Author Archives: Steve Olive

Part 1 – Origins to the 19th Century

What’s in a Name?

While Geoffrey de Mandeville, one of the Norman Conquerors, owned the land south of what is now Bayswater Road, the area to the north was almost certainly named after another of the Norman Conquerors, Bainiardus. Bainairdus was the feudal baron of Dunmow in Essex, although he is chiefly remembered for Baynard’s Castle, a Norman fortification on the Thames which was later reconstructed as a royal palace.

The scholarly journal Notes and Queries, contains this quote by Victorian historian John Timbs:

“Bainiardus held land here of the Abbot of Westminster; and in a grant as late as 1653 is described ‘the common field at Paddington’ (now Bayswater Field), as being, ‘near to a place commonly called Baynard’s Watering.’ Hence it is concluded ‘that this portion of ground, always remarkable for its springs of excellent water, once supplied water to Baynard, his household, or his castle; that the memory of his name was preserved in the neighbourhood for six centuries;’ and that this watering-place is now Bayswater.”

There are other, more fanciful, theories about Bayswater’s name. Some think it derived from one of the local rivulets, or perhaps a public house kept by a Mr Bays, or even from bay horses which quenched their thirst there. At any rate, it was recorded as Bayard’s Watering Place in 1380. The abundance of gravel pits, streams and springs being its most notable feature. Along with fresh water sources such as in Conduit Field, a stream called the Kilburn rose in Hampstead and passed under the Uxbridge (Bayswater) Road at what later became the Lancaster Gate entrance to Kensington Gardens. It was here known as the Bayswater rivulet, and later the Westbourn or Westbourne, so that by the eighteenth century the area was generally known as Bayswatering, although the name Bayswater was used as early as 1659.

More Watery Tales

By the nineteenth century the waterway had been confined to underground culverts and become a sewer, but for centuries the now lost river was cherished for its sweetness and purity. In 1439 permission was given by Westminster Abbey for a conduit to be built to supply drinking water to the City of London, and eighteenth-century illustrations show the head of the spring encased in a circular building with a pepperpot turret. Despite a plaque in Hyde Park which claims the water was ‘from this spot’ south-east of the Serpentine, most other descriptions place the head of the spring, ‘in a meadow opposite the north side of Kensington Gardens’, near to ‘Bay’s Water Tea Garden’.

The abundant water frequently made the main road almost impassable with mud and even flowing water, especially at the depression north of what became the Serpentine where the Westbourne or Bays Water crossed the road. In 1675 this stream was spanned by a brick bridge, which had been replaced by a stone one by 1769.

There were scattered farms, some growing watercress, as well as inns along the road, and small settlements to the west of what is now Lancaster Gate. Gravel had been dug from these parts since at least the thirteenth century, which is why the entire stretch between today’s Queensway and Notting Hill Gate tube station was known as Kensington Gravel Pits. Despite exploitation of the gravel on both sides of the main road, the area remained picturesque, with the tea house and the fields around dotted with nursery grounds and market-gardens.

A Retreat for the Super-Rich

By the turn of the seventeenth century Bayswater and beyond proved the perfect rural retreat for the super-rich, and between 1605 and 1620 three great Jacobean houses were constructed here. Cope Castle, built by Sir Walter Cope, later passed by marriage to the Lord Holland, 1st baron of Kensington and became known as Holland House. It was set in 500 acres of grounds some of which survive as Holland Park, although the building was largely destroyed by incendiary bombs in 1940. Campden House was built, or perhaps remodelled from an Elizabethan building, by Sir Baptist Hicks, later Viscount Campden, who owned more than 100 acres between Abbotts Kensington and Notting Barns. The house burned down in 1867.

Most importantly though was a mansion built for Sir George Coppin and later called Nottingham House. In 1689 it was acquired by William and Mary as a retreat from Whitehall Palace, their official residence on the Thames. The fresh country air was a godsend for the asthmatic King William III since, ‘The Smoak of the Coal Fires of London much incommoded his Majesty’.

A Royal Palace

Christopher Wren was hired to transform the property into a royal residence and, renamed Kensington Palace, it became a favourite home of British monarchs. Queen Mary died within its walls in 1694, as did her husband, King Billy, eight years later, after which ‘Good-hearted’ Queen Anne took over and formalised the gardens in front of the palace. Princess Victoria was born there in 1819 and of course more recently one of British royalty’s many tragic figures, Princess Diana, lived there and was mourned there with fields of flowers in 1997.

The Serpentine was formed in 1730 by building a dam across the Westbourne which made the magnificent grounds even more attractive to the public, but visitors to the park, like those to the palace, mostly entered from the south. So while the royal route from Whitehall to the palace and on to Windsor brought traffic to Kensington High Street, there was little development along the ancient road leading out from London north of the park.

