South Kensington - Notable Residents

Notable Residents

Notable residents have included:

• Sir Henry Cole (1808–1882), Campaigner, educator and first director of the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum) lived at 33 Thurloe Square.
• Charles Booth (1840–1916), Pioneer of social research lived at 6 Grenville Place.
• George Wallis, FSA, (1811–1891), artist, museum curator and art educator; first Keeper of Fine Art Collection at South Kensington Museum.
  • His children, including Whitworth Wallis and Rosa Wallis.
• Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853–1917), Actor-manager lived at 31 Rosary Gardens.
• Sir J M Barrie (1860-1937), playwright and novelist, author of Peter Pan, and his wife Mary née Ansell, actress, at 133 Gloucester Road
• Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), British author and artist, spent her early life in Bolton Gardens.
• Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), British writer, and her sister Vanessa Bell (1879–1961), painter and interior designer, lived at 22 Hyde Park Gate until 1904.
• Francis Bacon (1909–1992), Irish-born British artist lived at 7 Cromwell Place and 7 Reese Mews.
• Benny Hill (1924–1992), British comedian lived at 1 & 2 Queen's Gate.
• Nicholas Freeman, OBE, (1939–1989) Controversial Leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea lived in Harrington Gardens, near Gloucester Road.
• Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–97), liberal philosopher
• Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician.
• John Malkovich, actor, had a flat in the area
• Charles Crichton, English director and script writer.
• Dakota Blue Richards, actress
• Mika, singer
• Jason Orange, singer (Take That)