What’s in a name? For the tourists pouring out of Notting Hill Gate station in search of the pastel-coloured terraces immortalised on screen in everything from Performance and Paddington to Notting Hill itself, the grim stretch of 1950s high-rises around the tube makes for a misleading arrival.
The real Notting Hill lies to the north-west, its summit marked by the junction of Ladbroke Grove and Kensington Park Gardens and its stuccoed crescents curving downwards to Portobello Road — though as few areas embody the process of gentrification in extremis as Notting Hill, “real” might appear to be a fairly loose term in this fairytale corner of fantasy London.
