At the north end of Ladbroke Grove, squeezed between the Paddington mainline train tracks and the big Sainsbury’s car park lies Grade II* listed Kensal House – a bold experiment in community living, built in 1936 as Britain’s first purpose-built modernist ‘urban village’ for local workers. Today, it is still home to a thriving, diverse community – families, young people, older residents, council tenants and leaseholders – who continue to live out its founding vision: a future-facing, neighbourly community.

It is a vision now under threat. As Sainsbury’s / Ballymore and Berkeley St William roll out their glossy plans for 3,500 new tower block dwellings at the Kensal Gasworks ‘Opportunity Area’ next door.

A Building with a Mission

The site on which Kensal House now stands was once part of a sprawling gasworks complex, owned by the Gas Light and Coke Company (GLCC), who bought the land in 1872 from the Western Gas Company, formed in 1844. A peninsula of land between the canal, Kensal Green Cemetery and Paddington mainline railway, originally the GLCC manufactured gas from coal for the whole of North West London on the site. Equivalent to British Gas today, the GLCC saw opportunity for providing gas powered housing by the 1930s, and commissioned a competition to design a show estate to promote this new technology, the result being Kensal House. The GLCC’s head office was based at Canalside House, the red brick building on the other side of the roundabout, which is threatened with demolition (alongside 20 social housing homes in the Boathouse, and the Canalside Activity Centre) as part of the development.

Modernist architect Maxwell Fry and pioneering social housing consultant Elizabeth Denby won the competition to design Kensal House, (with support from architects Robert Atkinson, C.H. James and Grey Wornum). Denby was well respected for her work as a Housing Officer for the Kensington Housing Trust, working for 10 years prior to collaborating with Fry, supporting families living in overcrowded West London slum housing. You can tell her empathy and care for future residents informed the design, she wanted to make a place to live fit for a ‘community in action’. Fry and Denby eagerly responded to practical and social considerations within the design, making compact family homes to improve living conditions. Their relationship was personal and professional, inspiring each other to improve so many aspects of the design. The result was a radical architectural statement: a clean-lined, European-influenced flat roofed, white walled estate built with purpose, following the influence of Walter Gropius, Bauhaus and the principles of Existenz-Minimum. It was designed to rehouse working-class families into healthy, light-filled flats.

Each flat has generously sized social space with three bedrooms (or two in ground floor flats) alongside compact kitchens and bathrooms, one balcony for growing plants and another very small one for drying laundry. Concrete was used with cork insulation. Flats were designed to get maximum daylight following the principle of ‘zeilenbau’, sunlight warms the bedrooms in the mornings and the living rooms all afternoon until sunset. It is widely recognised as the prototype for modern living and was awarded Grade II* listed status for its historical significance.

But Kensal House was never just about buildings – it was about people. Fry and Denby’s design focused on shared spaces: gardens, a playground, allotments, laundry rooms, as well as a community theatre hosting the Feather’s Club (once also based at the Dalgarno Trust and across Kensington), and even an on-site nursery. Fitting the ideals of the time, there was a men’s carpentry room and a separate women’s social room, shared communal facilities to enable people to prosper. The expansive ball court playground and nursery building echo the rounded form of the former gasholder underneath, and the western block elegantly curves around this form – an architectural reminder of the site’s industrial past, and the gasworks next door underneath the Sainsbury’s car park.

There are no dark corners or isolating layouts within the site. It is an inviting space for children to play, riding scooters around the ball court, playing football, basketball or hide and seek. There are sweeping vantage points and vistas throughout the estate which are so playful. A bridge walkway links the blocks at street level (the whole road is higher of course, raised above the railway and the canal). Recognising faces on the bridge walkway leads to courteous nods and hellos between neighbours. Each set of ten flats shares a staircase, which feels like a friendly amount of people to share with. The estate was built to foster contact between neighbours, a living architecture of care and connection.

Can any contemporary developer equal this vision?

Images: Kensal House grounds 2025 Credit: Cordelia Cembrowicz

One of the most cherished areas of the estate is the Tropical Garden known as Hawaii by some; it is a green heart at the front of the estate visible from the main road.

The community theatre is leased to an organisation who received public funding to renovate the space. The refurbishment was completed in 2024 by Sam Causer architects.

