This is where we finished last week, minus 70 or 80 years or so:
The street is busy but pedestrians are still free to amble across it.The building in the centre was as I suggested last week at this time a bank, the London and Westminster Bank (much later merged into the NatWest). If you look carefully into the distance on the right the spires of the Baptist Chapel are visible. But I promised you another walk in a southward direction. So let’s take the other fork, Pembridge Villas.
As you can see it’s a quiet residential street full of what might be called suburban villas.
“There are some grand parts to Notting Hill; everybody knows that.The streets between Westbourne Grove and Pembridge Square for example have a reputaion for being awfully desireable. ” as Sugar, the heroine of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White says to William Rackham. “But that is precisely where I live!” is his reply. For these characters the area was clean and pleasant and not quite in London.
The buses were another useful amenity for residents.
A close up shows that these are horse buses which perhaps puts us in the 1890s. It would only be a short ride up Pembridge Villas to Pembridge Road. Here there is a junction with Pembridge Crescent and Pembridge Square, and a little further on Portobello Road.
Here is the familiar curved front of the Sun in Splendour, a pub which is still a starting point for any walk down the Portobello Road. I often pose the question what would it be like to enter these everyday scenes of a century or so ago, but what if it were the other way round, and the people in these pictures could see our streets?
I took this picture, which shows the other half of the pub’s front in 2008 when I went to look at some pictures in Notting Hill Library. (Is it really five years ago?)
This is the point where the street changes back to the retail environment we left back in Westbourne Grove.
The buildings are two storey affairs with shops on the ground floor and some living space above. Shoppers stroll by heading towards the High Street (as Notting Hill Gate would have been known then.)
Look past the boy looking at the camera and the woman in short sleeves. Can you see the sign: “Best prices paid for old artificial teeth” Dentistry was a growth business in this period.
Back in 2008 when I was there foot traffic was going in both directions.
The colours have probably changed, and the shop fronts are more flamboyant.
All fascinating shops as you can see but a brief acknowledgement from me to Mimi Fifi, at the centre of the picture, which I have visited many times and is devoted to toys and memorabilia and contains thousands of such items.
Imagine those late Victorian / Edwardian shoppers, already veterans of the 19th century retail revolution finding even more stuff to buy.
At the end of this short stretch the narrow road widens out again as it meets the junction with the start of Kensington Park Road and last section before Notting Hill Gate.
This view looks north, back the way we came. The buildings on the eastern side of the road are still with us, as you can see in this northward view:
Outside Hart’s Noted Furniture Stores two women seem to be waiting for something. A gap in the traffic?
Across the road the Prince Albert public house, which still goes by that name.
Behind it was a group of tiny streets, now mostly gone.
Further along the road at the junction with the high street the buildings have all been replaced by a huge development (relative to the street) combining retail and housing.
This view from 1963 shows the scale of the change.
At the right of the picture you can see the older buildings on the east side of Pembridge Road and across the road the retail /office block that replaced the original buildings. For me, and millions of others of course this is the Notting Hill Gate we know. The wide pavements and shops seem like just another familiar part of of the Kensington landscape.
We’ve walked ourselves back and forth through time while making that short journey from Westbourne Grove to Notting Hill Gate. Time to take a rest.
Postscript
I took the pictures in 2008 using an Olympus compact camera which seems tiny now compared with the Nikon I’m using now.
Dave Walker