Pembroke Gardens

Pembroke Gardens in 2010
Pembroke Gardens in 2010

Pembroke Gardens is a street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London.

It is in two parts meeting at a right angle, and runs from a junction with Pembroke Road and Cromwell Crescent to another junction with Warwick Gardens. It also intersects with the south-west corner of Edwardes Square.

It was developed in the 1850s and 1860s, largely by Richard Albion Holliday of Newland Street.[1]

On 29 September 1933, Ernest Holloway Oldham was found dead at his home, 31 Pembroke Gardens with his head in a gas oven.[2] Oldham was a cipher clerk in the Foreign Office, but from 1929 until his death in 1933 was a Soviet spy for money, rather than some ideological motivation. Although ostensibly a suicide, it is just as likely that he was killed by the Soviets.[2] His wife Lucy King was found dead in The Thames in 1950.[3] It is possible that they were both killed by the Soviets or MI5.[3]

References

  1. ^ "Survey of London: Volume 42, Kensington Square To Earl's Court: The Edwardes estate: Pembroke Square, Pembroke Gardens and Pembroke Road area". Victoria County History. 1985. Retrieved 23 July 2022.
  2. ^ a b Long, David (2012). Murders of London: in the steps of the capital's killers. London: Random House. pp. 110–113. ISBN 9781847946720.
  3. ^ a b Manger, Warren (5 June 2015). "Stalin's first British spy Ernest Oldham may have CAUSED the Second World War". The Daily Mirror. Retrieved 23 July 2022.

51°29′45″N 0°12′06″W / 51.49591°N 0.20178°W / 51.49591; -0.20178