Westbourne Park

Westbourne Park, Westminster/Kensington & Chelsea

A fashionable residential locality occupying a crescent of land made by the elevated section of the Westway, north-east of Notting Hill

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The West­bourne is minor river that rises in Hampstead and flows 12 miles south­wards into the Thames at Chelsea, nowadays mostly underground.

A mansion called West­bourne Place stood north of this locality in the 1640s, with grounds stretching in this direction. The property was later renamed West­bourne Park.

After the Great Western Railway came through the district in the late 1830s, a station was opened here, orig­i­nally called Green Bridge.

In the mid-1850s the mansion was demol­ished and its grounds were covered by the gener­ously propor­tioned semi-detached villas of West­bourne Park Road and West­bourne Park Villas, where the writer Thomas Hardy lived in the 1860s. For a while the new settle­ment was known as ‘West­bournia’.

In response to the influx of Roman Catholics to neigh­bouring North Kens­ington, the Poor Clare order estab­lished a monastery on West­bourne Park Road, with separate chapels for nuns and visitors.

West­bourne Park was served by Hammer­smith & City Railway from 1866 and the station brought some commerce to the area but vibra­tions caused the collapse of four tradesmen’s houses in West­bourne Park Passage (now lost) in 1869. The station was rebuilt on its present site in 1871. Later in the century West­bourne Park Road was extended westwards by the simple device of renaming Cornwall Road.

Like much of the surrounding area, West­bourne Park had declined by the middle of the 20th century and many houses had been subdi­vided. The notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman bought his first property on St Stephen’s Gardens in the early 1950s, targeting newly arrived West Indian immi­grants, whose diffi­cul­ties in finding accom­mo­da­tion made them easier to exploit. West­min­ster council later acquired groups of run-down homes, reha­bil­i­tating some and replacing others with flats.

West­bourne Park was popular with hippies in the 1960s and has since attracted more respectable (and wealthy) figures from the worlds of fashion and music, with chic eateries and organic grocers that draw celebrity customers. The area’s popu­la­tion declined in the late 20th century as houses formerly occupied by several families were reunited into single households.

The blue door that featured prominently in the film Notting Hill belonged to a converted chapel in Westbourne Park Road, once owned by the film’s scriptwriter and co-producer Richard Curtis. The door was sold for £5,750 to a Portobello Road antiques dealer in 1999.

Postal districts: W11 and W2
Station: Hammersmith & City line (zone 2)
Further reading: H E Bonsall and E H Robertson, Dream of an Ideal City: Westbourne Park, 1877–1977, Westbourne Park Baptist Church, 1978 (despite its promising title, the book is very much about the church rather than the locality)