Notting Hill is in the ceremonial county of
Greater London although it was formerly a hamlet on rural land until the expansion of urban London during the 19th century. As late as 1870, even after the hamlet had become a London suburb, Notting Hill was still popularly referred to as being in Middlesex rather than in London.
Origin of the name The origin of the name "Notting Hill" is uncertain though an early version appears in the
Patent Rolls of 1356 as Knottynghull, while an 1878 text, Old and New London, reports that the name derives from a manor in Kensington called "Knotting-Bernes", "Knutting-Barnes", or "Nutting-barns", with the "ing" part generally accepted as coming from the Saxon for a group or settlement of people.
Potteries and Piggeries . The area in the west around Pottery Lane was used in the early 19th century for making bricks and tiles out of the heavy clay dug in the area. The clay was shaped and fired in a series of brick and tile kilns. The only remaining 19th-century tile kiln in London is on Walmer Road. In the same area, pig farmers moved in after being forced out of the
Marble Arch area.
Avondale Park was created in 1892 out of a former area of pig
slurry called "the Ocean". This was part of a general clean-up of the area which had become known as the Potteries and Piggeries.
19th-century development The area remained rural until London's westward expansion reached
Bayswater in the early 19th century. The Ladbroke family was Notting Hill's main landowner, and from the 1820s
James Weller Ladbroke began to develop the Ladbroke Estate. Working with the architect and surveyor
Thomas Allason, Ladbroke began to lay out streets and houses, with a view to turning the area into a fashionable suburb of the capital (although the development did not get seriously under way until the 1840s). Many of these streets bear the Ladbroke name, including
Ladbroke Grove, the area's main north–south axis, and
Ladbroke Square, London's largest private
garden square. The original idea was to call the district
Kensington Park, and other roads (notably
Kensington Park Road and
Kensington Park Gardens) are reminders of this. The original local telephone
prefix 020 7727 (originally 01-727) is based on the
old telephone exchange name of PARk. , consisting of a large central circus with radiating streets and garden squares, or "paddocks". Ladbroke left the actual business of developing his land to the firm of
City solicitors, Smith, Bayley (known as Bayley and Janson after 1836), who worked with Allason to develop the property. In 1823 Allason completed a plan for the layout of the main portion of the estate. This marks the genesis of his most enduring idea – the creation of large private communal gardens, originally known as "pleasure grounds", or "paddocks", enclosed by terraces and/or crescents of houses. Instead of houses being set around a garden square, separated from it by a road, Allason's houses would have direct access to a secluded communal garden in the rear, to which people on the street did not have access and generally could not see. To this day these
communal garden squares continue to provide the area with much of its attraction for the wealthiest householders. in the upper left hand corner. In 1837 the
Hippodrome racecourse was laid out. The racecourse ran around the hill, and bystanders were expected to watch from the summit of the hill. However, the venture was not a success, in part due to a public right of way which traversed the course, and in part due to the heavy clay of the neighbourhood which caused it to become waterlogged. The Hippodrome closed in 1841, after which development resumed and houses were built on the site. The crescent-shaped roads that circumvent the hill, such as
Blenheim Crescent,
Elgin Crescent, Stanley Crescent, Cornwall Crescent and Landsdowne Crescent, were built over the circular racecourse tracks. At the summit of hill stands the elegant
St John's church, built in 1845 in the early English style, and which formed the centrepiece of the Ladbroke Estate development. The Notting Hill houses were large, but they did not immediately succeed in enticing the very richest Londoners, who tended to live closer to the centre of London in
Mayfair or
Belgravia. The houses appealed to the upper middle class, who could live there in Belgravia style at lower prices. In the opening chapter of
John Galsworthy's
Forsyte Saga novels, he housed the Nicholas Forsytes "in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a great bargain". In 1862
Thomas Hardy left Dorchester for London to work with architect
Arthur Blomfield; during this period he lived in Westbourne Park Villas. He immersed himself in the city's literary and cultural life, studying art, visiting the
National Gallery, attending the theatre and writing prose and poetry. His first published story, "How I Built Myself a House", appeared in ''
Chamber's Journal in 1865. Here he wrote his first―but never published―novel, The Poor Man and the Lady'', in 1867, and the poem "A Young Man's Exhortation", from which
Graham Greene took an epigraph for his own novel
The Comedians.
