In Mediaeval times Earls Court was a small hamlet roughly where the tube station is today. The Lords of the Manor were the Earls of Warwick and Holland, and the area took its name from their courthouse which was in this part of the manor. James Gunter, a successful pastry chef, bought farmland in Earls Court in the early 18th century. His sons and grandsons benefited from this decision as housing moved west. The station for the Metropolitan Railway was built in the 1860s on what was then still farmland. But the railway connection made the area very attractive for commuting to the centre of London and the present roads and terraces were created by the 1880s as fashionable new homes. After the First World War, most of the larger houses were converted into flats or tenements, or used as hotels. In the 1960s Earl’s Court was called Kangaroo Valley because so many Australians lived there on a temporary basis.

South Kensington has two parts. One starts near South Kensington tube station and then runs west between Old Brompton Road and Fulham Road. The second part runs between Cromwell Road and Old Brompton Road. The first part starts just east of South Kensington tube station, between Brompton Road and Cromwell with the Thurloe Estate, consisting mainly of Thurloe Square, Alexander Square and Thurloe Place, and containing very attractive stucco-faced houses from the 1840s. West of South Kensington tube station is the main part of the old Smiths Charity estate (or the Wellcome Estate as it later became). The most exclusive houses here are in Pelham Crescent, which is a beautiful crescent of terraced houses still mainly in single family occupation. Pelham Place is not quite so exclusive but contains attractive houses from the same era. Development of the estate moved westwards with ‘the Onslows’ - Onslow Square, Onslow Gardens and adjoining streets such as Sumner Place, Cranley Gardens and Cranley Place – which are mainly huge terraced houses, built in a distinctive light-coloured brick, as well as some more typical stucco-faced buildings. This area is now mostly converted into flats. Many of them back onto large communal gardens. The houses were originally built with mews at the back for horses and carriages, and these have also been converted in recent decades into attractive small family houses. These include Cranley Mews and Onslow Mews East and West.

Further west, and the next stage of Victorian building embraced the red brick style, and there are very ornate red brick faced blocks of flats in Evelyn Gardens and Cranley Gardens. That is the end of the Smiths Charity estate. There are then a series of attractive streets with a mixture of formal stucco-faced buildings and smaller family houses and mews properties in Roland Gardens Thistle Grove, and surrounding streets. At Drayton Gardens there are later Victorian mansion blocks with Dutch gables. The Boltons is about the end of the South Kensington area, after which it is more accurately described as Earl’s Court, although some say that West Brompton is an area in itself. The Boltons is considered one of the best addresses in central London. The houses are spectacular and they come with large front and back gardens. The Little Boltons and streets between there and Tregunter Road contain less impressive, but still very desirable, semi-detached houses.

The second part of South Kensington runs between Cromwell Road and Old Brompton Road. Part of Queens Gate stabs through the middle of it, but Queens Gate is essentially part of Kensington itself to the north. This is an area of garden squares. Stanhope Gardens, which runs through the middle of this area, has mainly stucco-faced terraced houses. Clareville Grove contains very sought-after period houses in a quiet area. Hereford Square similarly has stucco faced houses around an attractive square. The style becomes later Victorian red-brick on the west side of Gloucester Road, with Wetherby Gardens Harrington Gardens and Collingham Gardens, to name only a few, built in the late Victorian Dutch style with gables and ornate red brick. Behind the main streets, there are attractive mews such as Laverton Mews and Gaspar Mews, where there are small family houses.

