Eighteenth-century Notting Hill was entirely rural and laid to grass. As the suburbs reached here, there was an oversupply of middle-class housing, bordering on the poor suburbs which serviced them. The poor lived in the Potteries, Notting Dale, Jennings Buildings and Kensal New Town. The women were mainly
in service. Between 1837 and 1842, a part of the Dale to the east of Pottery Lane was fenced off to create a racecourse, the
Kensington Hippodrome; the race track followed the line of
Clarendon Road. This venture overlooked a
public right of way that was used to avoid passing through the piggeries. The locals vigorously removed the fence at
Ladbroke Grove and were supported by the parish. Furthermore, the ground, as suggested by the name 'potteries', was of soft clay, which made it unpopular with jockeys and most of the time unsuitable for either racing or training. The last Grand Steeplechase, recorded in a set of prints by
Henry Alken Junior, was in 1841, and the Hippodrome closed in 1842. The Hippodrome fence stopped the piggeries physically expanding, and further compacted the increasing population. built
semi-detached upper-middle class villas along Lancaster Road and Silchester Road alongside the proposed
Hammersmith and City Line. Latimer Road was demolished to form the track which opened in 1864.
Latimer Road tube station opened on Bramley Road in 1868, and Whitchurch targeted the lower middle classes and artisans, building the "railway streets": Manchester, Mersey, Martin, Lockton, Hurstway, Barandon, Blechynden and Testerton. The housing built along Lancaster Road (beneath the Lancaster West Estate) Walmer Road (now beneath Dufford Street) Canterbury Street (now Bomore Road) did not attract owner occupiers and were soon subdivided into rooms for rent. The railway streets remained respectable for a century- when their lack of interior plumbing condemned them to be classed as slums. The original scheme was intended to link Latimer Road Underground station with workplaces, shops, offices and amenities in addition to considerable new housing whilst subordinating car-storage, but when these intentions were blocked, a later concept of the estate continued with the idea of raised streets with pedestrian access running along a walkway with vehicular access below at a basement level. Three "finger blocks" – Testerton, Hurstway and Barandon Walks, three- and four-storey linear residential blocks – radiated 150m south from a shopping piazza, with a tower block included to the north to increase the housing density. In the main this was what was built. The finger blocks enclosed two large green spaces. The area to the immediate east of the tower is Lancaster Green and there are children's play areas to the immediate west.
Reputation Focus shifted again from addressing the housing need to one of crime prevention, as the new flats soon became known for
anti-social behaviour and crime. Indeed, by the mid-1980s, it was perceived as one of the most dangerous parts of Notting Hill at
Carnival time. Of the estate's problems, it was suggested that 'many of them [were] drug related,' and in the 1990s the estate also suffered from
gun violence, with, for example, a
Metropolitan Police patrol being shot at after using the underground car park servicing the Grenfell Tower in February 1993. In an attempt to bring residents together, during a time of
racial tensions, the
Catholic Archbishop of Westminster,
Basil Hume, in 1979, personally led a
Good Friday service in the shadow of the tower block. As a result of these concerns, modifications were made to access arrangements to the finger block and Grenfell Tower. Where previously the internal walkways to the fingerblocks allowed through-access, they were divided so each flat only had one point of entry. Similarly, the Grenfell Tower had two means of entrance and escape, this was reduced to one that led through a cramped lobby. There are 34 single 330 sq m units and 6 double units. Among the tenants is the
North Kensington Law Centre, the UK's first
law centre (1970) that specialises in the areas of
civil law most relevant to disadvantaged communities. Land became increasingly valuable in North Kensington, and part of the plot north of Grenfell Walk was allocated to the
Kensington Aldridge Academy and then for a redesigned
Kensington Leisure Centre. Government energy targets forced authorities to re-examine the energy efficiency of their buildings, and affordable housing targets forced them to look for additional ways of adding accommodation to existing buildings. This, and the recurrent failure of the district heating system serving the finger blocks, resulted in 2015 in the
Grenfell tower being modernised, reglazed, insulated and clad in a highly-flammable aluminium sheet material. ==Construction==