It wasn’t until the removal of the gallows at Tyburn that the area to the north of Hyde Park began to gain respectability. The arrival of the Great Western Railway at Paddington in 1838 further encouraged development, and the gentrification of Bayswater, the area immediately north of the park began with the construction of an estate called Tyburnia. These days Bayswater is mainly residential, and a focus for London’s widely dispersed Arab community, who are catered for by some excellent Lebanese restaurants and cafes along the busy Edgware Road. Much more tangible attractions lie to the west in Notting Hill, where London's most popular market, Portobello Road, takes place each Saturday, and where the August Bank Holiday weekend sees West Indian London out in force for the annual Notting Hill Carnival. The area is now one of the city’s trendiest and most affluent multicultural neighbourhoods. Back in the 1950s, when it was one of London’s poorest neighbourhoods — along with Brixton in south London— settled by Afro-Caribbean immigrants, invited over to work in the public services. For Hotels in Bayswater
Queensway
Bayswater’s main drag is Queensway, whose rash of cafés, clothes shops and French patisseries keeps buzzing until late in the evening. The renewed prosperity here is due, in large part, to the resurgent Arab community, but to add to the cosmopolitan atmosphere, Queensway also boasts the largest concentration ‘of Chinese restaurants outside Soho’s Chinatown. A short distance up Moscow Road, off Queensway, you’ll find St Sophia, London’s ornate Greek Orthodox Cathedral, boasting mosaics by Boris Anrep. One whole block of Queensway is taken up by Whiteley’s www.whiteleys.com which opened in 1885 as the city’s first real department store. The Universal Provider” with the boast that they could supply “anything from a pin to an elephant”. The present building opened in 1907, and in the same year the scene of the murder of the store’s founder, William Whiteley, by a man claiming to be his illegitimate son. Whiteley’s also had the dubious distinction of being Adolf Hitler’s favourite London building, he planned to make it his HQ once Britain was conquered and the invasion was over. The Store closed in 1981 and the building now houses an indoor shopping mall with several restaurants and a multi-screen cinema but it original wrought iron staircases, centaurs, fountain and glass domed atrium all survive and still look incredible today. For Hotels in Queensway
|
