On my final day mapping Porchester Gardens last Tuesday 25 October (the day before my birthday) (67, since you ask) I photographed & recorded the name of a house near the top of Sandford Road. Only long afterwards did the name of the building strike home: “Coronation Villa”.

Porchester Gardens was divided into lots for allotments & houses following it’s purchase on 26 March 1887 (history: [1], [2]). The first house is generally reckoned at 1889, and single houses were built on each square in the Gardens in the 10 years or so that followed purchase†. Odd houses were built throughout the next years, but it was the period between the 2 World Wars (1920s & 1930s) that saw the true spurt of building as gardening allotments were abandoned & houses built on each plot (all except one).

I find it very interesting to track the history of building, but the difficulty is to find the start_date for enough houses (especially the old ones). And that is where the building-name comes in, and exercising little grey cells…

This house can be seen in Google StreetView (it’s the double-fronted detached house with a blue door, but I cannot show that here). Here is the panel-name (not very clear):

Victorian & Georgian houses were frequently named after important national events (of either local or international importance). A Coronation in the year that the ground was prepared would be an obvious reason for such a name. These are the obvious candidates:

• 1837 : Queen Victoria
• 1901 : Edward VII
• 1910 : George V
• 1936 : George VI

My best guess is the first George; 1910 due to the coronation of George V (but I’m no expert).

†
It was the lady historian on Whittingham Road that informed me that the first action after purchase was to divide Porchester Gardens into plots with roads laid out in the New York grid-fashion. Those roads that ran East-West from Plains Road were named after the 3 guarantors: Bennett, Whittingham & Robinson. The combination of East-West & North-South roads divided the whole of Porchester Gardens into squares, and each square was sub-divided into garden plots. Every square had at least one house built on one of those plots straight away. My historian’s house was the precedent for her square (“Granby House”; start_date=1903) (building began upon her plot before the turn of the century but was not completed until after; that story seems to be common at that time.

If you want to play a pointless game, find the prime-house for each square. I reckon that Sandford Villa is the likeliest for it’s square (next-door-but-one to Coronation Villa and start_date=1904).

30 Oct: The precedent for the next-door square appears to be 310/312 Porchester Road (“Sunny Mount”; start_date=1903).