‘This is not the thing of today, but the foundation-stone of an undying ornament to our country, its proximity to the metropolis rendering it a boon of magnitude to Londoners never before contemplated; the working and poorer classes, particularly, are benefited by its establishment; it makes them even with the aristocratic and wealthy; from the most distant part of the metropolis they can ride in the omnibus, for sixpence, to the Hippodrome…’
‘The great annoyance experienced by the respectable company at the Hippodrome, from the ingress of blackguards who enter by the ‘right of way’, ought, at once, to convince the Kensington people of the impolicy, as well as the injustice of the steps they have taken in reference to this ground. Nothing has occurred of late so disgusting as this petty botheration. The inhabitants of Kensington have sunk 99% in the public estimation, in consequence of it. The very urchins, who were made the instruments of this piece of contemptible parochial tyranny, will, in after life, blush for the action. We allude to the little boys who accompanied the beadles and ‘old women’, in beating the boundaries of the parish. The reckless injury occasioned to the property, perhaps, is a minor consideration, when compared with the inconvenience attendant now upon the impossibility of keeping out any ruffian or thief who may claim his ‘right of way’ on the footpath… We do think they must feel how utterly insignificant the exercise of such paltry dominion, to the prejudice of the public at large, has made them appear in the eyes of every class of society in the metropolis. We of the town, it is well known, may be clearly considered to echo the sentiments of every man in it, and we cry, shame upon the people of Kensington!’ The Times (1837)
As west London urbanisation was held up by the Hippodrome racecourse, the story of modern Notting Hill began, as it would go on, in media hype, social conflict and local protest.
Having leased 200 acres of James Weller Ladbroke’s land, the local entrepreneur John Whyte proceeded to enclose ‘the slopes of Notting Hill and the meadows west of Westbourne Grove’ with 7 foot high wooden paling, and issued his prospectus for the Hippodrome: ‘An extensive range of land, in a secluded situation, has been taken and thrown into one great park, and is being fenced in all around by a strong, close, high paling. This park affords the facilities of a steeple chase course, intersected by banks and every description of fence; and also a racecourse distinct from the steeplechase course; and each capable of being suited to a 4 mile race for horses of the first class.’
The area, bounded by the Portobello and Pottery lanes to the east and west, the Notting Hill Terrace (Ladbroke Road) to the south, and the Portobello brook (along the route of Lancaster Road) to the north, was laid out with 3 tracks; the steeplechase utilising the existing hedges, the flat racecourse, and a pony and trap course; it was also to be used for training, ‘shooting with bow and arrow at the popinjay, cricketing, revels and public amusements.’
The ‘Chief Entrance to the Hippodrome’ was off Portobello Lane (now Pembridge Road), through an arch at the beginning of Kensington Park Road said to be on the site of the cab drivers’ hut.
The Notting Hill grassy knoll (now occupied by St John’s church) was railed in as a ‘natural grandstand’, accessed via a gate on the site of the main entrance to Ladbroke Square Gardens. The stables and paddocks were situated alongside Pottery Lane.
On the 1837 plans the course seems to follow the future route of Kensington Park Road down the hill, and back up the route of Portland Road-Clarendon Road. On the altered 1841 plan in the Sporting Magazine, ‘the hill for pedestrians’ and training ground were bounded to the west by the intended Notting Hill Park Terrace (Ladbroke Grove), and the course featured one, one and a half, and two mile turnings to the west of Notting Barns farm, back along the route of Portland-Clarendon Road to the dual start/finish.
In the welcome to the Hippodrome hype of the Sporting Magazine: ‘Making the cours aristocratique of Routine (alias Rotten) Row, you pass out at Cumberland Gate and then trot on to Bayswater. Thence you arrive at Kensington Gravel Pits (Notting Hill Gate), and descending where on the left stands the terrace of Notting Hill, find opposite the large wooden gates of a recent structure. Entering these, I was by no means prepared for what opened upon me. Here, without figure of speech, was the most perfect race-course that I had ever seen. Conceive, almost within the bills of mortality, an enclosure some two miles and a half in circuit, commanding from its centre a view as spacious and enchanting as that from Richmond Hill, and where almost the only thing that you can not see is London. Around this, on the extreme circle, next to the lofty fence by which it is protected… is constructed, or rather laid out – for the leaps are natural fences – the steeplechase course of two miles and a quarter. Within this, divided by a slight trench, and from the space appropriated to carriages and equestrians by strong and handsome posts all the way round, is the race-course, less probably than a furlong in circuit. Then comes the enclosure for those who ride or drive as aforesaid; and lastly, the middle, occupied by a hill, from which every yard of the running is commanded, besides miles of country on every side beyond it, and exclusively reserved for foot people.
