Kensington
Peel Street
Peel Street runs between Campden Hill Road and Kensington Church Street. It is on a slight gradient.
The houses are mainly two or three-storeys and both sides of the street are terraced. Some houses are painted and some are just bare brick. On the south side, halfway along the road, is an old pub called the Peel Arms which is now a private house. The north side on the west end of the street is a large six storey terraced mansion block built in 1877. On the south side of the street, halfway along, is a rather attractive, very narrow street called Peel Passage, linking the street with Campden Street.
Peel Cottage on the north side has a blue plaque naming Sir William Russell Flint, the artist who lived there from 1925 to 1969, and the cottage has an unusual tiled frontage.
You should read the history of the Racks to the point where William Ward and John Punter purchased their land for development.
When John Punter and William Ward divided up the land they had bought in 1822, the Peel Street area fell to John Punter. Perhaps due to financial difficulties, most of Punter’s land was put up for auction in 1823, although Punter himself bought back some of the plots. Punter built a number of houses in the area himself, but in 1829 he sold his remaining land to John Herapath, a railway journalist.
It seems that when the houses were originally built there were no sewers. One house was used to keep pigs.
Many of the original houses were knocked down when the Circle Line was constructed. After it was roofed over, rebuilding took place in the 1870s.
