Hyde Park Gate: Churchill & Virginia Woolf Were Neighbours

Hyde Park Gate in London is a quiet Kensington cul-de-sac famous as the home of both author Virginia Woolf and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Virginia Woolf was born at number 22 in 1882, a house marked today by three English Heritage blue plaques. In 1945, Churchill purchased number 28, where sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein modeled his bronze bust across the street, and where Churchill died in 1965.

London Β· from the walk β€œThe People's Park: Secrets & Untold Stories of Hyde Park” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Hyde Park Gate, London SW7 5BB

Which famous historic figures lived at Hyde Park Gate in London?

Look around you. This quiet, elegant cul-de-sac called Hyde Park Gate may seem like just another well-heeled Kensington street. But this is arguably the most intellectually charged address in all of London... because two of the twentieth century's most extraordinary minds lived just doors apart.......... Adeline Virginia Steephen, later known as the modernist author Virginia Woolf, was born right here on the twenty fifth of January, eighteen eighty two, at number twenty two. The Steephen family occupied this Victorian townhouse from eighteen seventy eight, when her father Leslie Steephen, a philosopher and literary critic, married Julia Prinsep Duckworth. If you look at number twenty two, you'll notice it's adorned with Three separate English Heritage blue plaques β€” for Leslie, for Virginia, and for her sister Vanessa Bell, the post-impressionist painter.......... Now here's something most people walk right past without knowing. For five years in the eighteen nineties, the little Steephens β€” Vanessa, Toby, and Virginia β€” spent their time writing a weekly family newspaper. They called it the Hyde Park Gate News, recording the day-to-day events of their family home. Virginia was just Ten years old... already sharpening the pen that would one day write Mrs Dalloway.......... But this house held darkness too. Years later, Virginia wrote a searing memoir Also titled "Twenty Two Hyde Park Gate." She described the house, standing at the end of this narrow cul-de-sac, as one that "led nowhere"... inside it had been "tangled and matted with emotion." After the death of her father in nineteen oh four, Virginia and her siblings fled to Bloomsbury β€” and the rest is literary history.......... Now... walk just a few doors further, to number twenty eight. After losing the general election of nineteen forty five, Winston Churchill bought this house as his London base. He then acquired the abutting number twenty seven in March nineteen forty six. Clementine Churchill thought it an extravagance... after all, it cost the grand sum of seven thousand pounds!......... And here's a delicious detail. Churchill's bust was delayed because the politician couldn't find time to sit for the artist until December nineteen forty six β€” but conveniently, his London residence at Hyde Park Gate was Opposite Epstein's home. That's right β€” the sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein lived at number eighteen, and he created one of the most famous portraits of Churchill ever made... a bronze bust completed in nineteen forty seven, one cast of which now sits in the White House. Neighbours helping neighbours, you might say.......... The last great scene on this street was deeply moving. A crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to Churchill outside his London house on his ninetieth birthday, and he replied with his familiar victory sign from a window. Nearly a thousand persons stood in the cold and drizzle on that day. It was the thirtieth of November, nineteen sixty four. Less than two months later... on the fifteenth of January, Churchill suffered a stroke β€” the Eighth he had endured β€” and he died on the twenty fourth of January, nineteen sixty five, right here, in this house, on this quiet little street.......... Two lives. Two towering legacies. One small cul-de-sac beside the park.

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