Qualla: 13 Kensington Palace Gardens

13 Kensington Palace Gardens: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krokodyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Britain rents this house to Russia for one pound a year. In return, Russia rents the British embassy in Moscow for one rouble. The Earl of Harrington commissioned the place in 1851, in his own peculiar version of Gothic style, on land that had once been the kitchen garden of Kensington Palace. A contemporary critic called it the very thumbscrew of design. Today, with the inscription Harrington House painted over and replaced by the number 13, it is the official residence of the Russian Ambassador to the Court of St James's.

Image: Krokodyl | CC BY-SA 3.0

13 Kensington Palace Gardens: Carved Out of Kensington Palace

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OpenStreetMap, cropped by Dr. Blofeld, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1841 an Act of Parliament hived off twenty-eight acres of Kensington Palace's kitchen gardens and turned them into a street of grand private houses. Kensington Palace Gardens quickly became one of the most coveted addresses in London, lined with what the era's prospectuses cal...

Image: OpenStreetMap, cropped by Dr. Blofeld | CC BY-SA 2.0

13 Kensington Palace Gardens: The Thumbscrew of Design

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krokodyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Harrington wanted Gothic. He sketched plans himself, handed them to the celebrated architect Decimus Burton for the exterior, and let Charles James Richardson supervise the build. Richardson, the surveyor to the Earl's South Kensington estate, was diplomatic in writing but visibl...

Image: Krokodyl | CC BY-SA 3.0

13 Kensington Palace Gardens: Inside the Plain Rooms

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krokodyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Buff brick with Bath stone dressings, a symmetrical front, a three-storey entrance tower originally crowned with a bell-turret. An oriel window jutted above the front door beneath a quatrefoil parapet. To the south, a conservatory. Inside, from the entrance hall, library and dini...

Image: Krokodyl | CC BY-SA 3.0

13 Kensington Palace Gardens: From Stanhopes to Soviets

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krokodyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Stanhope family - the Earls of Harrington - held the house until the First World War. Then in 1924 it passed to Sir Lewis Richardson, a South African millionaire businessman who spent over £25,000 reshaping it. Out went the bell-turret. The conservatory got new windows. The s...

Image: Krokodyl | CC BY-SA 3.0

13 Kensington Palace Gardens: Diplomatic Real Estate

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krokodyl, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1991, as the Soviet Union dissolved, the British government extended the Russian government's lease for another ninety-nine years. The terms remained extraordinary: one pound a year from the Russians, one rouble a year from the British for their Moscow embassy. The Russian Emb...

Image: Krokodyl | CC BY-SA 3.0