‘I could hardly credit what I saw. Here was, almost at our doors, a racing emporium more extensive and attractive than Ascot or Epsom, with 10 times the accommodation of either, and where the carriages are charged for admission at three quarters’ less. This great national undertaking is the sole result of individual enterprise, being effected by the industry and liberality of a gentleman by the name of Whyte… This is an enterprise which must prosper; it is without competitor, and it is open to the fertilisation of many sources of profit. As a site for horse exercise, can any riding-house compare with it? For females, it is without the danger or exposure of parks; as a training-ground for the turf or field it cannot be exceeded; and its character cannot be better summed up than by describing it as a necessity of London life, of the absolute need of which we were not aware until the possession of it taught us its permanent value.’
In spite of the local opposition, the first Hippodrome meeting took place on Saturday June 3 1837. According to a contemporary report in ‘Old and New London’: ‘On account of its vicinity to town every refreshment was provided at a rate for which those who had been used to the terrible extortions elsewhere would hardly have been prepared. Splendid equipages occupied the circle allotted to them, while gay marquees, with all their flaunting accompaniments, covered the hill, filled with all the good things of this life, and iced champagne, which can hardly be called a mortal beverage. The racing was for plates of 50 and 100 sovereigns, with moderate entrances, given by the proprietors. The £100 plate was won by Mr Wickham’s Pincher, and the steeplechase by Mr Elmore’s Lottery ridden by Mason.’
The Sporting Magazine reporter ‘Juan’ noted that, ‘as a place of fashionable resort’, the Notting Hill Hippodrome opened ‘under promising auspices.’ The stewards were the Earl of Chesterfield, a large racing stud owner, and Count D’Orsay, the ‘Phoebus Apollo of dandyism, the sportsman, the exquisite, the artist’, who lived with the scandalous salon queen Lady Blessington at Gore House (on the site of the Albert Hall, where William Wilberforce had previously lived). As ‘splendid equipages’ and ‘gay marquees with all their flaunting accompaniments’ covered Notting Hill, ‘Juan’ prophetically summed up the first meeting and the area’s future: ‘Another year, I cannot doubt, is destined to see it rank among the most favourite and favoured of all the metropolitan rendezvous, both for public and private recreation.’ However, other reviews were less favourable; in one the horses were described as ‘animated dogs’ meat’, in another, ‘save Hokey Pokey, there was nothing that could climb or hobble, much more leap over a hedge, and as to hurdle, it was absurd to attempt one.’
There was also a crowd invasion through a hole in the fence. On the morning of the first meeting locals cut the hole through the paling with hatchets and saws, where it blocked the path to Notting Barns farm (at the junction of Ladbroke Grove and Ladbroke Square). Of the 14,000 in attendance, it was estimated that ‘some thousands thus obtained gratuitous admission.’ The ‘ancient public way’ over the hill was apparently being used at the time as an alternative to Pottery Lane, which had become known as ‘Cut Throat Lane’, and was down as ‘no thoroughfare’ on the Hippodrome plan.
Florence Gladstone added that ‘it was possible, and sometimes advisable, to hide in the ditch beside the track’, rather than encounter the inhabitants of the Potteries. According to Warwick Wroth in ‘Cremorne and the Later London Gardens’, the path protesters ‘seem as a rule to have been orderly enough, but gipsies, prigs (thieves) and hawkers did not neglect the opportunity of mingling with the nobility and gentry.’ John Whyte proceeded to block up the hole with clay and turf thus enflaming the situation.
17 June 1837: The historical tradition of Notting Hill community action began when ‘local inhabitants and labourers, led by the parochial surveyor and accompanied by the police’, maintained the footpath by reinstating the entrance hole and adding a northern exit through the fence. Once this was achieved, the first local community activists gathered on the Notting Hill Hippodrome grandstand, on the site of St John’s church, to give 3 cheers for the parish of Kensington. Even the Vestry, the proto-Council, supported the path protest.
