walk/tour
Outside The Quiet Night Inn pub, next to Westbourne Park tube station
Kensington can be seen to represent wealth and privilege, yet its northern edges tell a different story. Here poverty and poor conditions have stood in contrast to the affluence just a few miles south. This tour explores these working class areas through a housing lens. It considers commercial endeavour, the ideals of modernism, community activism and the ongoing search for housing solutions.
Westbourne Park
23, 28, 18, 31, 328, 36
The tour will finish close Sainsburys at the top of Ladbroke Grove.
The entire walk is on pavements and tarmac paths. There are a few steps near the beginning of the tour. The rest is level access.
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.
Walking tour
10:00–12:00
How to book
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This compact area alongside the Grand Union canal and the railway line into Paddington is a something of a laboratory for the design of working class housing. Sometimes state-led, sometimes philanthropic, sometimes commercial, the landscape is marked by efforts to create a better future for the less well off. Residents however have not simply been passive recipients of housing; they have shaped it themselves, pushing back against top-down plans and fighting to influence the place they call home.
Our tour explores this showcase of housing design and architectural ideas. We consider the interwar modernism of Maxwell Fry and Elizabeth Denby; the bold statement of Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower; and pioneering examples of community-led planning and regeneration. Pevsner described the area as one of the most illuminating areas in London for the study of urban renewal. This tour tells its story.
This tour is led by Elizabeth O'Hara, local resident, housing practitioner and graduate of 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.
Learn more about the Golden Key Academy here: open-city.org.uk/golden-key-academy
Drop in / Guided tour
religious, community/cultural, 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