Arthur Machen (1863–1947), the author of many supernatural and fantastic fictions, lived at 23
Clarendon Road, Notting Hill Gate, in the 1880s; he writes of his life here in his memoirs
Far Off Things (1922) and
Things Near and Far (1923). His mystical work
The Hill of Dreams (1907, though written ten years earlier) has scenes set in Notting Hill; it is here that the protagonist Lucian Taylor encounters the beautiful bronze-haired prostitute who will later connive at his death.
Early to mid-20th century , showing
All Saints' church in the background The reputation of the district altered over the course of the 20th century. As middle-class households ceased to employ servants, the large Notting Hill houses lost their market and were increasingly split into multiple occupation. During
the Blitz a number of buildings were damaged or destroyed by the
Luftwaffe, including
All Saints' Church, which was hit in 1940 and again in 1944. In the postwar period the name Notting Hill evoked a down-at-heel area of cheap lodgings, epitomised by the racketeering landlord
Peter Rachman and the murders committed by
John Christie in 10 Rillington Place, since demolished. The area to the north east, Golborne, was particularly known for being, in the words of
Charles Booth, "one of the worst areas in London". Southam Street in Kensal Green had 2,400 people living in 140 nine-roomed houses in 1923, and the slum children from this street were documented in the 1950s photographs of
Roger Mayne. In late August and early September 1958, the
Notting Hill race riots occurred. The series of disturbances are thought to have started on 30 August when a gang of white youths attacked a Swedish woman,
Majbritt Morrison, who was married to a West Indian man (Raymond Morrison), following a previous incident in Latimer Road tube station. Later that night a mob of 300 to 400 white people, including many "
Teddy Boys", were seen on Bramley Road attacking the houses of West Indian residents. The disturbances,
racially-motivated rioting and attacks continued every night until they petered out by 5 September. The dire housing conditions in Notting Hill led
Bruce Kenrick to found the
Notting Hill Housing Trust in 1963, helping to drive through new housing legislation in the 1960s and found the national housing organisation
Shelter in 1966. Nos 1–9 Colville Gardens, now known as
Pinehurst Court, had become so run down by 1969 that its owner, Robert Gubay of Cledro Developments, described conditions in the buildings as "truly terrible". The slums were cleared during redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s when the
Westway Flyover and
Trellick Tower were built. It is now home to a vibrant community, mainly Mediterranean Spanish and Moroccan, together with Portuguese.
Late 20th-century gentrification By the 1980s, single-occupation houses began to return to favour with families who could afford to occupy them, and because of the open spaces and stylish architecture Notting Hill is today one of London's most desirable areas. Several parts of Notting Hill are characterised by handsome stucco-fronted pillar-porched houses, often with private gardens, notably around Pembridge Place and Dawson Place and streets radiating from the southern part of Ladbroke Grove, many of which lead onto substantial communal gardens. There are grand terraces, such as Kensington Park Gardens, and large villas as in
Pembridge Square and around Holland Park. There is also new construction of modern houses tucked away on backland sites. Since at least 2000, independent shops in Portobello such as Culture Shack have lost out to multinational standardised chains such as
Starbucks. In 2009, Lipka's Arcade, a large indoor antiques market, was replaced by the high-street chain
AllSaints. Reflecting the increasing demise of one of the most culturally vibrant parts of
central London, the 2011 Census showed that in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in which Notting Hill is situated, the number of Black or Black British and White Irish residents, two of the traditionally largest ethnic minority groups in Notting Hill, declined by 46 and 28 percent respectively in ten years. The district adjoins two large public parks,
Holland Park and
Kensington Gardens, with
Hyde Park within to the east. The gentrification has encompassed some streets that were among the 1980s' most decrepit, including the now expensive retail sections of
Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road, as well as Portobello Road's emergence as a top London tourist attraction and Chamberlayne Road as a local shopping street with its boutique independent shops. Notting Hill has a high concentration of restaurants, including the two Michelin-rated
The Ledbury and Core by
Clare Smyth. ==Geography==