1833 - The time before

In James Wyld's 1833 map of the "country in the vicinity of London" the piece of land soon to be our garden appears as wooded pasture.

1852 - The aquision of the plots

The land on which our gardens are laid out and the houses backing on built is acquired in 1852 by one Richard Roy. Richard Roy has already developed other parts of the estate, laid out "pleasure grounds", sometimes called "paddocks", and set up similar trusts for their management. He had already leased building plots in Ladbroke Gardens and sold the freehold of plots in Arundel Gardens, south side, then known as Lansdowne Road Terrace, to William Wheeler, a building contractor responsible for much of the building on the Ladbroke Estate.

By 1858, what is now our communal garden is a wedge, churned up by the passage of horses and carts, with dumps of building supplies and builders' debris between the building plots and houses in "carcase" (just the four walls, gaping black holes for windows, with luck, a roof), between Ladbroke Gardens and the separate development of Elgin Crescent, south side.

1861 - The residents

The most obvious difference between now and then is that the houses backing on are, with one exception, occupied by one family, or one person, and his or her servants. The exception is 21 Ladbroke Gardens, which is a school for young ladies, with eight to twelve pupils aged 12 to 17, two governesses, one sometimes German, besides the head.

Some families are settled here for two decades or more, and two are still around in the 1930s The Parkers, people of independent means from Boston, MA, at are living at 3 Ladbroke Gardens in 1861 and their six year old daughter Mary goes on living there till 1931.  William Graham, An Art Furnisher by trade, and his family have moved into 12 Ladbroke Gardens by 1891. His daughter, Rose, is still active on the garden committee on the eve of the Second World War.

The residents are solid, middle class professionals, not people in “society”, to judge by the number of servants, which averages three, with very few menservants, and their titles, which rarely include a “footman” or “lady’s maid”. The fathers are in the middle ranks of commerce or the law, with a smattering of retired “Old India hands”. There is also a contingent of widows. The respectable mass is leavened by a slightly “raffish or bohemian” element.  In 1881, Samuel Bennett, “editor and leader writer” lives at 13 Arundel Gardens”. He is still there in 1891, now author/journalist with his family and brother-in-law, a sculptor and cattle painter. In 1871, Anthony Montalba, artist, is living at 19 Arundel Gardens with one daughter, an historical painter, and three other daughters, describing themselves as artists. There are always a number of European nationals, such as the Serenas, shipping brokers from Venice, who lived for two decades at number 20 Ladbroke Gardens, and the German families that frequently occupy number 19 Ladbroke Gardens.

1863 - The Pleasure Ground

"At one in the afternoon of 5th January, 1863", in the offices of Taylor, Stileman and Underwood, of 15 Furnival's Inn, EC "the memorial is registered of the "Deed of Conveyance of the Ornamental Pleasure Ground called "Ladbroke Garden", Notting Hill, in the Parish of St Mary Abbotts Kensington to Trustees for the Management and Grant Assignment of yearly rents for maintaining the same." The rent to be paid by the freeholders or leaseholders of the houses backing on was 1 guinea (£1.05) (worth £58.86 in 2002 values), with strict penalties for late-payers or non-payers.

The meeting at Furnival's Inn on that January afternoon, marks one of the last developments of the Ladbroke Estate. This started on the north side of Notting Hill in the 1820s and moved down the hill in squares, streets and crescents enclosing "ornamental pleasure grounds" at the pace dictated by property transfers, legal disputes, boom and bust in the London economy, the rise and fall of the Hippodrome race course experiment, bankruptcies of developers and building contractors.

1863 - The Pleasure Ground

"At one in the afternoon of 5th January, 1863", in the offices of Taylor, Stileman and Underwood, of 15 Furnival's Inn, EC "the memorial is registered of the "Deed of Conveyance of the Ornamental Pleasure Ground called "Ladbroke Garden", Notting Hill, in the Parish of St Mary Abbotts Kensington to Trustees for the Management and Grant Assignment of yearly rents for maintaining the same." The rent to be paid by the freeholders or leaseholders of the houses backing on was 1 guinea (£1.05) (worth £58.86 in 2002 values), with strict penalties for late-payers or non-payers.

The meeting at Furnival's Inn on that January afternoon, marks one of the last developments of the Ladbroke Estate. This started on the north side of Notting Hill in the 1820s and moved down the hill in squares, streets and crescents enclosing "ornamental pleasure grounds" at the pace dictated by property transfers, legal disputes, boom and bust in the London economy, the rise and fall of the Hippodrome race course experiment, bankruptcies of developers and building contractors.