South Kensington Living
Harrington Gardens
Harrington Gardens is very convenient for Gloucester Road underground which is only a few minutes walk away.
The buildings on the south side are mainly large red-brick mansions designed in a very grand manner.
The buildings facing the communal garden are particularly attractive and whilst at first sight appear to be designed in the same style, all are slightly different.
The street is tree lined on the north side and the communal garden has many mature trees.
Harrington Gardens was built partly on land in the Alexander Estate and partly on land owned by the Gunter Estate.
On the Alexander Estate land, the builder John Spicer took the building contract for the south side of Harrington Gardens in 1874. But the development was in fact carried out by John Floyd Gibbs, a stonemason and marble worker based in Knightsbridge, who supplied many of the Kensington fireplaces. It took him 6 years from 1874-80 to build the two terraces on either side of Ashburn Place from No. 5 to No. 33. In fact he needed to call in help to finish some of the houses, including W H Collbran, the architect. Alexander gave up on Gibbs and the remaining plots on either side went to the Peto Brothers.
The Gunter Estate land was owned by Robert Gunter II. Spicer began work in Harrington Gardens in 1882, the year before his death. The houses he built were Nos. 46-50 at the Collingham Road end, backing onto Colbeck Mews. They proved very hard to sell as they were in a style which by the 1880s was regarded as old fashioned, compared with the new designs of George and Peto elsewhere on the estate.
In 1883, work was taken over by two other builders. Joseph Mears completed Spicer’s side with new houses at Nos. 28-44 in 1883-4. The row of houses on the other side of the gardens was built by John Robinson Roberts, who built Nos. 47-75 (odd) Harrington Gardens between 1883 and 1885 in a style he had already employed in houses in Courtfield Road on the Alexander estate. His architect was Walter Graves.
