HOTEL OVERVIEW

The Milestone Hotel is a beautifully restored Victorian building with the ambiance of an English Country home yet located in the very heart of London. Fifty-seven individually designed bedrooms and suites, some of which are themed: Ascot Room, Savile Row Room, Botanical Studio, Safari Suite, Venetian Suite, etc. Located directly opposite Kensington Palace and Gardens and the lush parklands of Hyde Park. CLIENTELE 60 percent corporate / 40 percent leisure Suitable for small groups.

The Milestone Hotel and Apartments takes its name from the old cast iron milestone that stands in its original position beside the hotel. The occupants of this site have had many associations, ranging from a mistress of James II, a man who believed himself to be Shakespeare's grandson, and an aristocratic governess to the daughters of George II.

The original dwelling on this site was Kensington House, built around 1689 and first occupied by Foot Onslow, a Commissioner of Excise under William III. His son Arthur Onslow (1691-1768) was a speaker of the House of Commons for thirty years; he sublet the property to George Davenport, an office in the Royal Bodyguard and the man who claimed Shakespeare as his grandsire.

From George Davenport, Kensington House passed onto Lady Susan Belasye, who in her youth had been a mistress of James II. For a few years in the mid 18th century it was occupied by Count Peter Grigorevich Chernyshev, the Russian Ambassador to London, whose daughter Natalia lived to the age of ninety-six and achieved immortality as the prototype for the Countess in Pushkin's Queen of Spades. Kensington House then passed into use as an academy for young gentleman, and later to a French émigré nobleman and cleric. Prince Charles Victor de Broglio also ran a Jesuit school on this site, which numbered the future King Louis Philippe as one of its ushers.