Editing Notting Hill (section)

==History==
Notting Hill is in the ceremonial county of [[Greater London]] although it was formerly a hamlet on rural land until the expansion of urban London during the 19th century. As late as 1870, even after the hamlet had become a London suburb, Notting Hill was still popularly referred to as being in Middlesex rather than in London.<ref>{{cite web|title=Notting Hill Middlesex|url=http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/20392|website=A vision of Britain through time|publisher=University of Portsmouth|access-date=24 January 2018}}</ref>

===Origin of the name===
The origin of the name "Notting Hill" is uncertain<ref>{{cite news | title=Notting Hill: Mandelson in good company | url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/240416.stm | publisher=BBC News | date=22 December 1998 | access-date=17 February 2009 }}</ref> though an early version appears in the [[Patent Rolls]] of 1356 as Knottynghull,<ref>{{cite web | title=Kensington and Chelsea | url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/314954/Kensington-and-Chelsea | access-date=17 February 2009 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=Kensington | url=http://www.worley.org.uk/NOTTING%20DALE.htm | access-date=17 February 2009 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080907093625/http://worley.org.uk/NOTTING%20DALE.htm | archive-date=7 September 2008 | url-status=usurped }}</ref> while an 1878 text, Old and New London, reports that the name derives from a manor in Kensington called "Knotting-Bernes", "Knutting-Barnes", or "Nutting-barns",<ref name="L1" /> and goes on to quote from a court record during [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]]'s reign that "the manor called Notingbarons, alias Kensington, in the parish of Paddington, was held of the Abbot of Westminster." For years, it was thought to be a link with Canute, but it is now thought likely that the "Nott" section of the name is derived from the [[Old English language|Saxon]] personal name Cnotta,<ref>{{Cite news | title=Inside Notting Hill |work=The Times | first=Sarah | last=Anderson | url=http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/holiday_type/travel_and_literature/article1967240.ece | date=21 June 2007 | access-date=17 February 2009 | location=London}}{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> with the "ing" part generally accepted as coming from the Saxon for a group or settlement of people.<ref>{{cite web | title=-ing | url=http://www.glaucus.org.uk/-ing.htm | access-date=17 February 2009 }}</ref>

===Potteries and Piggeries===
[[File:Walmer rd kiln.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Brick-making kiln, Walmer Road, north of [[Pottery Lane]].]]
{{main|Pottery Lane}}
The area in the west around Pottery Lane was used in the early 19th century for making bricks and tiles out of the heavy clay dug in the area.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://londongeographies.com/infrastructure/community-responses-to-infrastructure-projects-in-notting-dale|title=Community Responses to Infrastructure Projects in Notting Dale|last=Hardman|first=Josh|date=18 August 2018}}{{Dead link|date=March 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The clay was shaped and fired in a series of brick and tile kilns.<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/london/yourlondon/london_history/pottery_lane.shtml "London streets - Pottery Lane"], BBC London, {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041201012236/http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/yourlondon/london_history/pottery_lane.shtml |date=1 December 2004 }}</ref> The only remaining 19th-century tile kiln in London is on Walmer Road.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.london-footprints.co.uk/wknottinghillroute.htm|title=Notting Hill|website=www.london-footprints.co.uk}}</ref> In the same area, pig farmers moved in after being forced out of the [[Marble Arch]] area. [[Avondale Park]] was created in 1892 out of a former area of pig [[slurry]] called "the Ocean". This was part of a general clean-up of the area which had become known as the Potteries and Piggeries.

===19th-century development===
{{main|Ladbroke Estate}}
The area remained rural until London's westward expansion reached [[Bayswater]] in the early 19th century. The Ladbroke family was Notting Hill's main landowner, and from the 1820s [[James Weller Ladbroke]] began to develop the Ladbroke Estate. Working with the architect and surveyor [[Thomas Allason]], Ladbroke began to lay out streets and houses, with a view to turning the area into a fashionable suburb of the capital (although the development did not get seriously under way until the 1840s). Many of these streets bear the Ladbroke name, including [[Ladbroke Grove]], the area's main north–south axis, and [[Ladbroke Square]], London's largest private [[garden square]].

The original idea was to call the district [[Kensington Park, London|Kensington Park]], and other roads (notably [[Kensington Park Road]] and [[Kensington Park Gardens]]) are reminders of this. The local telephone [[Telephone numbering plan|prefix]] 0207 727 (originally 727, the 0207 indicating Central London)) is based on the [[Director telephone system|old telephone exchange]] name of PARk.<ref>[http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/phreak/tenp_01.htm London Director system exchange names.<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140525024839/http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/phreak/tenp_01.htm |date=25 May 2014 }}</ref>

[[File:London 104.jpg|thumb|left|upright|An antique dealer on [[Portobello Road]]]]
[[File:Allason plan 1823.jpg|thumb|upright|Thomas Allason's 1823 plan for the development of the [[Ladbroke Estate]], consisting of a large central circus with radiating streets and garden squares, or "paddocks".]]
Ladbroke left the actual business of developing his land to the firm of [[City of London|City]] solicitors, Smith, Bayley (known as Bayley and Janson after 1836), who worked with Allason to develop the property. In 1823 Allason completed a plan for the layout of the main portion of the estate. This marks the genesis of his most enduring idea – the creation of large private communal gardens, originally known as "pleasure grounds", or "paddocks", enclosed by terraces and/or crescents of houses.

