Earls Court Living
Collingham Gardens
Collingham Gardens consists of a west section on the east side of Bramham Gardens and also a section which then branches east. The buildings are mainly four and five-storeys high. The buildings that overlook Bramham Gardens are built in a dutch style although each have an individual design. It is one of the prettiest terraces in the area and the street was used for a scene in the film ‘Brideshead Revisited’. The eastern section of Collingham Gardens contains an attractive six-storey terrace of red-brick buildings with larger than average first floor windows. The buildings overlook an attractive communal garden. The street has many mature trees.
Collingham Gardens was built on Robert Gunter II’s part of the family estate.
George and Peto designed Nos. 1-18 Collingham Gardens and used their building company, Peto Brothers, to build the houses in 1884.
Peto Brothers was a building firm which operated only from 1872 to 1891. it was started by two brothers, William Herbert Peto and Morton Kelsall Peto. When Morton retired he was replaced by a third brother, Basil Edward Peto. Later, a fourth brother, Samuel Arthur Peto, also joined the firm.
The fifth brother, Harold Ainsworth Peto, became an architect and went into partnership with Ernest George, an architect with a reputation for progressive design. Their firm was called Ernest George and Peto.
William Herbert Peto and Samuel Arthur Peto married daughters of Robert Palmer Harding, and accountant. In 1880 Harding acquired the rights from the Alexander Estate to build four houses in Harrington Gardens. Ernest George and Peto produced the designs and Peto Brothers built the houses. By 1884 they completed Harrington Gardens.
In 1883 John Spicer, the Gunter’s favourite builder, died and Peto Brothers were awarded the contract for the construction of Collingham Gardens. Work began in 1883 and all the houses were completed by 1888.
Collingham Gardens houses were quite different from anything else seen on the estate. Ernest George and Harold Peto had both spent time on the continent studying Northern European architecture. Their designs for Collingham Gardens, as for Harrington Gardens, were a deliberately drew on merchants’ mansions from Bruges, Amsterdam and other North European ports. The houses they designed were all different. This again was a deliberate attempt to replicate the jumble of individual houses which made up the German Dutch and Belgian streets which were their models. But even if the details were deliberately different, there were unifying factors. All the houses were built in red-brick and terracotta, with leaded lights in the windows.
Joseph Mears, a builder from Hammersmith, built Nos. 19-30 Collingham Gardens in 1885-7.
