The Kensington District

When people speak of Kensington they generally mean a very small area lying north and south of the High Street; to this some might add South Kensington, the district bordering on the Cromwell and Brompton Roads, and possibly a few would remember to mention West Kensington as a far-away place, where there is an entrance to the Earl's Court Exhibition. But Kensington as a borough is both more and less than the above. It does not include all West Kensington, nor even the whole of Kensington Gardens, but it stretches up to Kensal Green on the north, taking in the cemetery, which is its extreme northerly limit.

If we draw a somewhat wavering line from the west side of the cemetery, leaving outside the Roman Catholic cemetery, and continue from here to Uxbridge Road Station, thence to Addison Road Station, and thence again through West Brompton to Chelsea Station, we shall have traced roughly the western boundary of the borough. It covers an immense area, and it begins and ends in a cemetery, for at the south-western corner is the West London, locally known as the Brompton, Cemetery. In shape the borough is strikingly like a man's leg and foot in a top-boot. The western line already traced is the back of the leg, the Brompton Cemetery is the heel, the sole extends from here up Fulham Road and Walton Street, and ends at Hooper's Court, west of Sloane Street. This, it is true, makes a very much more pointed toe than is usual in a man's boot, for the line turns back immediately down the Brompton Road. It cuts across the back of Brompton Square and the Oratory, runs along Imperial Institute Road, and up Queen's Gate to Kensington Gore. Thence it goes westward to the Broad Walk, and follows it northward to the Bayswater Road. Thus we leave outside Kensington those essentially Kensington buildings the Imperial Institute and Albert Hall, and nearly all of Kensington Gardens. But we shall not omit an account of these places in our perambulation, which is guided by sense-limits rather than by arbitrary lines.