Place Name
Originally Dalgarno Road. The Reverend Arthur Dalgarno Robinson (died 1899) was known as philanthropic vicar of St Clement’s Church, Notting Hill, and later St Helen’s Church, North Kensington, both of which he founded. He in fact founded a third church St Andrews, in Silchester Road. According to the St Clement’s website it is a “Grade II listed church because it is ‘a very skilful if unusual example of an Anglo-Catholic church of the 1860s’. The vast wooden roof is supported by scissor braces and held up by slender iron column. St Clement’s was built from the personal resources of its first vicar, Arthur Dalgarno Robinson. He devoted the majority of his life to alleviating the extreme poverty of the area, and the church was designed not to overpower the neighbouring modest homes, but to sit within them as a source of succour and strength.” He joined the church after Cambridge. He came from a well-t0-do family based in Richmond, who themselves carried out a great deal of work on behalf of the church. Among Dalgarno Robinson’s good works were the establishment of a ragged school in the Notting Dale Potteries. Sometime around 1870 he bought a plot of land for £300 on a corner of Little Wormwood Scrubs to be used as Glebe land, the profits of which are used to support the local vicar. The result was a dense housing development that took place in Bracewell Road, while Dalgarno Robinson built a large vicarage at the bottom of Brewster Gardens, now demolished. In 1880 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners passed on their responsibility and “leased” the whole of the remaining land to the Metropolitan Board Of Works. This street was named in his honour around 1887.
