page_title: Earl's Court
section_title: 19th-century
hierarchical_section_title: Earl's Court / History / 19th-century
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken from an estate agent's poster circa 1875. Out of copyright.
context_page_description: Earl's Court is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London, bordering the rail tracks of the West London line and District line that separate it from the ancient borough of Fulham to the west, the sub-districts of South Kensington to the east, Chelsea to the south and Kensington to the northeast. It lent its name to the now defunct eponymous pleasure grounds opened in 1887 followed by the pre-World War II Earls Court Exhibition Centre, as one of the country's largest indoor arenas and a popular concert venue, until its controversial closure in 2014. The area has long been known as "Bedsitter Land" with many of its stuccoed terraces converted into hotels and hostels.
  In practice, the notion of Earl's Court, which is geographically confined to the SW5 postal district, tends to apply beyond its boundary to parts of the neighbouring Fulham area with its SW6 and W14 postcodes to the west, and to adjacent streets in postcodes SW7, SW10 and W8 in Kensington and Chelsea.
  Earl's Court is also an electoral ward of the local authority, Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council. Its population at the 2011 census was 9,104.
context_section_description: The original catalyst for development was the ill-fated vanity project by Lord Kensington (died 1852), which consisted of the two-mile conversion of the insanitary Counter's Creek into the Kensington Canal (1826 onwards), followed by its eventual replacement first by  "Mr Punch's railway", opened in 1844 and next, by the Metropolitan District Railway in 1865–69, which eventually became London Underground's District Line and was joined after 1907 by the Piccadilly line. Meanwhile, the congestion apparent in London and Middlesex for burials at the start of the century was causing public concern not least on health grounds. In 1837 a decision was made to lay out a new burial ground on the edge of Earl's Court in an outlying area of Brompton. The moving spirit behind the project was the engineer, Stephen Geary. It was necessary to form a company in order to get parliamentary permission to raise capital for the proposal. Securing the land – some 40 acres – from local landowner Lord Kensington and the Equitable Gas Light Company, as well as raising the money, proved an extended challenge. After two years the cemetery was duly established by Act of Parliament and laid out in 1839, it opened in 1840, originally as the West of London and Westminster Cemetery. It was consecrated by Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, in June 1840, and is now one of Britain's oldest and most distinguished garden cemeteries, served by the adjacent West Brompton station.
  In the quarter century after 1867, Earl's Court was transformed into a loosely populated Middlesex suburb and in the 1890s a more dense parish with 1,200 houses and two churches. Eardley Crescent and Kempsford Gardens were built between 1867 and 1873, building began in Earl's Court Square and Longridge Road in 1873, in Nevern Place in 1874, in Trebovir Road and Philbeach Gardens in 1876 and Nevern Square in 1880. Earl's Court's only hospital was opened in 1887 on the corner of Old Brompton Road and Finborough Road. It was named in honour of Queen Victoria's youngest daughter however, the hospital closed in 1978.
caption: Philbeach Gardens, Earl's Court, c1875, with St. Cuthbert's Parish Church
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