The nursery was designed with the help of Mary Crowley, who coincidentally worked with Erno Goldfinger (of Trellick Tower fame) to design facilities for displaced children in WWII. It was also supported by Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who was instrumental in National nursery education and the Children’s Act (1948). The nursery space stayed open for years and for a while Clare Gardens nursery were based there during their renovation. Today, the nursery still serves local families, it is leased by the Full of Life Centre, supporting adults with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and their families. I have huge respect for their work.

Images: Kensal House, by Edith Tudor Hart, 1937, Credit: Riba Collections

You can see beautiful photographs of the estate taken in 1937 by Edith Tudor Hart on the RIBA website. They are striking for capturing a sense of play with the children within the communal space. Tudor Hart had trained with Maria Montisorri herself to be a Montisorri kindergarten teacher before studying photography at the Bauhaus in 1928. Incidentally Tudor Hart was a communist spy and recruited the Cambridge Five to the Soviet Union. What a life!

Elizabeth Denby remained deeply involved in the estate well into the 1940s, lending money for furniture to new tenants, and staying involved with the tenants association as Housing Director. As architectural historian Elizabeth Darling argues, Denby was massively underrecognised for her role in designing Kensal House during her lifetime and subsequently. According to Maxwell Fry himself he failed to publicly acknowledge her role in the design and ruined their relationship in doing so. Fry says in his memoir:

“As we worked, meeting at all hours, we fell into no ordinary kind of loving, for she was proud and high minded and wanted all while, though yielding in many things, I was the absolute creature of my work, which was in the midst of and at the end of all things received of her, my architecture. But how to distinguish one enthusiasm from another? We hugged for the delight of achievement and fell apart reluctantly. I loved her for her compassion and for the widening of every sympathy I shared with her. We ascended together, nearly every care vanished. And then I broke the relationship in pieces. I failed publicly to acknowledge her and injured us both irreparably.”

Maxwell Fry later married architect Jane Drew, and together they worked on pioneering modernist buildings in Ghana, Nigeria and India. They contributed significantly to the Chandigarh project, collaborating under the leadership of Le Corbusier, to design workable public buildings and civic infrastructure.

Community in Action

Over time, ownership and upkeep of the estate shifted. After the nationalisation of the gas industry, the estate passed to the London County Council, and the progression of electricity surpassed that of gas power, meaning the show estate had no commercial purpose. The additional costs of Kensal House’s unique social infrastructure were not seen as a priority by the LCC. One by one, the shared amenities were shuttered. It was treated like a ‘sink’ estate, with minimal funding put into the building. Design faults with the ventilation and the width of the drain pipes led to repeat problems. It had been painted green in WWII for camouflage and remained that colour until the 1980s.  According to interviewees in the 1984 documentary, ‘third category’ people housed there. ‘First category’ families were housed in places like the Wornington estate, which has now been demolished and replaced with Portobello Square.

A 1937 documentary by Frank Sainsbury (no relation to the supermarket) captures Kensal House in its early years, including rare testimonies from residents. A second film by director Peter Wyeth ‘12 Views of Kensal House’ paints a different picture in the 1980s, reflecting the era of underinvestment and media stigma of social housing in Thatcher’s Britain. The depiction is unfairly bleak – broken windows, racist graffiti, a place no one wanted to live. According to one of my neighbours they cut out the joviality from the film to heighten the drama.

Kensal House was granted Grade II* listed status in 1981, and a full refurbishment followed in 2001, with major works that one neighbour has told me the council were pleased to say came under budget. Anti-mould sealant was not used on the windows, to save money. Today frustratingly mould is a large problem due to extreme condensation on the failing ancient windows and poor quality roof, flats still have the original cork insulation crumbling underneath plasterboard and the original stack pipes (cast iron pipes embedded in the concrete floors) which block and leak. We are waiting for major works which are already frustratingly late, despite the promises of the council head of Social Innovation on ITV news in January 2023. We have a strong Residents Association and band together to raise concerns with our landlord to wade through their processes. I think about Elizabeth Denby in those moments.

Kensal House is now home to a mix of council tenants (65) and leaseholders (3), with residents of all ages and backgrounds. Many have lived here for decades, sharing stories of life in the 70s, 80s and beyond, when children used to play outside all summer, and shout up to balconies for their friends to come down. Now I’m raising my own family here, I am proud to be a part of that legacy, with neighbours I know I can rely on and friends in the playground and beyond. It remains, in every sense, a community in action.

