One Palace Green: Returning style and splendour to a monument of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement
The redevelopment of this iconic London property intrigues Arabella Youens.
There’s much debate today about whether a relaxation of formality has rendered dining rooms redundant, but one example in London suggests otherwise
Standing just off Kensington High Street, on what is often dubbed 'Billionaire's Road', is a house which was once a meeting point for members of the aristocracy, Pre-Raphaelites and leading proponents of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement.
The extensive use of unadorned plain red brick provoked sharp opposition from the Crown Estate Commissioners — some at the time thought it vulgar and too northern for grand London streets.
Built in 1870 for George Howard, later the 9th Earl of Carlisle, and his wife, Rosalind Stanley, 1 Palace Green was designed by Philip Webb with interiors by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. The appointments were a very personal choice; unusually for his family, George chose not to go into politics or estate management, but to become an artist. The result is one of the most influential of Webb’s early ‘studio-houses’ and helped to establish the use of red brick and asymmetrical frontages for fashionable London properties.
But the interiors were arguably more interesting than the exterior. At the time, the standard Victorian decorative approach would have been to apply wallpaper, place furniture and hang pictures. However, here, the decoration, furniture, textiles and paintings were conceived as a single artistic environment best captured in the house’s dining room, the artistic showpiece of the home.
Fast forward 150 years to 2021, when the Crown Estate put Grade II*-listed 1 Palace Green on the market. While the exterior design had been broadly preserved, over the passage of time, elements such as the original staircase and fireplaces, alongside decorative details including Morris wallpaper and textiles, had all but disappeared. Much of this happened when the house was subdivided into flats in 1957.
The launch caught the attention of Russell Smithers, CEO of property developers REDD. With the help of interior designer Martin Kemp and architects Pilbrow & Partners, they set about the careful redecoration of original features and the reinstatement of missing details where possible.
Central to the refurbishment of One Palace Green, as it is now known, has been the scholarly restoration of the dining room. Originally painted in a deep green, with gold gilding, its most notable feature was a frieze designed by Burne-Jones depicting the legend of Cupid and Psyche, based on the story in Morris’s The Earthly Paradise. The room was described in The Studio magazine in 1898 as glowing ‘like the page of an illuminated missal’.
Conservation architects Donald Insall Associates uncovered historical documentation detailing the original design, Kemp explains. ‘By the time I first saw the room, Burne-Jones’s frieze had long gone [it is in the Birmingham Museums collection] and we had to remove layers of paint to work our way back to see the original green.’
Victoria Stone supplied a new fireplace for the room and the gold leaf and orange details were painted by Brittain & Co.
The paint colour, known as Peacock Green, was mixed by Patrick Baty of Papers & Paints and passages from Morris’s epic poem The Earthly Paradise are inscribed around the room. Detailing on the panelling, arches and ceiling is influenced by William Morris’s Acanthus design. It was stencilled in parts over raw gold by specialist decorators Britain & Co. As the original fireplace had been removed, a new one was sourced from Victoria Stone with Delft blue tiles in the surround. Ceiling lights in aged brass from Vaughan add a further burnished metallic touch to the space, which shimmers under candlelight.
Following the restoration, the house has been divided into five apartments and this room forms the centrepiece of a duplex space that spans the ground and lower-ground floors of the house. Upstairs at the top of the house is George’s original studio, which is now a living room overlooking Kensington Palace Gardens with dramatic 4.5 metre (15 feet) ceiling height
The interiors had been carefully photographed by the Howards for posterity, but rather than heavily leaning into the Morris legacy or faithfully recreating an Arts-and-Crafts style, the decorative approach has been lighter in touch. ‘We looked to the principles that made the original house exceptional, such as craftsmanship and natural materials,’ Kemp explains. To that end, rooms bear tangible touches of Arts-and-Crafts influences, but in a toned-down manner.
A set of botanical prints introduce colour to the otherwise neutral principal bedroom of the first-floor apartment.
New wood panelling is painted in chalky heritage colours; handcrafted ceramic tiles in the bathrooms echo Morris motifs, but updated in black, grey and cream; and modern interventions such as air conditioning units are disguised in oak armoires. During the strip-out work, an approximately A3-sized fragment of original wallpaper was found in the first-floor drawing room. In its place, the team has placed a Morris-influenced design in neutral tones.
‘The temptation with a building of this significance is to become overly reverential. But the finest heritage projects don’t preserve buildings as museum pieces,’ Kemp says. ‘Here, it’s about being respectful to the architecture and knowing when to step back.’
The communal gardens have been redesigned by landscape architect Randle Siddeley.
