walk/tour
Outside The Quiet Night Inn pub, next to Westbourne Park tube station
The north of Westminster is rich in stories of how the local community has influenced the built environment in significant and lasting ways. This tour explores how the cityscape we see today has been shaped by different ideological approaches, local campaigns and the push and pull of battles for housing and amenities. It considers the question of who decides what gets built and who is it for?
Westbourne Park
18, 31, 328, 36
The tour will finish close to Westbourne Park tube station.
The walk is mainly on pavements with a short stretch along the canal tow path which is shared with other pedestrians, runners and cyclists.
Many parts of the tour are in residential areas with limited places to sit down. The only toilets are at the end of the walk.
We will see reflected in the built environment, a wide range of approaches taken at different times to the public realm and to housing the local working class community. We will revisit the response of the local residents to the building of the Westway and consider the provision of local green space. The tour will include artisan cottage dwellings of the 19th century and the extent to which they pre-empted the garden city movement; Victorian and Edwardian streetscapes, the stories of those who lived there and those who collected the rent; and the streets-in-the-sky approach of the post war period. We will also look at how, following Margaret Thatcher’s election to power in 1979, the wider ideological battles of the 1980s between left and right were played out in 2 north Paddington housing estates, with a visible legacy today. Throughout, we will consider who made the decisions and what local people had to say about it.
This tour is led by Elizabeth, a local resident and participant in Open City’s Golden Key Academy – a course training up insightful and engaging guides dedicated to explaining London and bringing its many stories to life. Further information on the Golden Key Academy can be found here
https://open-city.org.uk/golden-key-academy
Drop in / Guided tour
concert/performance space, religious, community/cultural, walk/tour, gallery
Grade I Victorian Gothic church by G E Street, architect of the Royal Courts of Justice. The recent conservation project reveals the majestic colours of Daniel Bell's painted ceiling, plus Dow Jones Architects' contemporary heritage wing.
G. E. Street, 1867
