London’s Alleys: Colville Place, W1

This charmingly quiet passageway in the centre of London feels cottagey, thanks to the row of old houses and the rich use of pot plants along the passage.

This part of London was still fields right up until the 1740s, when developments along Tottenham Court Road started expanding outwards. Within 50 years, the whole area was covered in the street layout we see today.

Colville Court, later Colville Place, was built around 1766 as a narrow passage with houses on both sides. They weren’t expensive houses; they were fairly basic three-storey working-people homes, originally with small back yards. The central pavement sloped down to the middle for drainage, with street lamps added much later.

The alley’s name came from the St Pancras-based builder John Colvill, but he wasn’t to enjoy the fruits of his labours. The houses on the south side were built later than the north side and took longer to rent out and by 1770, the delays had bankrupted him.

A rather dramatic incident occurred in March 1838, when the “effigies of all the pretended radicals who voted for Lord Teignmouth, or aided in his election” should be burnt in Colville Court.

Charles Shore, 2nd Baron Teignmouth, had stood for election in the Marylebone constituency in March 1838 but lost to the incumbent radical MP, Sir Samuel Whalley. However, a court case ruled that Sir Sam, a popular independent MP, wasn’t rich enough to be an MP and voided his win, letting Lord Teignmouth take the seat. Understandably, Lord Teignmouth wasn’t a popular successor to the parliamentary seat and quickly lost the seat in the 1841 General Election.

Away from politics, by the 1850s it seems that the passageway was home to a large number of cabinet makers.

An interesting incident occurred in 1903 when an Algerian man living in the passage was charged with door-to-door selling without a “pedlars license”, and the Judge expressed the opinions of the time (and sadly sometimes today as well) that “the foreigners come pouring into the country with articles that are not wanted and trade in such as way as to become a nuisance”.

He was fined 2s 6d, and on top of that, he was also told to pay an additional 5s for the language interpreter.

The case suggests, though, that Colville Place was home to migrants and poorer working people, and the houses would likely have been split into many small flats to accommodate as many people as possible. These days, however, the houses are rather more upmarket, offering a rare chance to live in little altered (external) Georgian houses in central London.

The passageway is almost a park, given the density of pot plants that spill over the pavements outside the houses, giving it a bucolic feel for this part of London. As it happens, there is now an actual public park next to the alley, occupying about half the southern half, a legacy of a bomb in WWII.

The alley is a delight to walk through.