Knightsbridge Living
Yeomans Row
Yeomans Row is a cul-de-sac which runs south of Brompton Road. As it is a cul-de-sac it is a very quiet street despite its proximity to Brompton Road.
The northern part consists of some commercial premises. The rest of the street consists mainly of three-storey brick-faced houses.
The houses on the east side of the street at the southern end have small front gardens and an abundance of shrubbery, and some are covered in creeper.
There are some particularly unusual houses on the west side of the street, with wide studio-style windows at first floor.
There is also a small neighbourhood Italian restaurant and also a French restaurant. There is a pub at the north end of the street on the corner with Brompton Road.
No. 4 Yeomans Row, which was at the corner with Egerton Gardens Mews, was originally built by W Mitchell and Son, Dulwich builders, for William Henry Collbran, as a bicycle workshop with studios above. It was built between 1900 and 1902 and joined onto the earlier terrace.
The earliest part of the terrace was Nos. 6-10 (even) Yeomans Row. This was built by The Estate’s Improvement Company in the early 1890s to provide stables for the house owners in Egerton Gardens. When Collbran took over the building agreement for this area from The Estate’s Improvement Company, he had put up another stable and coach house as number 12. This was rebuilt in 1957 to 1958 to designs by M Howard-Radley.
Nos. 14-28 (even) Yeomans Rows were designed to be studios or at least small houses to take the place of the now unwanted stable accommodation. Collbran apparently acted more as financier than builder. He sublet the sites of No. 14-22 to Charles Brassington, a builder from Camberwell, and it was Brassington who put up the buildings. Nos. 14-18 are fairly basic properties, but with large industrial windows. It is not known who designed these or No. 20. But number 22 was designed by Alfred J Beesley, an architect from Tufnell Park. This house has an elaborate door case constructed of brick and terracotta, with a pediment above it. The house is built in red brick and has bay windows.
Collbran also sublet Nos. 24, 26 and 28 to three lady artists, Eida Lovering, Emily McCalum and Sara Vaughan. They all used an architect named William Barber, who worked at 3 Brick Court Temple. He designed the properties with motifs in red brick and tile and different styles of window openings. The ladies employed Brassington to build their houses along with his own.
