Category: Notting Dale

The Notting Dale Gypsies

The rapid suburban growth of the late 19th century brought with it improvements like proper roads, pavements, sewers, the filling in of ‘the Ocean’ and the eviction of the pigs, but also thousands more people. As the old Dickensian London slums off the Strand around Drury Lane, St Giles in the Field and the Clerkenwell …

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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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Beyond the Colony of the Pigkeepers

‘Beyond the colony of the pigkeepers at the end of Pottery Lane’, the ‘Old Inhabitant’ anonymous vicar historian wrote of an outpost alongside the Counter’s Creek boundary stream (by then the Common Sewer) and the West London Junction Railway line; where Latimer (formerly Boundary) Road was coming into existence (as Latymer Road, named after the …

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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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The Piggeries – part 2

Alongside the racecourse, up Counter’s Creek between the Ladbroke estate and the brickfield, the Potteries ‘primaeval hamlet’ evolved into a half rural, half urban rookery, as Samuel Lake and the pigkeepers established their independent colony along Pottery Lane without any building restrictions or sanitation measures. When the Potteries was first nicknamed ‘the Piggeries’ (reputedly by …

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The Piggeries – part 1

As the future queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace in 1819, the next most influential names after Holland, Ladbroke and Talbot were attached to the area. Richard Ladbroke was succeeded as the landlord of Notting Hill by his nephews, Osbert Denton, Cary Hampton Weller and James Weller, who had to add Ladbroke to their …

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Getting It Straight in Notting Hill Gate

Getting It Straight in Notting Hill Gate from Tom Vague is a 2020s sequel to Notting Hill in Bygone Days by Florence Gladstone (1924). An historical and psychogeographical report on Notting Hill considered in its economic, political, sexual and intellectual aspects and a modest proposal for its remedy. Foreword The Folk Who Lived on the …

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St John’s Hill

St John’s Hill is the highest point in the area.

Kensington and Chelsea

This is a placeholder for the upcoming conservation guides to the LBKC. The sources may be found here:Kensington and Chelsea AVONDALE CONSERVATION AREA Avondale Conservation Area is an attractive residential area which was primarily developed from around 1860 to 1895. The cluster of buildings comprises modest Victorian terrace houses, a church and school which are …

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The Potteries and the Bramley Road area

Between the Ladbroke and Norland estates there extended northward from the Uxbridge Road a lane which provided access to the half-dozen fields between the northern boundary of the Norland estate and the southern boundary of Notting Barns Farm (later the St Quintin estate). In the eighteenth century this lane was known as Green’s Lane, perhaps …

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