The heart of Notting Hill is the area of Ladbroke Grove and the crescents around it. Streets are laid out in concentric circles with Ladbroke Grove running through the centre to Holland Park Avenue. Blenheim Crescent runs off Clarendon Road in the northern part of the area and contains terraces of Victorian houses. Elgin Crescent, the next street down, also has highly desirable terraced houses with stucco facades. Lansdowne Road, the next street down, runs all the way to Holland Park Avenue in the south and crosses Ladbroke Grove to become Arundel Gardens on the east. Similar terraces of houses are to be found here, with some villas but in the Arundel Gardens section houses have brick and stucco facades. The inner part of the concentric circles is made up of Lansdowne Crescent and Stanley Crescent. This is the summit of the hill. The curve of houses is particularly ornate and attractive, with Greek style columns holding up entrance porches. There are also some modern townhouses. St John’s Gardens and Kensington Park Gardens run across below the circle. Lansdowne Walk and Ladbroke Square run beneath that. Lansdowne Walk has more Victorian houses with brick and stucco facades, and a mansion block of flats called Bartok House. Kensington Park Gardens and Ladbroke Square contain more terraces of large Victorian houses, many divided into flats. This whole area has large hidden communal gardens lying behind the streets. The largest gardens are Kensington Park Gardens and Ladbroke Square Gardens and the extent of the Gardens is almost unmatched anywhere else in prime London. At the south end of the area, there are a number of small streets and mews, such as Willby Mews and Horbury Mews. Horbury Crescent which fills the angle between Ladbroke Road and Kensington Park Road contains curving terraces of large Victorian houses with brick and stucco facades. Kensington Park Road marks the boundary of this area and below it is mainly commercial, as well as 1930s mansion blocks such as Princes House, Buckingham Court and Matlock Court. There are also some large and highly sought-after houses on the west side backing onto the gardens.

East of Kensington Park Road is the Pembridge area of Notting Hill. This runs from Kensington Park Road to Chepstow Place in the east and to Westbourne Grove in the North. Portobello Road runs down beside Kensington Park Road and makes this a colourful area with its weekend market. Denbigh Close and Denbigh Terrace which run off it are attractive streets with small terraced houses, some painted in distinctive pastel colours. Chepstow Villas which runs across the area contains some of the most desirable houses in the area, with paired villas, many still family houses. Chepstow Crescent which runs off it has smaller terraced houses and some modern blocks of flats. Denbigh Road and Pembridge Crescent run down through the area. Denbigh Road contains a council estate as well as Victorian to modern houses. Ledbury Road also runs down through the area and shares stucco faced houses with shops and bars. Pembridge Villas is a main road running round to Westbourne Grove and contains some large houses. Pembridge Crescent crosses it to reach Pembridge Square on the east which contains large detached villas. Linden and Clanricarde Gardens to the south are cul-de-sacs with pairs of stucco faced houses. Two mews, Linden Mews and Garden Mews, are also to be found here. Pembridge Place and Dawson Place to the north contain large semi-detached stucco faced houses with glass and cast iron canopies over the entrances much like the most sought-after houses in neighbouring Holland Park.

Above Westbourne Grove is a rather different part of Notting Hill. The Portobello Court estate (council) lies on the corner of Lonsdale Road and Portobello Road. But further east, Lonsdale Road contains attractive houses, from the junction with Colville Road onwards. Colville Road itself contains terraces of large stucco faced Victorian houses, some semi-detached. Colville Terrace has similar large houses. Colville Gardens contains the Pinehurst Court mansion block. There are more Victorian terraces in Colville Square. Westbourne Park Road is mainly shops, but with flats above. Here is also the Convent Gardens council estate. This part of Notting Hill contains various mews with small houses, such as Colville Mews, Lonsdale Mews and St Luke’s Mews, and Dunworth Mews. Lancaster Road contains Victorian terraces and semi-detached houses.

The area of Notting Hill to the west of Clarendon Road is known as Notting Dale or Avondale. There are council blocks mixed with Victorian Terrace, and new small developments around squares or in mews. This is generally in Lancaster Road and the area of Silchester Road. Ladbroke Grove is the local tube station. It is a jumble of streets. Ladbroke Crescent contains flats in former Victorian terraces. Hippodrome Mews contains small town houses, as does Wilsham Street, where the houses are painted various pastel shades. Further south, there are streets of small artisan cottages and terraced houses around Avondale Park. Then there is a large council estate on Angus Road.