Images: Architectural Model of Kensal Gasworks development by Ballymore at Canalot Studios 2023. Kensal House in the foreground. Photo by Cordelia Cembrowicz

The Future Under Threat

This vision of community – the kind that takes decades to grow – now faces an existential threat. Sainsbury’s / Ballymore and Berkeley St William’s proposals for the Kensal Gasworks big Sainsbury’s site offer little thought for the local community and will damage life here and beyond.

Their plans do not address the housing crisis, with so many luxury flats sold off site for investment purposes, many will be buy-to-leave. Neither Sainsbury’s/Ballymore nor Berkeley St William meaningfully address the waiting list for social housing. They will receive tax breaks for cleaning the land and will reduce the percentage of social housing through any ‘unexpected’ additional costs.

We worry the bleak generic tower blocks will feel oppressive and will not foster a sense of neighbourhood for residents old and new. Many of the properties will be left empty, as is the way with buy-to-leave international investment properties sold off plan. Tower blocks are known to be unsustainable and ecologically unviable, now is not the time to build more. Not enough family size homes are being proposed in either development, how will children thrive without space, light or clean air?

Our estate will be cast into shadow from 3pm by the adjacent 14 storey crescent towerblock, we worry about the impact on our mental wellbeing. We will miss the sunset and the daylight. Kensal House used to be known as the sunshine flats. Would the council tolerate this in a Grade II* listed building in Chelsea or South Kensington, or an estate with fewer council tenants?

We worry about the lack of transport, with no train station ever being built and no additional roads in or out for the 3,500 planned flats. The impact on air quality and journey times up Ladbroke Grove will be atrocious. Traffic is already a nightmare and it will only get worse!

We worry about the remediation of the site as neither developer is going far enough to protect residents from the toxic nasties lying dormant in the old gasworks. Benzene, Cyanide, Arsenic, Naphthalene, VOCs are byproducts of the process and still lie buried underground. Life expectancy in Dalgarno, Golborne and Notting Dale wards is already shockingly lower than average and these communities should not have to suffer the excessive pollution of this big build project. It is dangerous.

The Sainsbury’s / Ballymore and Berkeley St William’s plans lack the soul, the foresight, and the lived-in wisdom of places like Kensal House. We believe in new housing, but believe the priority should be real homes for local people. Why not low rise high density housing built with the wellbeing of its residents in mind, like Kensal House?

We must protect the living heritage of North Kensington – not just its buildings, but its people and values. As we fight to save Canalside House, the Boathouse and Canalside Activity Centre, which are all up for demolition as part of the Sainsbury’s / Ballymore development, we think about alternative visions for the Kensal Gasworks. Kensal House reminds us what public architecture can be when it centres care, dignity, and connection. 

by Cordelia Cembrowicz

In memory of Mariam, Javed, Zayn and Amani.

Cordelia is an artist, teacher and Co Chair of Kensal House Residents Association. She has lived in Kensal House since 2021. You can see her artwork at www.cembrowicz.co.uk

Further info

Object to the new Ballymore and Berkeley St William’s developments (separate objections necessary, do it twice!): https://www.keepkensalgreen.com/

Visit us – London Open House Festival September 2025 https://programme.openhouse.org.uk/listings/12439

Reading – https://c20society.org.uk/building-of-the-month/kensal-house-west-london

“Kensal House: the Housing Consultant and the Housed”, in British Architecture and Design in the 1930s (Journal of the Twentieth Century Society, no. 8, 2007, pp. 106–116) Elizabeth Darling

“Elizabeth Denby or Maxwell Fry: a matter of attribution”, in Women’s Places: Architecture and Design 1860–1960(Routledge, 2003, pp. 149–170)

Edith Tudor Hart’s Photography: https://www.ribapix.com/search?q=Kensal+house# 

Film

Welcome to Kensal House, directed by Frank Sainsbury 1937 https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-kensal-house-1937-online

Twelve Views of Kensal House, directed by Peter Wyeth 1984 – available to view in person for free at the BFI archive: https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/art%20in%20the%20making/2022/08/18/twelve-views-of-kensal-house/ 

Full of Life Centre: https://www.fulloflifekc.com/