Corbett and McClymont

The story of the rise and fall of William Corbett and Alexander McClymont is a sad one, and mirrors the fate of so many Georgian and Victorian builder speculators to whom we owe the London of today.

What we loosely call the Gunter Estate in The Boltons and Redcliffe Square area below Old Brompton Road had 1,100 houses built on it in the quarter century from 1850.  About 750 were built on sites leased or purchased by Corbett and McClymont, and about 180 went to other builders as their nominees.

William Corbett was originally a clerical worker in the solicitors’ office of Messrs Lewins of Southampton Row.  This connection was useful to him when he branched out into building work.  Lewins not only did Corbett and McClymont’s legal work, but also provided some of the building finance.

Alexander McClymont was a bank manager before also branching out as a builder. At some point in the 1850s the two men formed a building company. It seems that McClymont dealt with the day to day building business. Corbett had more to do with financial management and the legal side.

Their main enterprise was the building of the “Redcliffe Estate”, comprising most of what we now loosely call the Gunter Estate south of Old Brompton Road and west of The Boltons. In fact, Corbett and McClymont’s building works spread over the land of a number of freeholders, as well as the Gunters, as far west as the Brompton Cemetery.  They built the infrastructure, such as roads and sewers, of the estate and most of the houses. But in some cases they “sublet” construction of houses to other builders. who then took the initial leases on the houses they built.

In 1871 Corbett and McClymont went bankrupt.  The problem seems to have been that there was a fall in the market generally and the particular types of houses they were building were out of fashion. They found themselves with too many properties on their hands and not enough cash to pay creditors.