There is reference to Knottynghull in the Middle Ages, but it is not known how the name came about. It was all farmland until the 19th century apart from a small village called Kensington Gravel Pits near Notting Hill gate. Gravel and sand extraction had been carried on in the area since the 17th century. There were two large landholdings in the area: the Ladbroke estate and the Norland Estate. From the 1830s onwards, these estates were gradually developed into middle-class housing.

The Ladbroke family had owned land in the area for about a century before the expansion of London made it attractive for house development. (Other things were tried first – a racecourse, the Hippodrome, was built in 1838, but was unsuccessful and closed in 1841.) Thomas Alom was largely responsible for the design of the estate.

The Norland estate on the north side of Holland Park Avenue had belonged to the Greene and Vulliamy families. The estate was bought by Charles Richardson, a solicitor, in 1839 and developed by him until he went bankrupt in 1851. The development was then taken over by Robert Cantwell and others.

To the north, there were two large farms, Notting Barns farm and the Porto Bello farm. These were also developed into a residential area in the last decades of the 19th century. Porto Bello was a town in Mexico which Admiral Vernon captured from the Spaniards in 1739. Portobello Road was originally a horse market, trading in horses at the Hippodrome. When the Caledonian market was closed in 1948, the antique traders moved to Portobello Road.

Seven Sisters Road which runs past Finsbury Park is mainly occupied by hotels. But there are attractive houses and flats in Portland Rise and Gloucester Drive and the streets in between. From Queens Drive to Blackstock Road there is Brownswood Park and there are large Victorian houses here. Queens Drive properties have particularly large gardens. To the east of the reservoirs many new houses have been built in recent years. The move of Arsenal’s football ground will affect the roads below Blackstock and Amber Roads and those surrounding it. On the west side of the Park there are Victorian houses in Woodstock Road and streets off it. Further north, Regent’s Quarter is a new flat and house development of recent years. East of Stroud Green Road there are houses to be found in Stapleton Hall Road and at Upper Tollington Park.

Finsbury Park is also called Stroud Green. It was mainly neglected marshland until some large country houses were built there in the 19th century. Seven Sisters Road is named after a group of elm trees which used to stand at the Tottenham end. When train lines were put through in 1870, the area was substantially developed for residential and industrial use. Finsbury Park, which is 115 acres in size, was created in 1869. Finsbury Park is one of the first publicly owned parks when it was opened in 1869. It contains 115 acres of land. The smaller Hornsey Park once visited by Richard III, forms part of it.

Lowndes Square and Lowndes Street form the boundary with Belgravia which is further east. Lowndes Square is mainly comprised of 1930s mansion blocks. Lowndes Street is partly commercial but contains terraces of stucco fronted houses at the southern end of the street as well as Chelsea House, a large Edwardian mansion block. Cadogan Place off Lowndes Street contains flats and houses backing onto gardens next to Sloane Street which also contains flats.

Knightsbridge continues on the other side of Sloane Street with the area dominated by Harrods on Brompton Road. The surrounding streets - Hans Crescent, Hans Road and Basil Street - contain large red-brick late-Victorian mansion blocks. Hans Place is a square with its own private gardens overlooked by large late-Victorian houses in the Dutch style. Walton Place nearby has earlier Victorian houses in white stucco facades. There is an entrance into Pont Street Mews, which contains smaller cottages. Beaufort Gardens contains more late Victorian terraced houses. Beauchamp Place, which is the western boundary for this part of Knightsbridge, is mainly commercial, but with some flats above shops. Brompton Place contains cottages.

