In 1852 the Reverend Walker bought 51 acres of Portobello farmland from Mary Anne and Georgina Charlotte Talbot. This covered the whole strip of North Kensington lying east of Portobello Lane, from Portobello farmhouse on the north to Lonsdale Road and Western Terrace on the south. On this land which joined the ‘Ladbrooke estate’, Walker commenced to build ‘a new town’ and erect an elaborate church to the memory of his parents.
The road on which the church was built was called St Columb’s Road, and the church was dedicated to St Ann, but the name of ‘All Saints’ was soon substituted.‘This ‘very stately and abnormal stone church, built after the model of that at St Columb’s Major in Cornwall was structurally completed in 1855, but owing to pecuniary difficulties was left without glass or furniture till 1861.’ Meanwhile it stood boarded up and weed-grown near a pond, the open ground behind being sometimes occupied by gypsies. A footpath which started beside the church, for some years after this date, led over fields all the way to Kensal Green. In 1861 Walker finished the church in a less costly manner… But already it was known as Walker’s Folly, and was sometimes irreverently called ‘All Sinners in the Mud’.’ Florence Gladstone, ‘Notting Hill in Bygone Days’ 1924.
During the Blitz, on the night of September 26 1940, bombs fell on All Saints church, All Saints Road and Powis Square.
The church, parish hall and vicarage were also badly damaged. The vicarage was burnt out in March and the hall suffered the same fate in July 44. The church was restored after the war, along with the church hall and vicarage, and reopened in 1951. The area behind the church became a bombsite adventure playground.