19 June 1837: The Times correspondent at the second meeting railed against ‘the contemptible conduct of the band of learned Thebans who rule the Kensington Vestry. This enlightened clique, directed in their counsels by a barber and a baker, assert a right of way across the Hippodrome, which opens a loophole to the admission of all the parish scum, and enables them in a great deal to mar the enjoyment of those who have honesty enough to feel that the man who provides a public entertainment has a right to be paid for it. The disputed path is one of no public utility whatever. It does not shorten the distance to any acknowledged highway – it affords only a circuitous route to a couple of farmhouses. It has rarely been used except by a few labourers.’
The local community were lumped in with the general mob as the reporter spluttered, with barely concealed aristocratic indignation at the outbreak of class war, which must have influenced GK Chesterton’s ‘The Napoleon of Notting Hill’, of ‘all the idle and outcast population of the neighbourhood, and all the dirty and dissolute vagabonds of London, a more filthy and disgusting crew than that which entered yesterday we have seldom had the misfortune to encounter. It would be well enough if they would confine themselves to the narrow track, beyond which even their champion, the barber, does not pretend they have a right; but, relying on their numbers, they spread themselves over the whole of the ground, defiling the atmosphere as they go; and carrying into the neighbourhood of the stands and carriages, where the ladies are most assembled, a coarseness and obscenity of language as repulsive to every feeling of manhood as to every sense of common decency.
‘If the majority of the parish of Kensington really believe that they have a right to the path, it would be well that some of the respectable parishioners should come forward to take the quarrel out of the hands of those who have adopted a mode of warfare exactly in keeping with the views which men in their situation in life are generally disposed to entertain with respect to everything that they think calculated to advance the pleasures of what they deem the upper classes – that is, of all who do not move exactly upon or below their own level. For the last month a course of the most petty annoyance has been persevered in, and will most likely be continued until the decision of a court of law has been pronounced upon the question. But as the delays of the law are proverbial, it is to be regretted that some of the gentlemen of the parish who cannot participate in the views of and feelings of the barber-and-baker brotherhood do not come forward to make such an arrangement as shall prevent this charming spot from becoming a place of resort only for the vilest and most degraded of the suburban population. If the proprietor be willing to take upon himself all the consequences of closing the fence, let him do so. If he be wrong the parish will have ample opportunity of fleecing him afterwards. Meanwhile, let the inhabitants of London have an opportunity of enjoying a few hours’ healthful recreation without the contamination of the very dregs of the community.’
20 June 1837: Then William IV died, causing the cancellation of the third meeting, and the sale of the royal stud meant a bad time in general for horse racing.
Over the next two years the path protest developed into the first great Notting Hill media controversy and only a handful of meetings took place.
As the Hippodrome races and the reign of Queen Victoria began the name of Charles Dickens first appeared on the Holland House dinners’ guest list. The old Lord Holland boasted to his sister Caroline: ‘We have had the author of ‘Oliver Twist’ here.’ In Dickens’ most celebrated novel Bill Sikes takes Oliver Twist through Kensington, and Oliver’s great-uncle’s house (on Bath’s Royal Crescent in ‘Oliver!’) would have been in the Norland Royal Crescent. Lord Holland was there at Kensington Palace in 1837, when Victoria ascended to the throne, as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
September 1837: The Times report on the 4th Hippodrome meeting continued the class conflict trend: ‘It is true that a large portion of the assemblage consisted of the dirty and dissolute, to whom the disputed path affords a means of ingress; but there was still a sufficient muster of the gay and fashionable to assure the proprietor that a purveyor of manly national sports will find no lack of powerful and flattering support from the largest and richest metropolis in the world… All that the most laborious and unceasing care could do towards the improvement of the course has been accomplished; all that the most watchful and solicitous attention to the increased convenience and comfort of the visitors could suggest has been achieved; but as long as the off-scourings of Kensington and its neighbourhood, backed by the redoubtable vestry of that parish, are allowed to intrude themselves into the grounds, it would seem that a much larger attendance of the police were absolutely indispensable.’