Walton Street runs south west to Fulham Road and the area to the north is still Knightsbridge. The first few streets after Beauchamp Place are Ovington Square, Gardens and Mews. Ovington Square contains tall terraced houses built in the 1840s with white stucco facades. Ovington Gardens has similar but slightly smaller properties. There are quaint cottages in Ovington Mews. In Yeoman’s Row, also a mews, there is a mixture of period and modern cottages. Next come “the Egertons” - Egerton Gardens, Place, Terrace. Mews and Crescent. Egerton Garden Mews contains more mews cottages. Egerton Place and Egerton Terrace contain mainly tall mansion blocks with red brick facades in the late-Victorian Dutch style. Egerton Crescent is a beautiful Georgian terrace of houses with stucco facades looking out over a private garden. The southern portion of Egerton Terrace also contains some good-looking stucco faced houses.

North of Brompton Road, Knightsbridge begins in the angle of Knightsbridge and Brompton Road. Park Mansions is a large mansion block near the corner. A large redevelopment has taken place in the area of Raphael Street and Lancelot Place, providing new flats. Further west along Knightsbridge come Trevor Square and Trevor Place. These contain terraces of early Victorian houses. The area south of Trevor Square was formerly a Harrods depot and has been developed as flats. Further west along Knightsbridge from Trevor Place is the large residential development known as “The Knightsbridge” with blocks of flats and mews houses. South of this development area towards Brompton Road and you are back to a more traditional Victorian areas with Montpelier Square with brick-and-stucco Victorian houses facing on to private gardens. Nearby Montpelier Walk contains smaller houses. Cheval Place contains cottages as well as some blocks of flats and shops. Montpelier Place and Montpelier Street also contain moderate sized brick-and-stucco terraced houses.

Next along Brompton Road comes Brompton Square which contains terraces of Georgian houses overlooking narrow central gardens. Brompton Square was built earlier than the rest of Knightsbridge and has a quite separate feel. The houses back onto Ennismore Gardens. This contains large terraces of stone fronted Victorian houses overlooking private central gardens. Behind runs Ennismore Gardens Mews, which contains brightly painted cottages. The Kingston House block of flats constructed in the 1930s run across Ennismore Gardens. To the east is Rutland Gate which contains two separate squares. The North Square contains houses with brick and stucco facades. The southern square contains mainly stucco fronted houses. They are separated by Eresby House, another large mansion block. There are numerous small cottage properties in Rutland Gardens, Rutland Mews West, Rutland Street and Fairholt Street. Many of the houses are among the earliest in Knightsbridge. The Royal Albert Hall lies to the west and in Prince Consort Road there are five large mansion blocks called Albert Hall Mansions, built in the Dutch style and designed by Norman Shaw in the 1880s. Another mansion block, Albert Court, is in Prince Consort Road.

Knightsbridge got its name from a local bridge across the Westbourne river (near Albert Gate) where two knights fought a duel to the death in the 11th century. In fact, well into the 18th century, it remained a favoured place for duels, and it was also infested with highwaymen.

Kensington as a specific residential area comprises the streets on either side of Kensington High Street and Kensington Church Street from Notting Hill Gate in the north down to Cromwell Road. Starting at the focal point of the area, Kensington Palace, the most exclusive street in the whole area is Kensington Palace Gardens, which turns into Palace Green at the southern end. This is a mix of huge private houses and embassies. Between there and Kensington Church Street is the Vicarage Gate area with smaller but still impressive single houses and terraces in prestigious streets such as Palace Gardens Terrace, Brunswick Gardens and Vicarage Gardens. On the west side of Kensington Church Street comes Campden Hill Road and streets off it on either side, where very desirable houses are to be found in surprisingly secluded streets. Campden Hill Square which is west of Campden HIll Road contains some very large houses in terraces round the private gardens, and most of them have front gardens of their own. Nearby, there are other large houses as well as smaller cottages in the streets towards Holland Park Avenue. East of Campden HIll Road, tucked up just below Notting Hill Gate is an area called Hillgate Village with attractive cottagey-types of houses in streets such as Farm Place, Hillgate Place and Jameson Street. Further south the properties become more a mixture of flats and houses, traditional and modern, in streets such as Peel Street, Camden Street and Sheffield Terrace. There are more Victorian mansion blocks in this area towards the town hall, many in the red-brick ornate Dutch style favoured in late Victorian times. On the other side of Campden Hill Road, the area around Duchess of Bedford’s Walk where there used to be a large college has recently been redeveloped into houses and modern flats, called ‘the Phillimores’. The Phillimore estate itself is to the south, bordering on to Kensington high Street. This was developed by the Phillimore family in Victorian times but most of the freeholds have now been sold off. There are highly desirable houses to be found in tree-lined streets such as Phillimore Gardens, Phillimore Place and Essex Villas. Nearer the High Street, there are huge blocks of flats built between the Wars, such as Stafford Court

