three entrances to the park. Abbortsbury Road has existed since 1905. The southern part of Abbotsbury Road, named after a Dorset estate belonging to the Earl of Ilchester, was created at the same time as Oakwood Court. Only a few houses were built before World War II (odd Nos 3–9 in c.1924; even Nos 8–10 and 24–28 in the 1930s). During the 1950s and 1960s, there was extensive building in the street. All the houses and flats on the west side of Abbotsbury Road to the north of Oakwood Court (odd Nos 17–137), in the adjoining Abbotsbury Close (Nos 1–66), and Abbotsbury House (a 10-storey block of flats), were built during this period by Wates Limited, designed by Stone, Toms and Partners.The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Meditation Centre was located in Abbotsbury Road and The Beatles visited in 1967. At the northern end in the park, installed in 2000, is the outdoor sculpture Tortoises with Triangle and Time by Wendy Taylor, commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for the Millennium.

The Embassy of Greece in London is the diplomatic mission of Greece in the United Kingdom.A Greek embassy in London was established shortly after Greek independence in 1828 and was formerly located at 51 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair. In 1975 the embassy moved to its current location, with the Mayfair building remaining as the Greek Ambassador's Residence.In 1999 Kurdish protesters temporarily occupied the embassy in protest at the role of Greece in the capture of Kurdistan Workers' Party leader Abdullah Öcalan in Kenya.Greece also maintains a National Tourism Organisation Office at 4 Conduit Street, Mayfair.

The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, built by the architect and designer William Burges as his home. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the French Gothic Revival style, it was described by the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as "the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival, and the last". The house is built of red brick, with Bath stone dressings and green roof slates from Cumbria, and has a distinctive cylindrical tower and conical roof. The ground floor contains a drawing room, a dining room and a library, while the first floor has two bedrooms and an armoury. Its exterior and the interior echo elements of Burges's earlier work, particularly the McConnochie House in Cardiff and Castell Coch. It was designated a Grade I listed building in 1949. Burges bought the lease on the plot of land in 1875. The house was built by the Ashby Brothers, with interior decoration by members of Burges's long-standing team of craftsmen such as Thomas Nicholls and Henry Stacy Marks. By 1878 the house was largely complete, although interior decoration and the designing of numerous items of furniture and metalwork continued until Burges's death in 1881. The house was inherited by his brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan. It was later sold to Colonel T. H. Minshall and then, in 1933, to Colonel E. R. B. Graham. The poet John Betjeman inherited the remaining lease in 1962 but did not extend it. Following a period when the house stood empty and suffered vandalism, it was purchased and restored, first by Lady Jane Turnbull, later by the actor Richard Harris and then by the musician Jimmy Page. The house retains most of its internal structural decoration, but much of the furniture, fittings and contents that Burges designed has been dispersed. Many items, including the Great Bookcase, the Zodiac settle, the Golden Bed and the Red Bed, are now in museums such as the Ashmolean in Oxford, the Higgins in Bedford and the Victoria and Albert in London, while others are in private collections.

Woodland House is a large detached house at 31 Melbury Road in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. Built from 1875 to 1877 in the Queen Anne style by the architect Richard Norman Shaw, it is a Grade II* listed building. Commissioned by the painter Luke Fildes, Woodland House is next to William Burges's Grade I listed Tower House.Originally 11 Melbury Road, the house was renumbered as 31 Melbury Road in 1967. It was the second of two houses in Melbury Road designed by Shaw, the first, 8 Melbury Road, was designed for another painter Marcus Stone. Fildes and Stone were artistic rivals and each naturally regarded their own Shaw-designed house as superior. Of the construction of Woodland House Fildes wrote in November 1876 that "The house is getting on famously and looks stunning ... It is a long way the most superior house of the whole lot; I consider it knocks Stone's to fits, though of course he wouldn't have that by what I hear he says of his, but my opinion is the universal one." Fildes moved into the house in October 1877 and it remained his home until his death there in February 1927. In 1959 the London County Council commemorated Fildes at Woodland House with a blue plaque.Woodlands House was later the home of the film director Michael Winner. His father purchased the lease for the property after the Second World War and, buying the outstanding lease from his father in 1972, Winner lived at the house until his own death at the house in 2013. It was subsequently purchased by the singer Robbie Williams.