1838: The year of Queen Victoria’s coronation and the opening of the Great Western Railway line, the Hippodrome controversy snowballed into lengthy petty sessions over the right of way, as well as alcohol and betting licensing. There were heated meetings, several violent incidents, and various petitions and summonses regarding the racecourse to Court of King’s Bench and Parliament.
The Hippodrome secretary was Edward Mayne, the brother of the police chief Richard (who must be relatives of the 1950s North Kensington photographer Roger Mayne). In one of the most disputed incidents a local man brought charges against a Hippodrome security guard, after it sounds like the former attacked the guard when he stopped him vandalising the fence. Nathaniel Britton, the landlord of the Duke of Clarence pub (at the end of Holland Park Avenue) was charged with selling beer without a license from a Hippodrome booth, and Mr Drinkwater of the Coach and Horses, then ‘still a small and primitive tavern’ at 108 Notting Hill High Street (to the east of Ladbroke Grove), was prosecuted for selling spirits on the racecourse.
Florence Gladstone noted in his defence, ‘the tavern itself was reputed to be quiet and respectable, instead of being a refuge for highwaymen as of old.’
At one point, John Whyte considered putting a subway under the course to resolve the path problem. He promised to curtail the betting and drinking around the entrance to the Hippodrome, and even offered to open the racecourse for free on Sundays but this only caused further protest from religious groups over desecration of the Sabbath.
Following reports of local schoolchildren betting on caterpillar and snail races, Douglas Jerrold wrote in ‘The Brownrigg Papers’ of the influence of the Hippodrome on the ‘scholastic establishments on Bayswater Road’, ‘gambling-houses, gin-shops, beerhouses’ available for ‘the scum and offal of London assembled in the peaceful hamlet of Notting Hill’, and John Whyte’s inability to ‘prevent these evils in the purlieus.’ In the end ‘the Notting Hill Enclosure Bill’ was quietly dropped and the footpath established with iron railings.
The racecourse was then extended northwards and renamed, by the Earl of Chesterfield and Count D’Orsay after the new queen, the Victoria Park Hippodrome, Bayswater.
But then, with the right of way dispute finally resolved, a more insurmountable hurdle emerged. The clay soil made the going heavy most of the time, causing leading jockeys to shun the course, and the training ground unusable for long periods.
At the beginning of the Victorian era, the area’s genteel image was further tarnished in the 4th annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners. According to which, ‘some cottages at Notting Dale, inhabited by Irish families and called the Potteries are, as I was informed at the Kensington Board of Guardians, built over stagnant pools of water, which may be seen through the interstices of the floors. In some instances the floors have given way and rest at one end of the room in the stagnant pool while the other end, being still dry, contains the bed or straw mattress on which the family sleep.’
At Notting Hill Gate, Thomas Anderson was paying rates on nine houses in a side alley off Campden Place, on the site of the Kensington Gravel Pits brewery (now Clanricarde Gardens). Anderson’s and Pitt’s Cottages were described as in ‘a filthy condition, multi-occupied with a score of pigs in the back yards’, and as ‘a notorious rookery known as Little Hell.’ The purpose-built industrial working class area, Kensal New Town was coming into being between the Great Western Railway line and the canal.
1839: There were just two more meetings at the Hippodrome, one of which was attended by the Grand Duke of Russia and other foreign dignitaries who ‘condescended to visit the London Epsom.’ The Hippodrome racecourse manager, Captain Martin Becher founded the Grand National at Aintree and was immortalised when he fell into a brook during the first one.
1841 As BR Davies’ ‘Entrance to Hipp’ map was published, showing the extended racecourse and Notting Hill as Ladbroke Road, there were two more Hippodrome meetings. These featured the Hyde Park derby, the Notting Hill stakes, the Kensington free plate and the Notting Barns handicap. June 2-4 The last Hippodrome steeplechase was immortalised in a series of sketches by Henry Alken Junior (who did ‘The Hunted Tailor’ sketch of the site before the racecourse), entitled ‘In and Out’ and ‘The Brook The Last Grand Steeplechase at the Hippodrome racecourse Kensington 1841’; one has a Great Western Railway train in the background. 1842 After 13 meetings in 5 years, John Whyte admitted defeat and relinquished the leasehold of the Ladbroke land. Charles Dickens wrote to Holland House from America of his sell out New York show, and cancelling the southern leg of his tour due to the weather ‘and the sight of slavery turned us back.’ 1844 Dickens sent his apologies to Lady Holland for not being able to make it to dinner as he was finishing ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’. Lady Holland was involved in Dickens’ attempt to revive the Courier Tory newspaper and advised him to go to Bristol to ‘see some of the 3rd or 4th class people.’
