Kensington Walk

Albert Memorial

I went a bit crazy at the bookshop, when I bought my new, awesome bird book, I also bought a book on walks in London.  I feel that I should be exploring the little back streets of London more.  I have my run home, which is pretty good for aligning things in your head, but outside of that narrow corridor I feel like I can't really string different places together yet.  I'm hoping this book can fix that.  It's a pretty good book, it's not just walk directions, but more a self-guided tour. 

Each walk is described by someone different, this one was written by a biographer, and he took the approach that Kensington used to be very much an aristocratic suburb, but in the 19th century, the bourgeoisie started to invade.  You start the walk near Holland Park, walking though the streets, past massive villas to the actual Holland Park.  Here there used to be a very grand house, one of the original aristocratic residents, Lady Holland in fact, who in 1876 thought the new villas being built around her were dreadful.  Though she did seem to have extensive gardens to escape from the encroaching shopkeepers, the owner of Debenhams built a gaudy house in an adjacent street.

Leighton House from the back, the studio is that massive window, and you can just see the dome of the Arab Hall on the right

Trees in Holland Park

A highlight for me was visiting Leighton House, which is a National Trust house and was built by the artist Lord Frederic Leighton.  This was the guy who made the athlete fighting with a snake statue which I really liked in the Tate Britain.  It's funny, at the time I didn't know that he was the same person, but then walking around and looking at his other sculptures and art work on display I was thinking, wow it looks very similar to the Tate Britain piece.  Maybe an understanding of art is greatly dependent on just how much art you've seen. 

This guy did seem to be a little weird, he had this massive house, two storeys, with this incredible studio, taking up almost the entire top floor, but then he only had one bedroom, which was very austere and had only a single bed in it.  Which was in complete contrast to the rest of the place.  The most famous room is the Arab Hall, which is covered in colourful tiles he brought back from the Middle East, and the room stretches up the full two storeys, with a domed roof, and a fountain.  Yes, a fountain inside the house!   Most of the rooms were covered in incredible tiles or silk, that's right, instead of wallpaper, or just paint, it was actual silk fabric covering the walls, amazing!  And there was an awful lot of his art around, which was cool, because I really liked his style.  What made it more stunning though was that from the outside, it was really quite a drab looking place.  It was only once you walked into the entrance hall and looked around that you were completely blown away.

Leighton obviously has a thing for athletes fighting snakes - it's a recurring theme

St Mary Abbots

After Lord Leighton's House we continued on to Holland Park, this obviously used to be the grounds of that very aristocratic Lady Holland, though there was a prior Lady Holland who perhaps wasn't so lady-like.  An earlier version was a divorcee and and such wasn't invited to the "proper" houses of the town.  Instead she invited society out to her.  This grand old house is now just a ruin, destroyed by bombs in 1941.  Some of it is still standing and a wing is now a YHA, the grounds have been turned into a park.  This house must have really been something back in the day, the grounds are massive, and it's funny to think that in the middle of London someone could have been hording all that land.  Though perhaps in a way it's good that they horded during the beginning of the industrialisation, since it means that now we still have the park, as opposed to just another block of town houses.

The unassuming side of Kensington Palace

On from Holland Park it was through the back streets of London, heading towards Kensington Park, this part had a great feel to it, these tiny little alley-ways, multiple hat shops (if you ever need a 300 pound fascinator I know just the place), and then popping out by St Mary Abbots, a church built in 1872.  It's spire is 76 metres high, and as such is the 10th tallest in the United Kingdom.  This was a nice quiet spot away from the hustle around the hat shops, and had quite a nice stained glass window.

At this point we are getting close to the final destination of the park, but there is still Kensington Palace Gardens to see.  It's a street, not a garden, but it's where a lot of the richer embassies are located, it seems that the poorer ones are all in Mayfair.  I don't have any photos of them though as the Israeli embassy was also here, and along with all the guards with guns and the no photo signs I thought I wouldn't risk it.

The Palace and Queen Vic

Finally though we were in the park, this was my first glimpse of Kensington Palace, the future home of Wills and Kate, and the current home of a bunch of minor royals.  It's really not a very grand looking building, I don't think it really deserves the title palace, more of a hall.  We didn't visit this time, but I'm sure we'll find our way back at some point.

Kensington Gardens are also home to the Albert Memorial, now this thing is just ridiculous.  It was built in 1872 by Queen Victoria in honour of Prince Albert, who died when he was only 42 years.  The memorial is 54 m high and took more than ten years to complete.  I'm not sure exactly what Prince Albert did, apart from marrying Queen Victoria, to deserve such a lavish monument.
And if that isn't enough, just across the road is the Royal Albert Hall.  This was meant to be called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but Queen Victoria changed the name after Prince Albert's death.

The massive memorial

But wait, there's more - Royal Albert Hall