Notting Dale Walking Tour

A walking tour of the Notting Dale / Latimer Road area

Notting Dale Walking Tour

England E1 6FQ, United Kingdom

Created By: Cecily Powell

Tour Information

Take a walk through the history of the Notting Dale / Latimer Road Area. Journeying back through time to explore the incidents and places that defined this area and the conditions that lead all the way to the Grenfell fire.

From Latimer Road Tube: this walk looks at the social history of Notting Dale and the endless fight over housing.

Story of Notting Hill has always been one of rich and poor, grand houses and slums.

You'll find stories of poverty, disease, race riots, half finished plans and a community's resilience in the face of adversity.


Tour Map

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What You'll See on the Tour

General Intro 1958 riots began on this corner.
Land in the area was owned by a barrister called James Whitchurch and set out for building in 1846. A few of the small detached or paired houses built at this time still survive, in sadly dilapidated condition, but this first phase in the d... Read more
The site of the Potteries shanty town. The Potteries were situated on the flat, sunken, stiff clay ground at the bottom of the hill, where St. John’s church stands now. There were no building regulations then and anyone could just build t... Read more
Site of the Victorian Workhouse, it was redeveloped as a garden square.
With the mixture of the potters and pig keepers, several of the main elements for the making of the hideous future of the district were established. Digging out the clay, left large ditches in the ground and with bad drainage, these ditche... Read more
The kiln is the last remnant of the Potteries. To the east lies the site of the Kensington Hippodrome, a racing emporium more extensive and attractive than Ascot or Epsom. Opened in 1837, it was short-lived. A public footpath ran through th... Read more
The poor of Notting Dale were squeezed into an unsanitary area, hemmed in all sides by wealthy estates. Union Street (now Sirdar Rd) was planned to join Notting Dale to the Norland Estate. The conjoining road was never built.
Charles Dickens's publication Household Works was the first to highlight the poverty and insanitary conditions in Notting Dale. His grandson Henry was instrumental in improving the conditions of the poor after WW2 and this estate is named a... Read more
The People’s Hall is the only significant building from the independent Republic of Frestonia that is still standing today. This red brick Victorian beauty was the focal point for the community of bohemians where the collective of 120 or ... Read more
The Harrow Club was formed in 1883 as The Harrow Mission Church, both funded and designed by old Harrovians from Harrow School. First Missioner William Law recognised the need for provision in the impoverished Notting Dale area and set up t... Read more
In the mid 1960's an overhead motorway, the A40(M) was driven through North Kensington staked out on giant stilts - the largest continuous concrete structure in the country. Two and a half miles of new road made it the longest stretch of el... Read more
The Maxilla memorial and healing space, incorporating the ‘Wall of Truth’, is a space created by and for members of the community in response to the great suffering after the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. Sitting underneath th... Read more
Once a major crossroads with busy shops and the site of Silchester Baths, the heart of the Notting Dale laundress' world. At its peak, in the early 20th century, there were over 300 laundry workshops and factories in North Kensington. Despi... Read more
In 1927 an escaped monkey jazz band embarked on days of high jinks and mayhem at Latimer Road station. Jumping aboard trains, one reached as far as Rugby before capture. End of Tour. Refreshment available at Pig & Whistle or Garden Bar.... Read more

 

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