Kensal Town
| Kensal Town | |
| Middlesex | |
|---|---|
 The Grand Union Canal in Kensal Town | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ243822 |
| Location: | 51°31’26"N, 0°12’36"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | London |
| Postcode: | W10 |
| Dialling code: | 020 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Kensington and Chelsea / Westminster |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Kensington and Bayswater Queen's Park and Maida Vale |
Kensal Town is an urban village deep within the metropolitan conurbation, between Kilburn to the north and Kensington to the south.
The village owes its growth to the Grand Junction Canal, now part of the Grand Union Canal which passes through it. Kensal Town was an exclave of the Parish of Chelsea from the Middle Ages through to 1900.
Origin and name
The origin of the area was as a well wooded, 144 acre, exclave of the Manor and Ancient Parish of Chelsea, since at least the time of Edward the Confessor, before to the Norman Conquest: oaks from the area were used to build Westminster Abbey.[1] It was then known as Chelsea-in-the-Wilderness or the Hamlet of Kensal Town.[2]
The name 'Kensal' is derived from Cynges holt, or 'Kingisholt', meaning 'King's Wood': the name was first recorded in 1253. The name 'Kensal Green' was first recorded in 1550 and applied to a long area of roadside common land, to the west of Kensal Town, in the ancient parish of Willesden.[3][4] Commons were frequently situated next to coppice woodlands, and often took their names from those woods.
19th and 20th centuries
The Grand Junction Canal opened in 1801 and passed through the south of what was by then a deforested but still rural area. The Great Western Railway, skirting the very south of the exclave, opened in 1838.[5]
The Kensal New Town estate was laid out shortly after the arrival of the railway, lying south of the canal and contained by the boundaries of the exclave. The name is first recorded on an Ordnance Survey map of 1876.[6][7] Later the name 'Kensal Town' was applied formally to the whole of the exclave,[8] while the name 'Kensal New Town' remained limited to the area south of the canal and other adjacent areas of Kensington that also lay between the railway and the canal.
The newly built Kensal New Town Estate quickly attracted a large Irish community, and the surrounding area still has a significant number of Roman Catholic churches. The Estate was disadvantaged by its position between the railway, the canal and the Kensal Green Cemetery. The area north of Harrow Road, where the Queens Park Estate was developed from 1875–81,[9] was more prosperous.
During the 19th century, the dog dealer Bill George's 'Canine Castle' establishment was on the Kensal Road.
When the local MP for Chelsea, Emslie Horniman, presented an acre of ground between East Row and Bosworth Road to the London County Council in 1911 for recreational purposes, he stated that there was then "no place within a mile or more where children could play, except in the streets, nor anywhere for the mothers and old people to rest".[10] The park was later expanded and is now known as Emslie Horniman Pleasance.
The area was much improved when the slums were cleared and replaced with new council housing during the mid-20th century.[11][12]
Parks
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Emslie Horniman's Pleasance is located in the neighbourhood.
Culture and community
The annual Notting Hill Carnival starts at Emslie Horniman's Pleasance.[13]
Queens Park Rangers football club was formed nearby at St Jude's institute, Ilbert Street, in 1886.[14]
References
- ↑ The London Encyclopaedia, Weinreb and Hibbert, p 633
- ↑ "Page 12: Chelsea-in-the-Wilderness, now Kensal". The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/vmhistory/general/vm_hs_p12.asp. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
- ↑ The Place names of Middlesex, English Place name Society, Vol 18, Gover Mawer and Stenton, 1942
- ↑ Willesden Local History https://willesden-local-history.co.uk/kensal-green-2/
- ↑ 'Kensal Green', in Survey of London: Volume 37, Northern Kensington, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1973), pp. 333–339. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol37/pp333-339 [accessed 6 January 2023]
- ↑ See OS map for position within exclave https://maps.nls.uk/view/102345961
- ↑ Mills, A., Oxford Dictionary of London Place Names, (2001)
- ↑ Parliamentary Papers, Volume 51, p210
- ↑ The London Encyclopaedia, Weinreb and Hibbert, p 633
- ↑ 'Kensal Green', in Survey of London: Volume 37, Northern Kensington, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1973), pp. 333–339. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol37/pp333-339 [accessed 6 January 2023].
- ↑ Willey, Russ. Chambers London Gazetter, p 268.
- ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 December 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20091222002809/http://www.historytalk.org/Notting%20Hill%20History%20Timeline/timelinechap3.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
- ↑ Evening Standard, 27 Aug 2022
- ↑ Independent Rs website https://www.indyrs.co.uk/2011/07/history-in-the-making-the-unveiling-of-the-plaque-at-st-judes-hall/