After Mary Fox of Little Holland House founded the first school in the Potteries in the early 1840s, Charles Dickens featured the local slum area in the first issue of his Household Words journal in 1850. Dickens was also a frequent visitor to Kensal Green cemetery. The end of the Notting Hill races coincided with the burial at Kensal Green of Andrew Ducrow, the famous bareback rider and circus impresario, for whom an extravagant oriental-style walk-in tomb/temple was erected. Laman Blanchard enthused about the cemetery at the time: ‘What an escape from the atmosphere of London burial-places to the air of Kensal Green… The surrounding landscape, so rich in cultivation, in character so diversified, in extent so sweeping… It is scarcely 10 years since the sheep were driven from their pasture, and already have there been about 6,000 internments within that noble and spacious enclosure.’ Before 1850 the land between the Grand Junction/Union canal and the Great Western Railway line, to the south of the cemetery, became the property of the Western Gas company.
The site of the racecourse briefly returned to open countryside and then James Weller Ladbroke unleashed the builders. The first building lease had been granted back in 1840 to Jacob Connop on land to the east of the disputed path. In 1842 Richard Roy presented plans to the Commissioners of Sewers for the Hippodrome area, William Jenkins signed up to develop the Pembridge quarter to the east, for no ‘noisome trades’, and a row of two-storey houses were built at the beginning of Portobello Lane (then Albert Place, now Pembridge Road). The Metropolitan Building Act of 1844 confirmed James Weller Ladbroke’s 5 original building contracts with William Chadwick, Jacob Connop, John Duncan, William Jenkins and Richard Roy. 28 acres between Notting Hill Gate and Westbourne Grove (the Longlands and the Hooks fields) were let to William Jenkins, and work began on the servants’ shopping centre Archer Street (named after the absentee landlord of the former field known as Barley Shotts) which became Westbourne Grove west. At the height of the mid-1840s building boom, James Whitchurch, a railway director attorney from Blechynden in Southampton, acquired 29 acres of Metropolitan (now Hammersmith and City) railway land to the north of the Potteries and Bird’s brickfield.
Edward Walford has ‘the green sward, trees and hedges, all swept away’ by the end of the 1840s, but the Hippodrome racecourse wasn’t entirely wiped from the map. The Notting Hill Hunting Grounds to the north continued as an equestrian area ‘over which dashing young ladies would ride their charges as lately as the year 1852.’ Pam MacDonald’s mother told her she used to watch ladies riding horses around the North Kensington Salter’s Fields in the 1890s. Immediately after the Hippodrome, there seems to have been another short-lived racecourse of the same name in the Portobello Pleasure Gardens to the east; the track of which is thought to have been around the axis of Talbot Road. According to Walford, ‘by the spot selected by the ‘Di Vernons’ and ‘pretty horse-breakers’ for their trial jumps now stands St Stephen’s church.’ There were horsebreakers’ yards in St Luke’s Mews off All Saints Road in the 1920s. Portobello Pleasure Gardens was the venue of ‘Mr Gypson’s third and last balloon accent, on which occasion the whole process of inflation may be witnessed by visitors, as it will be altogether inflated in the Gardens with pure hydrogen gas, having sufficient power for carrying up to two persons’; followed by a carnivalesque ‘grand representation of the Roman Festa with military music.’ The London Illustrated News reported another balloon ascent from the Portobello Pleasure Gardens going wrong, with the balloon exploding overhead. In the early 1850s there was a third Kensington Hippodrome, this time an equestrian extravaganza amphitheatre on the site of De Vere Gardens, south of Kensington Gardens.
