The area is principally composed of tree-lined streets with large Victorian mansions and contains shops, cultural tourist attractions such as the Design Museum, luxury spas, hotels, and restaurants along Holland Park Avenue and Kensington High Street.
A map showing the Holland ward of Kensington Metropolitan Borough as it appeared in 1916
The district was rural until the 19th century, and most of the area now referred to by the name Holland Park was formerly the grounds of a Jacobean mansion called Cope Castle. In the later decades of that century the owners of the house sold off the more outlying parts of its grounds for residential development, and the district which evolved took its name from the house. Large parts of Holland Park were constructed between 1860 and 1880 by master builders William and Francis Radford, who were contracted to build over 200 houses in the area. Notable 19th-century residential developments in the area include the Royal Crescent and Aubrey House. It also included some small areas around the fringes which had never been part of the grounds of Holland House, notably the Phillimore Estate (there are at least four roads with the word Phillimore in their name) and the Campden Hill Square area.
Lansdowne House, at Lansdowne Road. is a Grade II listed eight-storey building which was originally constructed in 1902–04 by Scottish architect William Flockhart,[6] for South African mining magnate Sir Edmund Davis. The building contained apartments and artists' workshops. Among the artists who had studios in the building in the early decades of the 20th century were Charles Ricketts, Charles Haslewood Shannon, Glyn Philpot, Vivian Forbes, James Pryde, and Frederick Cayley Robinson, who are commemorated on a blue plaque on the building.[7]
The building underwent significant alterations. When, in 1957, record producer Denis Preston was looking for a property in which to set up a recording studio, his assistant engineer Joe Meek found the premises, which had unusually high ceilings and a basement squash court, suitable for conversion into a studio. Preston, Meek and (a year later) engineer Adrian Kerridge then established the studio, and made their first recordings there in 1958. The studio was London's first independent music recording studio.[8] In 1962, an enlarged control room overlooking the studio floor was opened. Kerridge later became the studio's owner.[9] The studios closed in 2006 and the building was subsequently converted into 13 self-contained apartments, while retaining a small recording studio.[7]
The public park
Holland Park
Peacocks in Holland Park
The formal gardens
Formal gardens, looking towards Holland House
The Kyoto Garden
Kyoto Garden waterfall
Statue of Milo of Croton
Ornament piece
Fountain
The park covers about 22.5 hectares (56 acres),[10] with a northern half of semi-wild woodland, central section of formal garden areas, and southernmost section used for sport.
Holland House is now a fragmentary ruin, having been devastated by incendiary bombing during the Second World War in 1940, but the ruins and the grounds were bought by London County Council in 1952 from the last private owner, the 6th Earl of Ilchester.[11] Today the remains of the house form a backdrop for the open air Holland Park Theatre, which is the home of Opera Holland Park. To the immediate south of the park is the former site of the Commonwealth Institute, now home to the Design Museum.
The park contains a café, as well as the Belvedere Restaurant that is attached to the orangery, a giant chess set,[12] a cricket pitch, tennis courts, two Japanese gardens - the Kyoto Garden (1991) and Fukushima Memorial Garden (2012),[13] a youth hostel, a children's playground, squirrels and peacocks. In 2010, the park set aside a section for pigs whose job was to reclaim the area from nettles etc., in order to create another meadow area for wildflowers and fauna. Cattle were used subsequently to similar effect.
The Holland Park Ecology Centre (2013), operated by the borough's Ecology Service, provides environmental education programmes including nature walks, talks, programmes for schools, and outdoor activity programs for children.[14]
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