Moving south of Kensington High Street, the Queens Gate estate forms the eastern boundary with Knightsbridge. The streets here were not all built as a single development, but they have a consistency of style which makes them seem so. The streets are formed mainly of large terraces of stucco-fronted Victorian houses, most of which have long since been converted into flats. The streets are very wide by Kensington standards. The main streets are Queens Gate, Queens Gate Terrace, and Queens Gate Gardens. There are also mews behind the main streets such as Elvaston Mews and Queens Gate Mews. In the western corner near Gloucester Road is a separate exclusive area of terraces formed by Kensington Gate and Hyde Park Gardens and this area contains both huge detached houses and red brick mansion blocks.

On the other side of Gloucester Road is a more quaint area, with many winding streets containing attractive smaller-scale houses. The streets have a much more villagy feel, and the nicer ones include Launceston Place, Kynance Mews and Eldon Road. There are more tree-lined streets to the north, with attractive houses in Albert Place, Canning Place and surrounding streets. This area leads towards an area more dominated by late Victorian and 20th-century mansion blocks, such as Kensington Court and Kensington Court Gardens. But nearby is also Kensington Square, containing terraces of houses originally built when there was nothing around but farmland, and some of the houses go back to Jacobean times.

The tube line from High Street Kensington then cuts through the area, effectively dividing it. To the west, starting at Wrights Lane, there is a mixture of grand houses and imposing mansion blocks. Iverna Court contains a series of blocks of flats, leading to Abingdon Villas which contains impressive Victorian houses. Scarsdale Villas contains semi-detached large houses and terraces in stucco and brick. Lexham Gardens is made up of terraced houses, now almost exclusively converted into flats. There have been many infill developments in this area, such as Kensington Green, which contains small houses and flats.

The final part of Kensington proper, is the area around Pembroke Square and Edwards Square. This is just on the other side of Earls Court Road, but is still regarded as part of Kensington. Edwards Square is a beautiful example of Georgian houses which have avoided being badly spoiled by later developments. Pembroke Square is also an attractive and mainly original Georgian square. Pembroke Gardens contains mainly later Victorian properties in Dutch style.

Kensington was originally an Anglo-Saxon name, possibly meaning the farm - or “tun” - of Cynesige. In the 18th century it was still an entirely rural area mainly containing market gardens providing food for London to the east and nurseries for exotic fruits such as the newly discovered pineapples. Near present-day Kensington Church Street mansions for the well off began to be constructed from the 17th century onwards. William of Orange bought a house and arranged for Christopher Wren to turn it into Kensington Palace. At a time when plagues were quite frequent in London, the king regarded it as a more healthy place to live than Westminster. In the 19th century, the area was completely redeveloped to provide housing for the ever expanding London market. The Ladbroke, Norland, Phillimore and Smiths Charity Estates were all developed into streets and terraces of houses in the first half of the 19th century. Mid-century, the South Kensington estate belonging to the Commissioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851 was also turned into residential streets. Kensington was a “royal” borough to mark the fact that Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace. When Kensington was merged with Chelsea, the combined borough kept the “royal” title.