Notting Hill used to be the sort of shabby, sleazy place you drove through as
fast as you could with the doors firmly locked. But in the last 10 years it
has been rediscovered and colonised by actors, lawyers, bankers and
politicians, including new young Tory leader David Cameron and his political
friends in the Notting Hill Set.
This month’s walk explores this small but exciting multicultural area, full of
variety and contrast, from the elegant Italianate houses of the Ladbroke
Estate to the concrete ugliness of the 1960s Trellick Tower by the Grand
Union Canal. The route takes in streets of individual antique shops, clothes
and bookshops, markets and restaurants around Portobello Road, Westbourne
Grove and the once notorious “front line” of All Saints Road before
returning to Notting Hill Gate through residential streets.
Highlights
Ladbroke Grove garden squares
Golbourne Road
Trellick Tower
Grand Union Canal
Portobello Road and Market
All Saints Road
Westbourne Grove
Distance: 4 miles approx
Time taken: 2-2.5 hours
Type of walk: circular. Starts and finishes at Notting Hill
tube station (central, circle and district lines)
Weekends are the best time to do this walk if you want to explore the
Portobello antiques market at the south end of Portobello Road, which only
open on Saturdays.
Start. Come out of Notting Hill tube station on the north
side of Notting Hill Gate and take the first right into Pembridge Road.
Branch immediately left into Kensington Park Road and left again into
Ladbroke Road past a row of delectable white stucco Victorian villas
characteristic of the new affluent Notting Hill. Turn right into Ladbroke
Terrace to reach Ladbroke Square, one of many private garden squares in this
area of London. Only residents of the tall Victorian houses in the square
have keys to the three hectares of wooded gardens hidden behind iron
railings in Ladbroke Square Gardens.
Turn left into Ladbroke Square with the gardens on your right, take a right
into Ladbroke Grove, the area’s main traffic artery, and cross at the
crossing into Lansdowne Crescent with St John’s Church on your right. This
and the sweeping surrounding crescents of stucco houses with carved
Italianate buildings and pillared porches form the heart of the Ladbroke
Estate. If you think the estate’s distinctive circular shape on the A-Z
looks a bit like a racetrack, this is because it originally was. The area
was opened as the Hippodrome racecourse in 1837 circling the hill, but the
venture failed and the racecourse closed in 1841. The Ladbroke estate was
developed on the land in the 1840s with the church marking the Hippodrome’s
central point.
Follow Lansdowne Crescent round to come out at Ladbroke Grove and walk
northwards with the blue railway bridge carrying the tube over the road in
front of you. Shops and streets quickly become dirtier and shabbier, with
small ethnic supermarkets and takeaways, as you get nearer the Westway, the
concrete motorway flyover which carves Notting Hill in two. This is one of
the few remnants of an ambitious scheme in the 1960s to build a series of
ringways throughout London, with what is now the M25 as the outermost ring.
But planners were stopped in their tracks in inner London by a combination
of mounting costs and public outrage and the ringways were abandoned in the
1970s. Now the spaces under the Westway are occupied by cafes, a fitness
centre and the north end of Portobello Market.
Go under the Westway and turn immediately right into Cambridge Gardens, where
you can see the Westway on your right, incongruous against the backdrop of
Victorian terraces on your left. Turn left into Portobello Road past a
clutch of furniture and antique clothing shops and right into Golborne Road.
This is the shopping and cultural centre of the area’s Portuguese community,
with the Lisbon Patisserie, Lisboa delicatessen and Café Oporto all busy
with customers talking to each other in Portuguese.
[If you want to head straight back to Portobello Road and market at this
point, turn right into Wornington Road and right into Malvern Close. Look
for a path leading half left past the Malvern pub and keep ahead across the
end of Acklam Road to pick up Portobello Road under the Westway]
Otherwise keep straight ahead along Golborne Road, cross the bridge over the
railway and walk towards Trellick Tower. The 31-storey concrete tower,
completed by Hungarian architect Erno Goldfinger in 1972, dominates the
skyline for miles and for years was a symbol of urban decay and
disaffection. But now some of the flats are privately owned and the tower
has become a fashionable place to live, close to Portobello Market and the
shops and bars of Notting Hill.
Follow Golborne Road until it bends to the left and turns into Kensal Road and
walk straight on past two metal bollards into Meanwhile Gardens to pick up
the towpath along the Grand Union Canal, which carves across London in a
nine mile arc from Paddington to Limehouse in east London providing welcome
relief and space from the closely packed streets of North Kensington
Walk on for a short distance then look for a set of steps on your right
between two sloping metal posts and head down into Meanwhile Gardens,
keeping diagonally left along a tarmac path with Trellick Tower on your
right. At Elkstone Road, turn right then left back over the railway bridge.
This brings you back into Golborne Road from where you turn into Wornington
Road and follow the directions in brackets above to reach Portobello Road.
The northern end of Portobello Road under the Westway is much less touristy
and upmarket than the well-known antiques market further south but still
worth exploring. Shops sell New Age and grunge clothes, pubs and cafes serve
Thai food and Spanish wine, and market stalls sell a vast variety of fruit
and vegetables.
Turn left into Lancaster Road and take the second right into All Saints Road.
In the 1950s and 1960s, this and surrounding roads were slums, the large
houses divided up into bedsits, many lived in by West Indians who had
recently arrived in London. Tensions between whites, blacks and the police
led to the Notting Hill riots of 1958 and continuing unrest throughout the
1960s. All this is difficult to imagine now, looking at the multicoloured
house fronts newly painted red, green, yellow and black, the elegant
contemporary art galleries and furniture shops and offices of architects and
designers. The only reminder of recent history is the People’s Sound record
shop with reggae music blaring out of the door.
Turn right into Westbourne Park Road and left into Portobello Road. This is
where the shops get smarter and the Saturday antiques market starts with
stalls out on the road in front of shops crammed with objets d’art and
collectibles. Blenheim Road off Portobello on your right as you walk up is
worth a detour to explore its eclectic selection of bookshops including The
Travel Bookshop, famous as Hugh Grant’s bookshop in the film Notting
Hill, and Books for Cooks. Coming back to Portobello Road, the lush
interior of the Electric Cinema was restored in 2001 after years of neglect.
The Electric has a brasserie if you want to stop off for a meal or a drink.
Otherwise Portobello Road and Blenheim Road have a wide choice of pubs,
restaurants and takeaways.
Continue up Portobello Road to Westbourne Grove on your left, with its
designer loo incorporating a flower stall on the island in the middle of the
road. Westbourne Grove is lined with upmarket clothes chain stores including
Whistles and Joseph, alongside bars and restaurants.
To return to Notting Hill Gate station and the end of the walk, continue up
Westbourne Grove and turn left into Pembridge Villas, which becomes
Pembridge Road and leads to the tube.