Instead of houses being set around a garden square, separated from it by a road, Allason's houses would have direct access to a secluded communal garden in the rear, to which people on the street did not have access and generally could not see. To this day these [[communal garden]] squares continue to provide the area with much of its attraction for the wealthiest householders.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49874|title=The Ladbroke estate: The 1820s and 1830s - British History Online|website=www.british-history.ac.uk}}</ref>

[[File:Environs of London Davies map 1841.jpg|left|thumb|1841 map of the Environs of London, showing the [[Kensington Hippodrome|Hippodrome]] in the upper left hand corner.]]
In 1837 the [[Kensington Hippodrome|Hippodrome]] racecourse was laid out.<ref>{{Cite news|url= http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/england/article727749.ece |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080830081836/http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/england/article727749.ece |url-status= dead |archive-date= 30 August 2008 | work=The Times | location=London | title=Notting Hill on foot | first=Sara | last=McConnell | date=6 February 2006 | access-date=20 May 2010}}</ref> The racecourse ran around the hill, and bystanders were expected to watch from the summit of the hill. However, the venture was not a success, in part due to a public right of way which traversed the course, and in part due to the heavy clay of the neighbourhood which caused it to become waterlogged. The Hippodrome closed in 1841, after which development resumed and houses were built on the site. The crescent-shaped roads that circumvent the hill, such as [[Blenheim Crescent]], [[Elgin Crescent]], Stanley Crescent, Cornwall Crescent and Landsdowne Crescent, were built over the circular racecourse tracks. At the summit of hill stands the elegant [[St John's Notting Hill|St John's church]], built in 1845 in the early English style, and which formed the centrepiece of the Ladbroke Estate development.

The Notting Hill houses were large, but they did not immediately succeed in enticing the very richest Londoners, who tended to live closer to the centre of London in [[Mayfair]] or [[Belgravia]]. The houses appealed to the upper middle class, who could live there in Belgravia style at lower prices. In the opening chapter of [[John Galsworthy]]'s ''[[Forsyte Saga]]'' novels, he housed the Nicholas Forsytes "in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a great bargain".<ref>[[John Galsworthy]], ''The Man of Property'', Chapter 1, published 1906.</ref> In 1862 [[Thomas Hardy]] left Dorchester for London to work with architect [[Arthur Blomfield]]; during this period he lived in Westbourne Park Villas. He immersed himself in the city's literary and cultural life, studying art, visiting the [[National Gallery]], attending the theatre and writing prose and poetry. His first published story, "How I Built Myself a House", appeared in ''[[Chamber's Journal]]'' in 1865. Here he wrote his first―but never published―novel, ''The Poor Man and the Lady'', in 1867, and the poem "A Young Man's Exhortation", from which [[Graham Greene]] took an epigraph for his own novel ''[[The Comedians (novel)|The Comedians]]''. [[Arthur Machen]] (1863–1947), the author of many supernatural and fantastic fictions, lived at 23 [[Clarendon Road]], Notting Hill Gate, in the 1880s; he writes of his life here in his memoirs ''Far Off Things'' (1922) and ''Things Near and Far'' (1923). His mystical work ''[[The Hill of Dreams]]'' (1907, though written ten years earlier) has scenes set in Notting Hill; it is here that the protagonist Lucian Taylor encounters the beautiful bronze-haired prostitute who will later connive at his death.

===Early to mid-20th century===
[[File:PinehurstCourt.jpg|thumb|Nos 1–9 Colville Gardens, now known as [[Pinehurst Court]], showing [[All Saints Notting Hill|All Saints]]' church in the background]]
The reputation of the district altered over the course of the 20th century. As middle-class households ceased to employ servants, the large Notting Hill houses lost their market and were increasingly split into multiple occupation. During [[the Blitz]] a number of buildings were damaged or destroyed by the [[Luftwaffe]], including [[All Saints Notting Hill|All Saints' Church]], which was hit in 1940 and again in 1944. In the postwar period the name Notting Hill evoked a down-at-heel area of cheap lodgings, epitomised by the racketeering landlord [[Peter Rachman]] and the murders committed by [[John Christie (murderer)|John Christie]] in 10 Rillington Place, since demolished. The area to the north east, Golborne, was particularly known for being, in the words of [[Charles Booth (philanthropist)|Charles Booth]], "one of the worst areas in London".<ref>{{cite web | title=One thousand years of Goldborne | publisher=Golborne Life | url=http://www.golbornelife.co.uk/golbornehistory.html | access-date=17 February 2009 }}</ref> Southam Street in Kensal Green had 2,400 people living in 140 nine-roomed houses in 1923, and the slum children from this street were documented in the 1950s photographs of [[Roger Mayne]].

