June 2015 archive

St Peter’s Park – a lost suburb

St Peter’s Park was formerly the name of a characterless suburb around Walterton Road. Until the spread of building in the mid 19th century, the area consisted of fields stretching westward from the Bayswater rivulet, bounded by Harrow Road to the south and by Kilburn Lane to the west and north-west. Westbourne Green lay along …

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Westway roundabout

A view of the “M41” roundabout under construction at the far end of the Westway. In the first photograph you can see Western Avenue extending into the distance. In the close-up, construction workers building a roundabout which ultimately had no real purpose…

All Saints Road, W11

Local and social historian Tom Vague writes about All Saints Road in Notting Hill. The Wise brothers described All Saints Road at the height of its Frontline notoriety, when the street never closed without police assistance, as ‘a north London casbah’ featuring late night Rasta football games and street fights. In an All Saints joke of …

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The Apollo

Local and social historian Tom Vague writes about the Apollo in All Saints Road. In ‘Once Upon a Time there was a Place called Notting Hill Gate’, the normally hypercritical Wise brothers get quite sentimental about the old Apollo pub: “It had been an okay dive, despite the many nights of depression, all 57 varieties of …

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The Mangrove

Local and social historian Tom Vague writes about the Mangrove restaurant which stood on the corner of All Saints Road and Westbourne Park Road between 1968 and 1991. “Mangrove, smell of hashish, swirling clouds of ashen smoke, weave in, around, away, palms like giant fingers, sounds of laughing, belly deep and penetrating, wise words and indiscretions, …

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Queen’s Park

Queen’s Park lies between Kilburn and Kensal Green, developed from 1875 onwards and named to honour Queen Victoria.

The De Veres – Lords of the Manor of Kensington

‘Here come de Veres of the times of old…’ Edward Walford ‘Old London’ The first recorded mention of Kensington in ‘The Doomesday Book’ is: ‘Albericus de Ver holds of the Bishop of Coutances Chenesitun.’ After the Norman Conquest, the manor of Chenesitun passed from Edwin the Thegn of Edward the Confessor to Geoffrey, Bishop of …

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The Paddington Canal Murder

George Forster was found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in Paddington Canal, London. At his trial the events were reconstructed. Forster’s mother in law recounted that her daughter and grandchild had left her house to see Forster at 4pm on Saturday 4 December 1802. Joseph Bradfield, in whose house Forster lodged, …

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Notting Hill and Bayswater

Extract below originally appeared in pages 177-188 of Edward Walford, ‘Notting Hill and Bayswater’, in Old and New London: Volume 5 (London, 1878). British History Online.   As soon as ever we quit the precincts of Kensington proper, and cross the Uxbridge Road, we become painfully conscious of a change. We have left the “Old …

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Ladbroke Road, W11

For this post, we are going to take a brief foray down one of the more select roads in Notting Hill. Select that is despite the presence of a local police station which saw many a miscreant’s face in its time. James Weller Ladbroke inherited a great deal of Notting Hill land after the death …

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