St Barnabas Church Garden

This area was once part of the Holland House estate, which in the late C18th consisted of c.200 acres, but the original estate had once been nearly 500 acres, extending almost to Fulham Road. The development of the Addison Road area of the estate commenced from 1822 under the 3rd Lord Holland, whose estate was by then running at a loss. Oakwood Court was the first development of large flats built here at the turn of the century on the site of a lake, previously the fishponds, called The Moats. The small railed and hedged garden was provided for the use of the tenants.

Leighton House Museum is the former home of Victorian artist Frederic Lord Leighton (1830-1896), a grand house with a large secluded garden. The house with purpose-built painting studio was designed for him in the mid-1860s by architect George Aitchison on a plot adjacent to Holland Farm, part of the Holland Estate. At that time the area to the north was open land, but gradually other grand houses were built, and the area became a centre for artists, writers and politicians. Leighton's immediate neighbour was the painter Val Prinsep, whose house by Philip Webb was built at the same time as Leighton's, and later residents included Sir Luke Fildes. Leighton lived here until his death in 1896, the house then opening as a museum. With funding from the HLF, the garden of Leighton House was restored in 1997 based on a plan of 1896 that showed formal beds immediately in front of the house and a large lawn with perimeter herbaceous borders. A trellis covered part of the path on the west of the garden and two mounds were originally planted with substantial trees.

Warwick Square was laid out by Lord Kensington's surveyor William Cutbush between 1824-39 but it was not a successful development. It was later bisected by the roadway, now Warwick Gardens, a major one-way route south. In the centre of the road is an area of landscaping around the Queen Victoria Monument, a memorial erected by inhabitants of the borough of Kensington. Designed by H L Florence in 1904, the granite column is topped with an urn and has reliefs of the Queen on the faces. It was re-erected here in 1934. All that remains of the houses of Warwick Square are Nos. 1 - 9 Warwick Gardens. The central area with the memorial column has planters either side and a drinking trough to the south, sited here in 1899 by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association at the behest of 'R McC'.