In late August and early September 1958, the [[1958 Notting Hill race riots|Notting Hill race riots]] occurred. The series of disturbances are thought to have started on 30 August when a gang of white youths attacked a Swedish woman, [[Majbritt Morrison]], who was married to a West Indian man (Raymond Morrison), following a previous incident in Latimer Road tube station.<ref>[[BBC News]]: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1355718.stm Long history of race rioting], [[British Broadcasting Corporation]], 28 May 2001.</ref> Later that night a mob of 300 to 400 white people, including many "[[Teddy Boy]]s", were seen on Bramley Road attacking the houses of West Indian residents. The disturbances, [[Race riot|racially-motivated rioting]] and attacks continued every night until they petered out by 5 September.

The dire housing conditions in Notting Hill led [[Bruce Kenrick]] to found the [[Notting Hill Housing Trust]] in 1963, helping to drive through new housing legislation in the 1960s and found the national housing organisation [[Shelter (charity)|Shelter]] in 1966.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070206195243/http://www.nottinghillhousing.org.uk/news.aspx?id_Content=731 "Reverend Bruce Kenrick"], Nottinghill Houing, 22 January 2007.</ref> Nos 1–9 Colville Gardens, now known as [[Pinehurst Court]], had become so run down by 1969 that its owner, Robert Gubay of Cledro Developments, described conditions in the buildings as "truly terrible".<ref>Jan O'Malley ''The Politics of Community Action in Notting Hill'', Spokesman Press, 1977</ref>

The slums were cleared during redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s when the [[Westway (London)|Westway Flyover]] and [[Trellick Tower]] were built. It is now home to a vibrant community, mainly Mediterranean Spanish and Moroccan, together with Portuguese.<ref>{{Cite news | title=Exotic eats in West London | url=http://www.thelondonpaper.com/cs/Satellite/london/food/article/1157140145760?packedargs=suffix%3DSubSectionArticle | first=Tom | last=Maggoch | publisher=The London Paper | department=The London Style | date=20 December 2006 | access-date=17 February 2009 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109012910/http://www.thelondonpaper.com/cs/Satellite/london/food/article/1157140145760?packedargs=suffix%3DSubSectionArticle | archive-date=9 January 2009 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Late 20th-century gentrification===
By the 1980s, single-occupation houses began to return to favour with families who could afford to occupy them, and because of the open spaces and stylish architecture Notting Hill is today one of London's most desirable areas.<ref name="BBC NEWS">{{cite news|url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4314926.stm |title=Proud to be a Notting Hill Tory |publisher=BBC News |access-date=7 June 2009 |date=6 October 2005}}</ref> Several parts of Notting Hill are characterised by handsome stucco-fronted pillar-porched houses, often with private gardens, notably around Pembridge Place and Dawson Place and streets radiating from the southern part of Ladbroke Grove, many of which lead onto substantial communal gardens. There are grand terraces, such as Kensington Park Gardens, and large villas as in [[Pembridge Square]] and around Holland Park. There is also new construction of modern houses tucked away on backland sites.<ref>{{cite web|title=Light House|url=http://us.archello.com/en/project/light-house-2|website=archello.com|access-date=24 January 2018}}</ref>
[[File:Notting hill colorful houses.jpg|thumb|Notting Hill is full of colourful houses.]]
Since at least 2000, independent shops in Portobello such as Culture Shack have lost out to multinational standardised chains such as [[Starbucks]].<ref>{{Cite news | title=Gap? Starbucks? On Portobello Road, darling? | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/gap-starbucks-on-portobello-road-darling-516154.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220621/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/gap-starbucks-on-portobello-road-darling-516154.html |archive-date=21 June 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |first=Mary |last=Braid |work=The Independent |date=20 November 2005 |access-date=8 December 2013 }}</ref> In 2009, Lipka's Arcade, a large indoor antiques market, was replaced by the high-street chain [[AllSaints]].<ref>{{Cite news |title=Dealers mobilise over threat to Portobello | url=http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2010/feb/01/dealers-mobilise-over-threat-to-portobello |work=Antiques Gazette |date=1 February 2010 | access-date=8 December 2013}}</ref> Reflecting the increasing demise of one of the most culturally vibrant parts of [[central London]], the 2011 Census showed that in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in which Notting Hill is situated, the number of Black or Black British and White Irish residents, two of the traditionally largest ethnic minority groups in Notting Hill, declined by 46 and 28 percent respectively in ten years.<ref>{{Cite news | title=Census 2011: Truth where you live |url= https://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2012/dec/13/census-2011-truth-where-you-live-interactive | date=13 December 2012 | access-date= 8 December 2013}}</ref>

The district adjoins two large public parks, [[Holland Park]] and [[Kensington Gardens]], with [[Hyde Park, London|Hyde Park]] within {{convert|1| mi| km| 1}} to the east. The gentrification has encompassed some streets that were among the 1980s' most decrepit, including the now expensive retail sections of [[Westbourne Grove]] and Ledbury Road, as well as Portobello Road's emergence as a top London tourist attraction and Chamberlayne Road as a local shopping street with its boutique independent shops. Notting Hill has a high concentration of restaurants, including the two Michelin-rated [[The Ledbury]] and Core by [[Clare Smyth]].