The name Kensington is Anglo-Saxon in origin, giving us a tantalising if uncertain glimpse into its early development. Kensington probably derives from Chenesitun, town of Chenesis people.
From the early 17th century Kensington became popular with persons of quality and note due to its good position near the metropolis and its reputation for pure healthy air. In the 1590s Sir Walter Cope began to purchase land in Kensington, and in 1604 he built Copes Castle. After his death the house and the manors passed to his daughter Isobel, wife of Henry Rich, later Earl of Holland. They were retained by the family until Holland House was sold to Henry Fox, later Lord Holland. The house became a noted meeting-place for artists, writers and politicians. Badly damaged by incendiary bombs in 1940, the remains of the house were bought by the London County Council in 1952 and the grounds opened as a public park. Today the park is owned by the Royal Borough.
Nottingham House, purchased in 1689 by William III as a country house where he could breathe clean air free of the smoke and dirt of London. Commissioned by the King, Christopher Wren enlarged and rebuilt the house, turning it into a fitting royal residence. With the King came many court officials, servants and followers. Kensington Square, until then a failing venture, became a popular residential area. The Palace was regularly used by reigning monarchs until 1760 and since then by members of the Royal family. Queen Victoria was born there in 1819 and it was her home until her accession in 1837.Although Kensington was not an industrial area the new forms of transport of industrial England soon touched the parish. First came the Paddington branch of the Grand Junction Canal. It opened in 1801 and enjoyed great popularity for 20 years as both a commercial and a leisure facility. This was followed by the Kensington Canal in 1826, which ran along the western boundary.
Two events were to radically alter the area, transforming the rural landscape of farms, nurseries, market gardens and orchards into a prosperous metropolitan district of bricks and mortar. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in Hyde Park, was opened by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851. The brainchild of her husband and consort Prince Albert, it was a team of engineers, administrators and entrepreneurs spearheaded by Sir Henry Cole that made it a reality. It was an outstanding success, attracting some 6 million visitors and making a profit of 186,000 by the time it closed on 15 October 1851. For corporate and family landowners it was now more profitable to lease land to speculative builders than for agricultural purposes and so a great wave of expansion began spreading from east to west. The late 18th and 19th centuries were a period of great expansion as the demand for building land increased. Hans Town, created by Henry Holland on the Cadogan Estate, and Knightsbridge were among the first to be developed. In Kensington development was patchier. Edwardes Square was built between 1811 and 1819, a forerunner of the elegant garden squares that now dominate the area. In. Estate development played an important role, which led to a greater architectural harmony as landowners frequently used the same architects and builders. They also co-operated in improving communications, in particular the laying out of roads. South Kensington, despite the speed of construction, was a high-class residential area composed mainly of large terraced houses of the premier type. In North Kensington large terraced houses, garden squares and fine villas were built, especially in Notting Hill. Smaller speculative projects were the norm in Chelsea. In southern Kensington alone 1600 houses were built in 10 years. The final stage came in the late 1880s with the arrival of the mansion blocks such as Kensington Court with large luxury flats and modern conveniences including lifts and electric light.
During this period the seeds were sown for the disastrous development of some of the worst slums in London. The land north of the Norland Estates was composed of a clay particularly good for making bricks and pottery and by the early nineteenth century a colony of brick-makers settled there. At the same time a colony of pig-keepers, forced to move out of Marylebone, settled in the Notting Dale area, building cottages with one room for the family and one for the pigs. The industry depended on the collection of food and refuse from the West End which was then boiled down to extract the fat, a practice which added to the already appalling sanitary conditions. By the middle of the century cholera and other diseases spread like wildfire and the average life expectancy was eleven years and seven months.
Conditions were not much better in the secret slums just off Kensington High Street including Market Court, Gardeners Buildings and Browns Buildings. The most notorious was Jennings Buildings, described in the local paper as Truly horrible to conceive ... in that narrow space are crammed nearly 1500 living souls. Mainly Irish labourers, they worked in the market gardens and later on building sites. These rookeries were cleared away by 1867 with many of the displaced inhabitants moving to Notting Dale.
