Before Notting Hill was deindustrialised.......

When folk are celebrating - or mourning - the death of ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who famously decimated 1st the steel industry and then the coal industry. I thought it timely to remind folk that the rich suburb of Notting Hill was also formerly industrial. Like most London suburbs, 1st they stripped brickearth to make bricks. then they filled the holes with waste. At about that time piggeries were moved into the area from Marble Arch. Then when the holes were filled with household waste they were built over. Unlike earlier suburbs, where bricks had been made in clamps. Notting Hill acquired some bottle klins. One of which survives, as a reminder of the area's plebeian past. Since then the fortunes of the area have risen to heights and plumbed the depths. Original large houses that accommodated servants were split into slums after WW2, and the area was known on the one hand for seediness and the sex industry, on the other for the first wave of commonwealth immigration. Since the 1980s however, the area has become extremely privileged.... ....and large houses favoured by bankers and financiers.

http://www.vaguerants.org.uk/wp-content/pageflip/upload/TL/timelinechap2.pdf

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See also a clip of the "slums of Portland Road", http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v2b42

now 3 million GBP+ houses!!!!!

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