52 THE BATH ROAD 



it had been put was to be converted, by Alexis 

 Soyer, into a huge restaurant for the millions who 

 frequented the Great Exhibition of 1851, which I 

 do not recollect, thank goodness ! 



There were other landmarks in the Kensington of 

 my youth which have long since been swept away. 

 For instance, where Victoria Road joins the Gore 

 there was a tall archway leading to a hippodrome, or 

 horse repository. Where it stood there is now an 

 extremely " elegant " — as they used to say when I 

 was younger — hotel. Even greater changes have 

 taken place where the Gore joins the Higli Street. 

 Where that collection of palatial houses called 

 Kensington Court now stands, there stood years ago 

 a huge old brick mansion which in its last days 

 experienced some strange vicissitudes of fortune, 

 amonof which its last two chano-es — into a school for 

 young ladies, and finally into a lunatic asylum — 

 were not the least remarkable. There was in those 

 days a most dreadful slum at the back of this mansion, 

 known locally as the " Rookery." Londoners should 

 know the history of Kensington Court and its site, and 

 how Baron Albert Grant, in the heyday of his financial 

 success, pulled down the old mansion, and built 

 himself on its ruins a lordly (and vulgar) pleasure- 

 palace, which he called " Kensington House." The 

 memory of it springs fresh to this day, and it re(}uires 

 little effort to recall the place as it stood, in all its 

 pristine pretentiousness, until 1880, or thereabouts. 

 It was built by the redoubtable Baron to shame 

 Kensington Palace, which it exactly faced, and if 

 gilt railings, fresh white stone, and big plate-glass 



