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Local information and useful advice for the residents of Holland Park and Holland Park Mews (W11)
Area History
The area generally accepted to constitute the Holland Park ‘Village’ with Holland Park Avenue as its spine running from the now Shepherd’s Bush roundabout to Notting Hill Gate only became a recognisable community from the middle of the 19th century. Holland Park Avenue was until the 1860s known as Notting Hill High Street and the change in name occurred around the time of the removal of the Notting Hill Toll Gate in 1864.
Apart from the area to the south of the road which comprised the 200 acre estate of Lord Holland, which was mostly farmland until built upon progressively from the 1820s (Addison Road area was the first to be developed) most of the area to the north of Holland Park Avenue had been either farmland or gravel pits while toward the Walmer Road area pig-keeping and brick-making were the main activities.		 Shim Holland Park Street
Holland Park Avenue, looking east from opposite Nordland Square

Starting from the 1840s, the Royal Crescent, Norland and then Holland Park (1862-5) estates were developed and turned the area gradually into a prime residential community with shops along the northern side of the Avenue being established between the 1850s and 1880s

The Ladbroke estate took a much stranger development path. Originally the farm land comprising this estate stretched from Notting Hill (Pembridge area) west to Portland Road and on it Richard Ladbroke, heir to a previous Lord Mayor of London, Sir Robert Ladbroke, planned to build in the grand style of the Nash terraces off Regent’s Park.

Finance problems delayed this and in the 1840s for a short period the Ladbroke Hill area was developed into a Hippodrome or racecourse. Extreme sleaze seemed to overcome the project with gin-shops, high crime and rampant corruption. One path to the course was know as ’Cut-Throat Lane’.

When house building finally started toward 1850, it was largely piecemeal for lack of finance and the grandiose plans were much modified in practice. Described as a ‘graveyard of buried hopes’, the building produced many bankruptcies and derelict buildings until the 1880s when most of the development was largely completed.

By the 1890s, most of today’s Holland Park Village was a recognisable entity and considered a very fashionable part of Kensington. 

For a detailed history - Barbara Denny’s ‘Notting Hill and Holland Park Past’ is recommended.
Houses Waterfall Lord Holland Holland Park Tube Station
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