Earls Court
Trebovir Road
Trebovir Road runs east of Warwick Road. It contains mainly large red-brick mansion blocks called Kensington Mansions. The buildings consist of five floors (plus basement) and there is a small communal garden on the south side of the street. The street is tree lined. There is an attractive small lodge style house on the south side of the square dated 1888.
In 1874 Lord Kensington entered into an agreement with Thomas Grange, a builder, to construct houses on land which included the future Trebovir Road and Templeton Place. Grange did not build the houses himself, but entered into a subsidiary arrangement with the Van Camps, a family of builders in Kilburn, who had originally come from Belgium. Jean Francois Van Camp and Edouard Van Camp were already building houses nearby in Hogarth Road. They began building here 1876.
Nos. 1-15 (odd) Trebovir Road were completed that year and Nos. 2-18 (even) early in 1877. Most of the other houses in Trebovir Road were built in 1877-8, except Nos. 20-24 (even) there work began in 1879.
Nos. 10-14 (even) Trebovir Road were destroyed by bomb damage and were replaced in 1952-3 by Orpen House, a small block of flats (Sir William Orpen was a local [painter).
At the west end of Trebovir Road are blocks of flats known as Kensington Mansions on either side of the road. Four blocks on the north backing onto the houses of Nevern Square and two are on the south side. They are red brick buildings built in 1888-90 by William Cooke, a builder from Upper Phillimore Place.
The Van Camps houses have four main storeys above basement, and with an attic storey in a hipped roof behind an ornate balustrade. The design is quite florid with ornate stone work around the windows and along the cornice. They have equally ornate cast iron balconies running outside the first floor windows. They used casement windows, not sash windows, on the upper floors.