Medical Matters

In fact in 1734 Bayswater’s continuing seclusion, so quiet and yet so close to the metropolis, made it a suitable place for a pest house, or pestilence or plague house, the equivalent of an isolation hospital. These were grim places often used for forcible quarantine of people with cholera or other infections, but also with an eye to true pandemics. This was, after all, within living memory of London’s great bubonic plague. The infirmary was established in 1734 by Lord Craven on land bought the previous year from Upton Farm, ‘at the end of a tree-line lane,’ just east of Westbourne Green Lane (now Queensway), and it replaced the pest house in Carnaby Market where land was becoming expensive. The asylum itself was a long building with several enclosures set in fields well back from the Uxbridge road. But presumably it was gone by 1795 when a group of new houses called the Craven Estate was ‘very pleasantly situated’ not far away on a slight rise known as Craven Hill.

A Sparsely Populated Passing Place

A little further to the west was the biggest property facing the main road, Shaftsbury House. But, apart from the royal palace, along with a brick works to its west, and a few outhouses, there were scarcely two dozen other buildings scattered between what today are Lancaster Gate and Notting Hill. Quiet though it was, there was sufficient traffic to sustain several inns. There was a pub called The Crown at today’s Lancaster Gate in the 1600s and a tavern nearby called the Saracen’s Head, replaced by the Swan Inn, which opened in 1775 and survives opposite the Italian Gardens just west of Lancaster Gate.

The Oxford Arms alehouse was opened in 1704 opposite what is now Queensway Station and around 1751 was renamed the Black Lion Inn, giving its name to Black Lion Lane and later Blackman Lane (now Queensway and formerly Westbourne Green Lane), and to the Black Lion entrance to Kensington Gardens.

Despite these development, Bayswater was a place to pass through rather than a settlement. The whole area including hamlets like Westbourne Green and Paddington Green contained at most a few hundred souls.

According to the historian George Rousseau:

“Bayswater in 1760 still consisted of green fields dotted with cow sheds and a few houses. Even a generation later, when the composer Josef Haydn retreated there in 1791, he called it ‘rural Paddington’. Its fields dipped and rose and were prone to flooding [but] provided its inhabitants could endure wet cellars and rooms, it seemed a small paradise. During the 1760s market gardeners and nurserymen found it pastorally seductive because they could plant and grow surrounded by plenty of space and pure air. The land was cheap to buy as well as rent.”

In 1791 the pure air and cheap land enticed the General Lying In Hospital to move from Jermyn Street to Bayswater, near to The Swan Inn. In 1809, having secured the support of the Duke of Sussex, it was renamed Queen Charlotte’s Lying-In Hospital, taking its name from the wife of King George III. It was an unusual and controversial institution since, intended for the poor (the rich were attended to in their own homes), it admitted both married and single women, an unusual arrangement at the time.

A little to the west there were substantial farm buildings at the junction of today’s Bayswater Road and Queensway. A sketch by William Crotch (above) dated May 1816 shows the view east towards the city, with the turnpike guard house beside a flooded ditch and the old brick wall that enclosed the park.

And thus, as we reach the turn of the 19th century our first article concludes, but you can expect a follow-up piece bringing us up to modern-day Bayswater later in 2024.

Our thanks go to The Orme Square Association, particularly to its Chairman Mr Nick Ross, for permission to source this article from “The Square – A History of Orme Square – The First 200 Years

The original set of images were all taken on a single day, but we now have an additional set from Mik Laver which capture some great scenes from the BRA area. Just follow this link to view them.

The BRA committee is very pleased to welcome Mik Laver to the Committee.

Mik Laver, born and raised in London, now lives in St Petersburgh Place, having spent a large part of his working life in Ireland and the United States. He takes long walks in and around the area every day, rain or shine, and always carries a camera. A keen amateur photographer, he’s mainly interested in documenting the rich visual environment of this part of London.

We’ll soon be adding some of Mik’s photos to our gallery, plus a fascinating article

We’ve been and out about in the BRA area taking photographs. You can see them on a dedicated gallery page via this link.

Over the coming months and years we’ll be adding to the collection, so do keep an eye on our home page news links to new galleries.

We could explain the boundaries that define the BRA area, but it’s so much easier to look at a image. Follow this link to view a pair of aerial views that show where we operate in West London.

We’ve put together a whole new website and we have a lot planned for it. Right now there are just a few pages, but we’ll adding and expanding quite a lot over the months and years.

Do fee free to explore, you don’t have to be a member to view anything, but of course if you do want to join BRA then follow this link to do so.

Thanks for popping by.