Kensington Living
Allen Street
Allen Street is a long road running from Kensington High Street to Stratford Road. At the south end each side of the street has a different name. The west side is Alma Terrace and the east side is Inkerman Terrace. Inkerman Terrace consists of three storey stucco houses plus basement with small front garden. Alma Terrace mainly consists of three storey houses plus basement with stucco up to first floor. These houses also have small front gardens and the street is tree lined on both sides.
Half way along Allen Street is the Coptic Orthodox Church of St Mark and the road then crosses Scarsdale Villas. The eastern section then has some large red brick mansion blocks and some garages on the west side. The street then crosses Abingdon Villas. This section of the street, on the east side, contains a mixture of a red brick mansion block of flats and a terrace of four stucco terraced houses. These have off street parking.
At the northern end the western section has a terrace of red brick Edwardian four storey mansion blocks plus basement, known as Wynnstay Gardens. The block has a private courtyard behind with a large number of private parking spaces.
Allen Street also has the very attractive Kensington United Reformed Church with its impressive entrance consisting of two large Ionic columns on either side.
Part of the west side of Allen Street just north of Abingdon Villas is also called Shaftesbury Villas which consists of a terrace of four stucco houses consisting of four floors with off street parking. The northern part of Allen Street is also tree lined.
The southern part of Allen Street was in the Nokes Estate. (See Nokes Estate for a short history of the Abingdon Villas and Scarsdale Villas area.)
Allen Street takes its name from Thomas Allen who bought land in the area in about 1817. By trade he was a tailor in Old Bond Street, and he had made his fortune by supplying uniforms to the army in the Napoleonic Wars.
A terrace of houses on the east side of Allen Street just above Stratford Road was begun in 1853 by Richard Anderson, a Pimlico builder. But he went bankrupt at that point. The work was taken over by Barnabas Jennings and William Stevenson, builders from Chelsea, in 1854 and completed in September 1854. The houses were called Inkerman Terrace, but this cannot have been the original intention since the Battle of Inkerman, which it was meant to celebrate, took place in November that year.
Allen Mansions was built on the site of the Britannia Brewery. The block was designed by H. Theodore Fenn and it was constructed in 1928/9.
