I am mainly concerned with North Kensington. The far side of the Harrow Road is also W10 and I will have the odd article about that area. Back in the day, before the London boroughs were created in 1965, that was Paddington Borough. I will also venture in to W11 and W9 from time to time. Before 1965, Kensington was not linked to Chelsea. I should also add that one of my interests is Women’s History.
North Kensington as anyone familiar with the area knows, is quite a mixed area. It’s a mix of large houses intended for the middle classes. At lot of the houses were not occupied by the middle class families they were intended for. Many properties were divided up into flats. Kensington has always had a large private rented sector. Octavia Hill had some projects in the area. Kensington Housing Trust was set up in the 1920s, to tackle bad housing conditions in the area. See the film – Kensington Calling. In the period that interests me, 1870s to 1950s), North Kensington was a relatively low income area, an industrial area.
The Regent Canal passes through the area. Coal came from Newcastle by ship. It then went to Kings Cross and from King’s Cross came to North Kensington. Coal in this period is the fuel of industry. The canal linked North Kensington to East London and to West London and the Midlands.
There was a gas works in the area (where the Sainsburys is now). Tow of the old gas holders still remain. The coal was made into town gas which was used for street lighting among other things. There were factories along Kensal Road as it gave them access to the canal. There was a car works along Barlby Road. There were laundry houses. There was a lot of public houses. There was a workhouse in Mary Place. There was a lock hospital on he Harrow Road. What is now St Charles Hospital was the workhouse infirmary for the Marylebone Workhouse Union.
During the war and in the immediate post war period, one of the worst legal miscariage of justice happened in the area. Timothy Evans lived locally, as did the murderer, John Christie who killed 6 women and Evans’s baby. Evans himself was hung for murder of his child. It later became clear that Christie had most likely killed the child as well as the other 6 women.
Other murderers were not too far away. Neville Heath carried out one of his murders at Pembridge Court Hotel in W11. John George Haig, the acid bath murderer, murdered several people at his lock up at Gloucester Road. Gordon Cummins, the Black Out Ripper, killed one of his victims at Paddington. All of these grisly crimes mostly against women have been the subject of episodes of Murder Maps.
W10 History 