Aubrey House is a large 18th-century detached house with two acres of gardens in the Campden Hill area of Holland Park in west London, W8. It is a private residence. Known for a long time as Notting Hill House, by the 1860s it had been named Aubrey House, after Aubrey de Vere who held the manor of Kensington at the time of the Domesday Book. The core of the house is thought to date to 1698; it was remodelled by Sir Edward Lloyd between 1745 and 1754. The house became a centre for radical thought and a haunt for political exiles in the 1860s under Clementia and Peter Alfred Taylor; Giuseppe Garibaldi stayed at the house in 1864 and meetings of the nascent British women's suffrage campaign were held at Aubrey House. The house served as a hospital during the First World War and later became the most expensive property ever sold in London upon its 1997 sale to the publisher and philanthropist Sigrid Rausing.

Holland Park School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form in Holland Park, London, England. In 2013, it has attained academy status. Opened in 1958, the school became the flagship for comprehensive education, and at one time had over 2,000 students.

Melbury Road is a residential road in the Holland Park area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. It is known for houses owned by the Victorian Holland Park Circle, an informal group of 19th-century artists, including William Burges, Luke Fildes, Frederic Leighton, Valentine Prinsep, Hamo Thornycroft, and George Frederick Watts.The road links Addison Road (A3220) to the west with Kensington High Street to the south. There is a junction with Holland Park Road, location of the Leighton House Museum.

Little Holland House was the dower house of Holland House in the parish of Kensington, Middlesex, England. It was situated at the end of Nightingale Lane, now the back entrance to Holland Park and was demolished when Melbury Road was made. Number 14 Melbury Road marks its approximate location.

8 Melbury Road is a large detached house at the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, W14. Built in the Queen Anne style by the architect Richard Norman Shaw, it is a Grade II* listed building.It was commissioned by the painter Marcus Stone as a "studio-home" for himself. The house was designed by architect Richard Norman Shaw in the Queen Anne style. Shaw was well acquainted with members of the art establishment, being friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Philip Webb. The choice by Fildes and Stone of Richard Norman Shaw as the architect of their houses was an important symbol of their ambition to become academicians, members of the Royal Academy of Arts, and of the art establishment themselves. The imposing houses and studios that Shaw designed would impress potential patrons. The house is next to the home of George Frederick Watts, and backs on to the garden of the Leighton House Museum, the former "studio-home" of Frederic, Lord Leighton. Stone's studio occupied the whole of the first floor of the house. The house is now separated into flats.Following Stone's death the house was occupied by artist Percyval Tudor-Hart. The film director Michael Powell lived at the house from 1951 to 1971 and shot parts of his controversial 1960 film Peeping Tom at the house.It was the first of two houses in Melbury Road designed by Shaw, the second, Woodland House, 11 Melbury Road (now 31), was designed for fellow painter Luke Fildes. Fildes and Stone were artistic rivals and each naturally regarded their own Shaw-designed house as superior. Luke Fildes wrote of his house that it was "a long way the most superior house of the whole lot; I consider it knocks Stone's to fits, though of course he wouldn't have that by what I hear he says of his, but my opinion is the universal one."Stone moved into 8 Melbury Road with his wife, Laura Broun, the daughter of a merchant. Stone and Luke Fildes were the first two artists to build studio-houses in Melbury Road.In 1994 English Heritage commemorated Stone with a blue plaque at 8 Melbury Road. A green plaque placed by the Directors Guild of Great Britain on the house commemorates Michael Powell.