Notting Hill is an area in West London, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The area was most well-known for Portobello Market (on Portobello Road, unsurprisingly), which runs every day except Sundays, and the Notting Hill carnival, held every year on the last weekend in August.
Notting Hill was rural until London’s expansion reached nearby Bayswater. The Ladbroke family, who owned most of the land in the area, started constructing streets and houses to create a fashionable 1820’s suburb. When the Hippodrome Racecourse which circled Notting Hill became waterlogged and closed in 1841, houses were built on this land following the original tracks of the racecourse. Today this is the most prosperous and elegant part of Notting Hill, but at the time it didn’t attract the richest people – Notting Hill was slightly too far from Central London for their liking!