Portland Road is a road in

Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...

, in the

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is an Inner London borough with royal status. It is the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England; it is one of the most densely populated administrative regions in the ...

that was built as a speculative development in the 1850s. The road has been noted for its division into three sections of different wealth: the section between Holland Park Avenue and Clarendon Cross/Hippodrome Place being one of the most expensive places to buy a house in London, a section of terraced houses further north being also very expensive but less so than the lower reaches of the road, and a section at the northern end that was once slums and is now working class social housing and is described as being north of an "invisible line" that divides it from the privately owned sections of the road.

Location

The road runs from

Clarendon Road Clarendon Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of London. It runs roughly south to north from Holland Park Avenue. It is named after George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, who was Lord Privy Seal when the road was built. The suffrag ...

in the north to

Holland Park Avenue Holland Park Avenue is a street located in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in west central London. The street runs from Notting Hill Gate in the east to the Holland Park Roundabout in the west, forms a part of the old west road ...

in the south and is crossed by Hippodrome Place and Clarendon Cross. It is joined on its western side by

Penzance Place Penzance ( ; kw, Pennsans) is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is about west-southwest of Plymouth and west-southwest of London. Situated ...

and

Pottery Lane Pottery Lane is a street in Notting Hill, west London. Today it forms part of one of London's most fashionable and expensive neighbourhoods, but in the mid-19th century it lay at the heart of a wretched and notorious slum known as the "Potterie ...

, and on its eastern side by Ladbroke Road. The part above Clarendon Cross was originally known as Montpellier Terrace and the part north of that as Portland Road North. The houses on the west side in the southern end of the road were originally known as Portland Gardens.

History

Portland Road was built by speculative developers in the 1850s on a strip of land between the affluent

Ladbroke Estate The Ladbroke Estate was a substantial estate of land owned by the Ladbroke family in Notting Hill, London, England, in the early 19th century that was gradually developed and turned into housing during the middle years of the century, as London ...

to the east and the Norland Estate to the west, home to the

Potteries and Piggeries Pottery Lane is a street in Notting Hill, west London. Today it forms part of one of London's most fashionable and expensive neighbourhoods, but in the mid-19th century it lay at the heart of a wretched and notorious slum known as the "Potterie ...

, one of the most notorious slums in London. At first all the houses were rented and in the southern part occupied by well-off tenants with households of more modest means further north. Winterbourne House was built between the wars in the northern part of the road behind Heathfield Street as part of the clearance of what was by then slum housing. It was partly occupied by people who worked in the adjacent Notting Hill Brewery. In the late 1930s, the far larger Nottingwood House was built at the far northern end of the road on the site of the brewery and slum housing. In the twentieth century the road began to decline with most of the houses being in multiple occupation. Notting Hill slum landlord

Peter Rachman Perec "Peter" Rachman (16 August 1919 – 29 November 1962) was a Polish-born landlord who operated in Notting Hill, London, England in the 1950s and early 1960s. He became notorious for his exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanism" ...

owned property in the road. From the 1960s the road began to be colonised by the middle classes again. In the later twentieth century, the road was blocked to vehicle traffic immediately below the junction with Hippodrome Place and Clarendon Cross, an action which has been seen as crystallising the class differences between the northern and the southern parts of the road. By the early twenty-first century, the southern end of the road had become a "ghetto" for bankers and it has been used as a case study of the

gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...

of London streets.Is this UK's most gentrified street?
Keith Moore, BBC News, 27 June 2012. Retrieved 2 September 2017.

References

External links

{{coord, 51.50985, N, 0.2102, W, type:landmark_region:GB-KEC, display=title Notting Hill Streets in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea 1850s establishments in England

Location

History

References

Further reading

External links