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18 Melbury Road

1877 establishments in EnglandArtists' studios in LondonBrick buildings and structuresGrade II listed buildings in the Royal Borough of Kensington and ChelseaGrade II listed houses in London
Houses completed in 1877Houses in Holland ParkLondon building and structure stubsUse British English from August 2023
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT also CETSHWAYO 18 Melbury Road Holland Park London W14 8LT
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT also CETSHWAYO 18 Melbury Road Holland Park London W14 8LT

18 Melbury Road is a large semi-detached house in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London W14, England, located just north of Kensington High Street. The house was built in Victorian times as a brick and stucco house with gas lighting by William Turner of Chelsea, London and originally sold on a 90-year lease.The 1877 building is semi-detached with No 16. Both houses have three storeys with attic dormers and a tiled roof, built in brick with Flemish bond and painted cement. Attached to the rear outer corner of No 18 is a single-storey brick studio building. The building is Grade II listed, along with the semi-detached and mirror-image 16 Melbury Road and a later attached studio building at 18A Melbury Road. It was the home and studio of the Pre-Raphaelite painter, William Holman Hunt, from 1903 until his death in 1910. Cetshwayo kaMpande (c.1826–1884), King of the Zulus, stayed here in 1882. Both Holman Hunt (in 1923) and Cetshwayo (in 2006) are recorded with blue plaques by English Heritage on the front of the building, one above the other. In 1923, the MI6 British Secret Intelligence Service moved to 18 Melbury Road due to financial restrictions but moved back to Westminster within a year.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article 18 Melbury Road (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

18 Melbury Road
Melbury Road, London Earl's Court (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea)

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N 51.49925 ° E -0.20223 °
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Cetshwayo

Melbury Road
W14 8NZ London, Earl's Court (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea)
England, United Kingdom
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WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT also CETSHWAYO 18 Melbury Road Holland Park London W14 8LT
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT also CETSHWAYO 18 Melbury Road Holland Park London W14 8LT
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Woodland House
Woodland House

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.

The Tower House
The Tower House

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.

8 Melbury Road
8 Melbury Road

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.