Blenheim Crescent one of the major thoroughfares in Notting Hill – indeed it features in the eponymous film.
Tag: Tom Vague
Acklam Road and the Carnival
As Hawkwind played a series of free gigs under the Westway, pictured on the gatefold sleeve of their 1971 album ‘X In Search of Space’, during which they would merge with the Pink Fairies as Pinkwind, Frendz underground paper (at 305 Portobello Road) made ‘a call to all progressive people; black people smash the racist …
All Saints Road, W11
Local and social historian Tom Vague writes about All Saints Road in Notting Hill. The Wise brothers described All Saints Road at the height of its Frontline notoriety, when the street never closed without police assistance, as ‘a north London casbah’ featuring late night Rasta football games and street fights. In an All Saints joke of …
The Apollo
Local and social historian Tom Vague writes about the Apollo in All Saints Road. In ‘Once Upon a Time there was a Place called Notting Hill Gate’, the normally hypercritical Wise brothers get quite sentimental about the old Apollo pub: “It had been an okay dive, despite the many nights of depression, all 57 varieties of …
The Mangrove
Local and social historian Tom Vague writes about the Mangrove restaurant which stood on the corner of All Saints Road and Westbourne Park Road between 1968 and 1991. “Mangrove, smell of hashish, swirling clouds of ashen smoke, weave in, around, away, palms like giant fingers, sounds of laughing, belly deep and penetrating, wise words and indiscretions, …
The De Veres – Lords of the Manor of Kensington
‘Here come de Veres of the times of old…’ Edward Walford ‘Old London’ The first recorded mention of Kensington in ‘The Doomesday Book’ is: ‘Albericus de Ver holds of the Bishop of Coutances Chenesitun.’ After the Norman Conquest, the manor of Chenesitun passed from Edwin the Thegn of Edward the Confessor to Geoffrey, Bishop of …