Courtfield Gardens stands on what was once, according to records from the 16th century, ‘a large, open meadow’, known as Great Courtfield. It is described as being surrounded by fertile land and small farms and was part of a parcel of land that stretched from the present Cromwell Road to The Old Brompton Road in one direction, and Gloucester Road to the Earl’s Court Road in the other. Great Courtfield was included in the Earl’s Court ‘manor’.

By the 18th century, a large manor house, Earl’s Court House, occupied the site of what is now the western terrace of Barkston Gardens (replacing a substantial dwelling, described in 1705, as having fountains, a marble-tiled dairy, engines for water and great gates at its entrance).

When the anatomist and surgeon, John Hunter, lived there in the 1790s, it was known as ‘Hunter’s Menagerie’ due to his installation of cloistered enclosures, in which he kept a great variety of animals for ‘observation and experiment’, including buffalo, eagles chained to rocks and other exotic creatures.

The Duke of Richmond purchased the house in 1802 for his ‘housekeeper’ and mistress, Mrs Bennett. She then leased it to the Earl of Albermarle, who lived there until 1810. Finally, in 1832, Earl’s Court House became a Private Asylum for Young Ladies, and remained so until it was demolished in 1886, to make way for the construction of Barkston Gardens.

James Gunter, a successful Berkeley Square confectioner, had bought Earl’s Court Lodge (located at the present junction of Earl’s Court Road and Bolton Gardens) and its land in 1797, thus beginning the family’s accumulation of land which would continue for the next sixty years and would have a profound and lasting influence on the area. The nickname of Currant-Jelly-Hall was given to Earl’s Court Lodge by the Albermarle children living at nearby Earl’s Court House, a mocking reference to the market gardening business built up by James Gunter’s son Robert in the locality.

The area was already famous by the 1740s for its nurseries, market gardens and orchards, which kept London supplied with fresh produce. But it seems to have reached a peak in the 1820s, when we find Robert Gunter being praised for ‘the extent and variety of his production and the progressiveness of his methods....the combined effects of capital, talent and industry’. His innovations included steam-heated greenhouses for tender and exotic fruits.

Robert Gunter’s son, also named Robert, finally removed himself and his family to Wetherby Grange, in Yorkshire, in 1857. He leased Earl’s Court Lodge to the sisters of the Order of Assumption, who occupied the house for some years, until they settled in Kensington Square, where they remain to the present day.

The most dramatic and enduring change came to the area in 1865, when the rising cost of land for building houses (combined with the expansion of the Metropolitan Railway Line) could no longer be ignored by Robert Gunter and his brother James. They sold part of the family’s land for the laying of the railway line and the construction of the first Earl’s Court Station. (The photograph of the old farmhouse was taken just before its demolition to make way for the station.) Gloucester Road Station (constructed in the middle of William Attwood’s market garden) was built around the same time.

The development of the squares and gardens of Earl’s Court and South Kensington continued steadily between 1865 and 1896. These houses were intended for the use of the wealthy during the London Season. The construction of Courtfield Gardens began in 1873 with the south terrace (no’s 1-12) together with the houses flanking Collingham Road. They were completed in 1875 - the same year that work began on the western and northern terraces. Building continued around the square until the eastern terrace (a noticeably more modern style) was completed in 1881.

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