Category: North Kensington

Aldermaston Street, W10

Aldermaston Street is a lost street of North Kensington

Kensal House, W10

Kensal House was designed in 1936 to show off the power of gas and originally had no electricity at all.

Bruce Close, W10

Bruce Close replaced the earlier Rackham Street in this part of W10.

Blechynden Street, W10

Blechynden Street is now a tiny street in the vicinity of Latimer Road station, W10

Baths and Clubs

In the wake of further sanitation campaigns, the Kensington Baths and Washhouse was finally established at the junction of Silchester Road and Lancaster Road in 1888. By then the Latimer Road Board School was catering for over 1,000 pupils, after the original Ragged School opened in the 1860s for 100. Notting Dale also hosted the …

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The Hill of Dreams and Far Off Things

Contents Getting it Straight in Notting Hill Gate The Hill of Dreams Arthur Machen, who lived on Clarendon Road in the 1880s, wrote the horror fantasy novels ‘The Great God Pan’, ‘The Hill of Dreams’ and ‘The Three Imposters’. He became best known during World War I when his short story ‘The Bowmen’ gave rise …

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Notting Barns

The 150 acre Notting Barns farm, with ‘an ancient brick building surrounded by spacious barns and outhouses’, came into the possession of Colonel Matthew Chitty Downes St Quintin of the Lancers Regiment in the late 1850s. St Quintin proceeded to build a well-to-do estate, originally as the Portobello Park, featuring Cambridge and Oxford Gardens, Basset, …

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Going down the Lane

Another slum developed at Notting Hill Gate south of the road in the streets known as ‘the Racks’ (after the original field); Uxbridge, Newcombe, Calcott, Hillgate/Dartmoor, Farmer and Jameson. The main employer here would be the Dunhill cigarette factory on Uxbridge Street. As the Swan inn on Church Street became a gin palace, the Coach …

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Temperance and intemperance

The 1860s sexual revolution in Notting Hill and the vibrant local pub scene were inevitably accompanied by a proliferation of churches, chapels, convents, tabernacles and missions of all religious denominations. In the battle for the souls of the inhabitants of the Notting Hellmouth, the dark forces of drink, untidiness and inactivity had arrayed against them …

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A Tale of Two Cities

In the new suburbs carved out by the middle classes to escape from the noise, smoke, dirt, and crowding of the central areas of Victorian London, poor and squalid enclaves could frequently be found. They were not there by accident. The comfortable suburb and the meaner suburb within it were mutually interdependent. The Potteries, Notting …

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