As well as the ‘fashionable resort’ legacy of the Notting Hill Hippodrome, the racecourse effected the building development of the area. According to Florence Gladstone, ‘it determined the future aspect of the whole district’; with the Ladbroke estate following the track layout and sometimes referred to as the Hippodrome estate. The steeplechase straight seems to have become Portland Road, incorporating the Hippodrome Lane to the stables, while the parallel main course straight turned into Park Street (now Clarendon Road). St John’s church on Lansdowne Crescent was originally referred to as ‘St John’s on the Hill for pedestrians’ or ‘the Hippodrome church’ when it opened in 1845. The influence of the racecourse lives on today in the street names, Hippodrome Place, at Clarendon Cross between Portland Road and Pottery Lane (which was known as ‘the Postesses’ because it was lined with posts and led to the Potteries and Piggeries), and Hippodrome Mews on the site of the stables which were still in use as late as the 1920s. The Hippodrome also made its mark on local pub history: The Prince Albert Tavern/Arms and Hope Brewery by the course entrance at Notting Hill Gate, the Ladbroke Arms on Ladbroke Road and the North Pole (originally the Globe) on North Pole Road date back to the early 1840s.
As the Kensington Gravel Pits turned into Notting Hill Gate, the ‘Old Inhabitant’ local historian recalled ‘the Peaceful Hamlet of Notting Hill’. There was a tailor, Mr Fenn, on Greyhound Row between the Kensington Mall and Church Street (then Silver Street), a grocer, butcher, candlemaker, and a blacksmith on the site of the Coronet. The rag and bone merchant, Mr Burden, who went on to be an omnibus proprietor, was described as ‘a great man on Kensington Vestry’, renowned for his oratory and for his particularly fat wife; on her demise she had to be winched out of her bedroom window. Notting Hill Gate also hosted the first radical shop, the Chartist brush shop, Pitman the newsagents, and Mr Clutterbuck’s brickfield, the site of Guy Fawkes burnings and bonfires. The first shop to be lit by gas was King’s Italian warehouse on Church Street near the village pound and pump. The first local pop star was Lucia Elizabetta Bartolozzi, Madame Vestris, ‘that most incomparable of singing actresses’ who became the first female theatre manager.
1847: James Weller Ladbroke’s Kensington Park Estate passed to his cousin Felix Ladbroke less than half finished. By then the local curse on the Hippodrome had already struck the first property developers, Jacob Connop and John Duncan, who started Kensington Park Road and Ladbroke Square before the racecourse closed. Due to a gross over provision for upper class housing, Connop and Duncan failed to let enough properties and were declared bankrupt in 1845. James Weller Ladbroke’s last deal was to hand over 38 Clarendon Road to the builder Richard Roy; whose stay there was short-lived due to the ‘close proximity of the Piggeries and Potteries.’ And it seems that even Felix Ladbroke made a loss on his speculative building ventures. Soon after inheriting the land, he was forced to mortgage part of the liquidated ‘100 Acre Estate’ to Richard Roy. Felix Ladbroke sold the freehold of Linden Lodge (on the site of Linden Gardens) to the architect Thomas Allason, and the Pembridge estate to the son of William Jenkins (of the same name), who built the Pembridge and Chepstow Villas and Crescents, and Denbigh and Ledbury Roads, on a slightly less grand scale to the Kensington Park estate. These streets were named after places in Herefordshire and Wales where the Jenkins family hailed from.
By the late 1840s the building of paired villas with communal gardens, following the plan of Thomas Allason and the influence of Nash’s Regent’s Park estate, reached just over the hill to Elgin Crescent. And that was as far as the upper class ‘Leafy Ladbroke’ Garden City was going to get. In the ensuing bust period after the speculative building boom, the upper class Royal Crescent and Norland Square development of the City lawyer Charles Richardson ground to a halt at St James’s Square (now Gardens). This created a class barrier-block to the ‘deplorable quarter’ around the Potteries and Norland Town, with its street market on Norland Road. James Whitchurch was putting in the sewer system for Blechynden Street, Bramley, Latimer, Lancaster, Silchester and Walmer Roads. The property speculating Cornish vicar, Samuel Walker and others began to sink reputed millions into upper-middle class building development, disastrously close to the Potteries. According to the ‘Old Inhabitant’, Samuel Walker was responsible for causing ‘hundreds of carcasses of houses to be built. If he had commenced his operations on the London side of the estate no doubt the houses would have been sold and a fine investment made, but as he preferred building from Clarendon Road (where roads were not made) towards London the land was covered with unfinished houses which continued in a ruinous condition for years.’