The Hyde Park Towers Hotel

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Hotel facts and statistics
The Hyde Park Towers Hotel

Location	London, United Kingdom
No. of restaurants	1
No. of rooms	115
No. of floors	5
Website	[1]

The Hyde Park Towers Hotel, 41-51 Inverness Terrace

1 Early History
2 Development of Inverness Terrace
3 Residents
4 20th Century
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Early History

The history of Bayswater can be traced back to Bayard's Watering Place, recorded in 1380 where the stream later called the Bayswater rivulet or Westbourne passed under the Uxbridge road. The name presumably denoted a place where horses were refreshed, either from the stream itself or from a spring. There were several variations of the name, Bayswatering being common in the 18th century, although the form Bayswater occurred as early as 1659.

Seventeenth-century Bayswater was a small hamlet. In 1746 there were only two buildings near the road east of the Bayswater rivulet and three on the west side. The lane still led through fields, to Lord Craven's pest house, east of which were two more buildings, presumably barns, beside the rivulet. The location in 1742 was 'intended to be called Craven Hill'. Until about 1840 Bayswater was semi-rural. There were some grand houses on Moscow Road and some villas on Porchester Terrace but in 1840 Bayswater had still not been joined to neighbouring districts.

[edit] Development of Inverness Terrace

At this time plans had been made to exploit more of the Paddington Estate as the eastern part of Bayswater, where the future Gloucester, Westbourne, and Eastbourne terraces were to lead to Bishop's Road. The layout was thought to be by architect George Gutch. Terraces were chosen, rather than villas, perhaps in order to mask the railway. They were also used, however, in most of the rest of Bayswater: in further building along the former Black Lion Lane (which was subsequently renamed Queen's Road in honour of Queen Victoria, who had been born at nearby Kensington Palace. This was a name somewhat lacking in distinctiveness, and for this reason the present name of Queensway was eventually substituted. ), and in most of Inverness and Queensborough terraces. Detached villas were chosen only for the completion of Porchester Terrace as far as Bishop's Road and semi-detached ones only for the northern end of Inverness Terrace and, further west, around Monmouth Road south of Westbourne Grove.

During the 1840s and 1850s housing in the Bayswater area spread steadily. It was the work of several builders in the south part of Maida Vale, and in the east part of Westbourne green, where some of Bayswater's long avenues were continued north of Bishop's Road. The grandest street was Westbourne Terrace, begun from the south end c. 1840 and finished 1856-60, whose main builders were William King and William Kingdom. The blocks north of Craven Road were by Kingdom, who also built most of Gloucester Terrace between 1843 and 1852.

Meanwhile farther west, lines of building similarly proceeded northward along Queen's Road, Porchester Terrace, the newer Inverness and Queensborough terraces, and the cross street Porchester Gardens. Builders who took several plots in Queen's Road included Edward Capps, James Capps from 1841 and Richard Yeo of Westbourne Park Road from 1851. They also had land in Inverness Terrace, whose stretch north of Porchester Gardens was called Inverness Road until 1876 and which was built up between 1844 and 1856, largely by Yeo. John Scantlebury was building at the south end of Inverness Terrace in 1857.

J.V Scantlebury was a builder in London in the 1850s in the Paddington area and died in Acton, Middlesex on the 12 April 1906. His father was John Scantlebury and his mother Janes Stevens Henwood. John Scantlebury's mother was possibly a Vandersluys. The Scantleburys were a Cornish family who came from parishes near Fowey and Lostwithiel.

Much of Inverness Terrace is made up of stuccoed four- or five-storeyed rows. Inverness Terrace has two symmetrical ranges facing each other, with centrepieces, Corinthian pilasters, and continuous balconies. 41 – 51 Inverness Terrace is The Hyde Park Towers Hotel which is an early [[Victorian building combined from six town houses.

Nearly all the area from Westbourne Terrace to Inverness Terrace was wealthy during the late 19th Century, although Leinster Place and Terrace and Craven Terrace were merely well-to-do, as were Eastbourne Terrace to the east and Queen's Road to the west. There was a significant Greek community at this time too - Gazettes of the period show Greek families owned whole stretches of Westbourne Terrace, Inverness Terrace, Porchester Terrace and Pembridge Gardens.

[edit] Residents

The ornate Inverness Court hotel is a former private house, remodelled, with its own theatre, for Louis Spitzel (d.1906) by Mewès & Davis, architects of the Ritz.

Sir John Bridge, the eminent chief metropolitan magistrate of the Bow Street Court, who dealt with some of the most sensational trials of modern times (the Balfour case, and the Jameson raiders), and tried Oscar Wilde in 1885, occupied No. 50, Inverness Terrace, Bayswater, and died there, April 26, 1900. (http://www.imperial-london.me.uk/houses-of-famous-people.php/gpo.php)

Sir George Mivart, F.R.S., the Admirable Crichton of modern times in science, whose controversy (just prior to his death) with Cardinal Vaughan is reported in various places, lived at 77, Inverness Terrace, Hyde Park, and there “breathed his last, April 1, 1900”.

[edit] 20th Century

In the period between the World Wars, most of the area remained expensive.

While Bayswater Road was gradually taken over for flats or hotels, including the former home of Field-Marshal Sir John French, earl of Ypres (1852-1925), at no. 94 Lancaster Gate, the main north-south avenues still had distinguished residents. Samuel Montagu's nephew Sir Herbert (later Viscount) Samuel (1870- 1963), the Liberal politician, had three successive homes in Porchester Terrace, whose many titled householders included the Lord Chancellor Viscount Buckmaster (1861-1934), and Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson (1860-1933) lived in Westbourne Terrace. Lancaster Gate East and Lancaster Gate West wards, with respective densities of 61 and 78 persons to an acre, were less crowded even than Maida Vale in 1921 and 1931. Lancaster Gate East, with 69.5 persons to an acre, still had the borough's lowest density in 1951. (fn. 47)

The Paddington Estate's cottages around Caroline Place, one of the oldest parts of Bayswater, which 'might be part of a country town', were being closed in 1937, although they had good tenants and did not constitute a slum. Poverty existed only in pockets: three derelict buildings had to be closed at the corner of Leinster Street and Porchester Mews, where a family with eight children lived in two rooms. The Church Commissioners' decision in 1954 to reorganize the Paddington Estate involved the renaming and disposal of their Bayswater property. Plans for its sale, with that of outlying properties farther north, were announced in 1955, to include Westbourne Terrace, Cleveland Square, most of Gloucester Terrace, part of Lancaster Gate and Inverness Terrace, and shops in Queensway.

An early purchaser, of 65 a. in the eastern part, was the Royal Liver Co., from which Maxwell Joseph in 1958 bought 25 a. called Hyde Park North. The area was also known as 'Sin Triangle', consisting of 680 properties, mainly divided houses, from Paddington station to Lancaster Gate. Eastbourne Terrace was rebuilt as office blocks between 1957 and 1959 in partnership with Max Rayne. The Church Commissioners paid for the building costs and received half of the profits, in an experiment whose success encouraged them to take shares in another 25 joint companies between 1958 and 1962.