W14
Like Addison Avenue, it takes its name from Joseph Addison. Among the notable inhabitants of this road, begun in the 1820s, have been two distinguished statesmen, David Lloyd George, who lived at No. 2, 1928–36, and Chaim Weizmann, a founding father and first President of the State of Israel, who resided at No. 67, 1916–19.
No. 8 was designed by Halsey Ricardo for Sir Ernest Debenham in 1905–6 and looks more like a pumping station or a minor museum than a dwelling. Ricardo, an advocate of ‘structural polychromy’, combined within his Byzanto-Italianate design grey bricks, green-glazed bricks, turquoise tiles and ‘variegated Doulton Carrara ware’. Inside there is a central dome and lavish Arts and Crafts decoration.
After use by a mental welfare and rehabilitation group, in 2002 it went on the market for around £20 million. John Galsworthy lived at No. 14 in 1905–13. The church of St Barnabas was built in 1829 in the Tudor Gothic style to the designs of Lewis Vulliamy.
Excerpted from The London Encyclopaedia by kind permission of the Publishers, Pan MacMillan.
