Earls Court
Finborough Road
The southern part of Finborough Road was on land owned by R J Pettiward, not by the Gunters, although its development proceeded hand in hand with that on the Gunter estate proper. The road was laid out in the 1860s and was named after the Pettiwards’ estate at Finborough in Suffolk.
On the east side of the road, the sites for Nos. 1-61 Finborough Road were leased by Pettiward to Corbett and McClymont in stages over a period from 1866 to 1871. It seems that they sub-let the building of Nos. 1-19 to another builder A M Greig and that Nos. 21-27 were either sub-let to John Gibbings or built by him for them in about 1866-8. Finborough House, now on the site of Nos. 29-39, was built in 1956-7 (H M Grellier and Sons, architects).
Private housing picks up again sporadically above Redcliffe Street where the land was part of the Gunter Estate again. Nos. 85-113 were built by Corbett and McClymont in 1870-1, No. 121 in 1870, and Nos. 139-167 in 1869.
On the west side of the road, Nos. 2-60 (even) were leased by Pettiward to Corbett and McClymont and built in 1867-70. Back in Gunter territory, they built Nos. 80-116 (even) in 1868-9 and 1871-2 under leases from Robert Gunter II, and in 1868 they constructed Finborough Arms public house at No. 118.
In the Redcliffe Square area the site of Finborough Road passed into land owned by another remaining freeholder, J L Tomlin, who granted the relentless Corbett and McClymont leases of the land where they built Nos. 120-138 (even) in 1869-70 and Nos. 146-182 (even) in 1870-1.
The 1871 census tells us that on the day of the census, 57 houses had families in residence, and between them there were 258 family members and 71 servants. The house owners included a parson, a surgeon, a colonel, a builder’s foreman, and a travelling salesman. Five of the houses had been converted to use as boarding houses.
