CONGREGATIONALISM
IN THE
COURT SUBURB.

BY

JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D.

Formerly Minister of Kensington Chapel.

London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,

27, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCLXXXIII.

Butler & Tanner,

The Selwood Printing Works,

Frome, and London.

DEDICATION.

THE FOLLOWING

HISTORICAL SKETCH,

PREPARED AT THEIR REQUEST,

Is Gratefully Inscribed

TO THE

PRESENT MINISTER AND DEACONS

OF
KENSINGTON CHAPEL.

INTRODUCTION.

At the commencement of my History, I wish to convey some idea of what Kensington was at the close of the last century, when the original Nonconformist Church in that place was formed and established.

Kensington as a parish must be distinguished from Kensington as a village or suburb.  The boundaries of the parish are still unaltered, yet what it contained ninety years ago was different, indeed, from what it contains now.  It is startling to read in Lyson’s “Environs,” published in 1795, the following sentence:—“The parish of Kensington contains about 1,910 acres of land, about half of which is pasture meadow, about 360 acres are arable land for corn only, about 230 in market gardens, about 260 cultivated sometimes for corn and sometimes for garden crops, and 100 acres of nursery ground.”

I often think, as I am reading history, what a contrast exists between its background of natural scenery, and the prospect now before our eyes on the spot to which the history refers.  We should not know Kensington if we could see it as it was when Hornton Street Chapel was being built.  Then all around was rural.  Notting Hill and the whole way to Paddington—where was the parish boundary to the north—exhibited fields bordered by hedgerows.  Holland Park, to the west, was a lordly demesne such as you see now “down in the shires,” and the boundary of the parish in that direction, at what used to be called Compton Bridge, was marked by a turnpike gate not long ago removed; beyond it lay a bit of country landscape before you reached the junction of roads at Hammersmith Broadway.  No great change had then taken place since Addison—who lived in Kensington—wrote to the Earl of Warwick, saying, “The business of this is to invite you to a concert of music, which I have found out in a neighbouring wood.  It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a blackbird, a thrush, a robin redbreast, and a bullfinch.  There is a lark that, by way of overture, sings famously till she is almost out of hearing.”  “The whole is concluded by a nightingale.”  Such were the warblers that broke the silence of Kensington woods when no screech of the railway whistled in the wind, and no lumbering omnibuses thundered along the highway.  Indeed, I well remember the nightingales in Holland Park, after the commencement of my ministry at Hornton Street.  Earl’s Court, even then, was separated from Holland Park gates by a country lane which began at Pembroke Square.  But fifty years before, now ninety years ago, it was thereabouts all pleasant open country, dotted with homesteads, paddocks, gardens; whilst at eventide broad green meadows saw “the lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.”  Brompton, included within the parish, extended to the borders of Chelsea, famous for cosy retreats occupied by merchants and literary men.  Turning from south to east, there opened, under the shadow of the palace, those gardens which had become famous and much admired in Queen Anne’s time; and after Hornton Street chapel was built, a minute of the Board of Green Cloth recorded that an annual pension of £18 was to be paid to a widow, named Gray, “in consideration of the loss of her husband, who was accidentally shot while the keepers were hunting foxes in Kensington Gardens.” [9a]

Lyson tells us that in 1795 there had been new buildings erected, principally in and near the hamlet of Brompton.  “The present number of houses,” he says, “is about 1,240, of which about 1,150 are inhabited, the remainder are for the most part unfinished.” [9b]

So much for the parish.  Now look at the Court suburb; so small in comparison with the parish, that it may be compared to a shrivelled kernel in a nutshell.  There, in the centre, stood the old Parish Church, pronounced by Bishop Blomfield the ugliest in the country; and in Church Street, higher up, the Vicarage was encompassed by a goodly garden and small park, now covered by rows of houses.  Quaint-looking tenements bordered Church Street a little way.  Campden House and grounds retained a palatial appearance.  A row of brick dwellings, taking us back to the days of the first Georges, still line Holland Street, and were then in their prime.  Hornton Street looked out, in spring, upon blooming orchards.  The road between Kensington Palace Gate and Holland House was, as it still is, the main thoroughfare; and I conclude that Phillimore Place, called by the Prince Regent “Dish-clout Row,” from its tasteless slabs in front, was then in pristine pride.  Kensington Square, though shorn of the glories it possessed under the first two Georges—when it boasted of forty coaches, and of lords and ladies occupying the buildings round it—still presented much quiet respectability; and old inhabitants, as they passed by the palace gates, could tell of having heard from their fathers and mothers how one morning there issued thence “Horse Guards with their trumpets, and a company of heralds with their tabards, to proclaim, after Queen Anne’s death, George, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith.”

All round, the Court suburb was separated from neighbouring hamlets by a belt of orchards, gardens, and nursery grounds; and the road between Kensington Gardens and Knightsbridge remained notorious for its loneliness and perils.  Opposite Hyde Park were a few aristocratic mansions, with spacious lawns, shrubberies, and gardens bounded by lofty walls; but the road was often in very bad repair.  In the middle of the century, Lord Hervey told his mother it was impassable, and that in Kensington he lived “in the same solitude as he should do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean.” [11]  Matters might have mended somewhat at the time the chapel was built, but a good old pew-opener, Mr. Mundy, told me how he remembered that