No. 17, Park Village West, Camden, London

No. 17, Park Village West

The office of John Nash

c.1837

Cream stucco

Off Albany Street, Camden, London

Other houses in Park Village West by the Office of John Nash, and Related Material

Houses by Sir James Pennethorne

No. 8, Park Village West

No. 10, Park Village West

No. 11, Park Village West

No. 12, Park Village West

No. 14, Park Village West

No. 17, Park Village West

Houses in Park Village East

Victorian Women's Religious Orders

Photograph, caption, and commentary below by Jacqueline Banerjee

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According to the Survey of London, No. 17:

was intended to be in the late Gothic style with a steep roof terminating in gables with moulded parapets and central finials and pendants, the external angles having octagonal projections taken up in tall turrets that flank the gables. The Tudor character of the building is well maintained by the external chimney-stacks with octagonal shafts and the label mouldings over the windows. There is a bay window to the ground floor below the northern gable. The south looks towards the road and has a railed enclosure before it. (Roberts and Godfrey).

This house is of additional interest: a blue plaque explains, "In this home on March 26th 1845 was founded the first Religious Sisterhood in the Church of England since the Reformation." Following a very low-key beginning, a series of refined young women (and a more matronly middle-aged one) came to take up residence here, to the neighbourhood's intense curiosity. Eventually, a visit from "the notorious Dr Pusey" confirmed that this "innocent-looking villa was nothing else but a 'Puseyite Nunnery'" (see "Ascot Priory"). In 1856 the sisterhood was absorbed into Lydia Sellon's Devonport Sisterhood, the new foundation then becoming the Society of the Most Holy Trinity. [see Cobb]

Bibliography

"Ascot Priory: A Sermon Preached in Pusey House in Celebration of the Revival of the Religious Life in the Church of England." Viewed 2 May 2009.

Cobb, Peter G. "Sellon, (Priscilla) Lydia (1821-1876)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Viewed 2 May 2009.

Roberts, J. R. Howard, and Walter H. Godfrey, eds. "Park Village West." Survey of London, Vol. 21 (1949). British History Online. Viewed 2 May 2009.

Last modified 23 October 2015