South Kensington
Onslow Square
The houses in Onslow Square were built shortly after George Basevi died. They still show his strong influence, but it seems likely that the design of the façades was altered after his death, since it is much more elaborate than his familiar style of work.
The first range of houses to be built were Nos. 1-7 Onslow Square. They have four main storeys, with basements and garrets in addition. The facades of the houses are completely stuccoed. Instead of being completely flat, sections of the façade project forward with quoins at the angles. The porticos have Ionic columns. The first floor windows are given half-columns. Some houses have triple windows at second-floor level. At third-floor level there is a continuous frieze of triglyphs and metopes embellished with paterae runs along the terrace below the window level. Despite the fact that he had Ionic columns on the ground floor, the frieze is Doric, a mistake Basevi would surely not have made.
Nos. 1-7 Onslow Square were the only houses in Onslow Square, to which Freake gave stuccoed façades as prescribed in his building agreement. For the rest of the square the elevations are grey stock brick with stucco dressings.
Apart from the semi-detached houses on west side of the square near St. Paul’s Church, the main Onslow Square terraces are broadly similar. The houses in a terrace are linked by a deep cornice resting on consoles at third-floor level. They all have Doric porches. At the ends and centre of each terrace many of the porches link together to form colonnades. (Where they don't, such as in Nos. 77-109 odd, it's probably the result of botched restoration after bomb damage in the War). An invention of Freake's which was to appear from then on in his developments, was to have crinoline-shaped balcony railings.
One characteristic motif of Basevi's, which Freake did adopt was to have the houses at the ends or in the middle of a long terrace projecting slightly to break the monotony of a long line. As in Egerton Crescent, the projecting sections are defined by quoins and emphasized by the use of triple windows, with anthemion-and-palmette capitals.
On the eastern terrace, the projecting parts of the terrace have pilasters at the angles, except where they were damaged in the War and have not been restored. But in the other terraces, the angles are usually decorated with quoins.
The group of three partly detached houses numbered 44-54 (even) on the west side of the square, and which share the frontage with St. Paul’s Church, are different from the houses in the rest of the square. They were built with three rather than four main storeys, but extra floors were added later.
Nos. 25 - 31 Onslow Square were destroyed by bombing in the War. They were replaced by a single block of flats with one entrance and one number, 25. But the new facade was cleverly designed to make it seem at first sight as if there are still four houses.
Most of the Onslow Square houses were built to the standard plan for a London terraced house. The basement contained the kitchen, rooms for food storage and preparation, and perhaps a room for the butler. The ground floor had at least a dining-room and a living room. It might also have a third large room which could be used as a library or a study. There was usually a dog-leg stair at the rear, reached by a side hallway. The upper floors usually have two main rooms to a floor.
Freake adopted a practice of varying the width of the individual houses in a terrace. The wider houses would usually be at the middle or the ends of a terrace. Then he could alter the internal layout. No. 57 Onslow Square, on the north side of the square, is an example. It has a forty foot frontage, almost double the width of many standard terrace houses. As a result, Freake was able to insert an open-well staircase supported on marble columns, as well as a separate side staircase for the servants. The house had a dining-room, library, morning-room and billiard-room on the ground floor, two ‘noble’ drawing-rooms on the first floor and thirteen bedrooms and dressing-rooms above. It also came with a stable for several horses and a large coach-house at the rear of a correspondingly large private garden.
