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.