Harrington Gardens

{{Short description|Street in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, London.}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

File:43 Harrington Gardens - BU London.jpg

Harrington Gardens is a street which has a communal garden regionally sometimes known as a garden square in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. The street runs from Collingham Gardens and Collingham Road in the east to Gloucester Road and Stanhope Gardens in the west. It is crossed by Ashburn Place and joined by Colbeck Mews on its north side. It contains several listed buildings including an important group of grade II* buildings on the south side numbered 35 to 45 (odd numbers only).

In March 1954, Kenneth Gilbert (22) and Ian Grant (24), porters at the Aban Court Hotel at no 25, killed their colleague 55-year old night porter George Smart, and on 17 June 1954, they became the UK's last side-by-side execution when they were hanged at HM Prison Pentonville.{{cite book |last1=Long |first1=David |title=Murders of London: in the steps of the capital's killers |date=2012 |publisher=Random House |location=London |isbn=9781847946720 |pages=122–125}} After a long era in which double hangings were normal for partners in crime, the Homicide Act 1957 ended the practice, making hangings simultaneous, but at separate prisons. Until early November 1959, the American poet Theodore Roethke lived at the Alwin Court Hotel in nearby Gloucester Road and then the Aban Court Hotel, but "did not like the accommodations at either one".{{cite book |last1=Seager |first1=Allan |title=The glass house : the life of Theodore Roethke |date=1991 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |location=Ann Arbor |isbn=9780472064540 |page=267 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OdrIchCSEAYC&dq=Aban+Court+Hotel&pg=PA267 |access-date=23 July 2022}}