Notting Hill history walk on Saturday November 10th
London Blue Badge Guide and LBC contributor Diane Burstein will lead a walking tour of Notting Hill, which will encompass Golborne. Golborne Life has a preview of material created for the walk by local historian Tom Vague.The tour is part of a programme of events Across the street around the world (PDF, 1.62 MB), which celebrates Black and minority ethnic heritage and culture in the Royal Borough. It will explore how African and Caribbean, Moroccan, Serbian, Jewish, Indian, Spanish, Portuguese and other groups have contributed to the rich mix of the area and will finish in Golborne Road with its lively variety of shops and cafes. A podcast and map of the tour will be available afterwards on the In Transit website.
Meet at Notting Hill Gate tube station outside WH Smith at 2.30pm. Tour lasts two hours. The tour is free, but booking is essential. Email or call 020 7361 3844 to reserve a place.
Here are some extracts from the background research for the walk by local historian, Tom Vague.
From the early 70s, in the heart of what is now the ‘Little Tangiers’ Moroccan casbah, 93 Golborne Road hosted the legendary Rock On record stall of Ted Carroll, which boasted a ‘huge and rocking selection’ of rare and imported rock’n’roll, rhythm’n’blues, rockabilly and US punk rock.
In the 1977 Portobello Guide Golborne was described as being in a 1950s time warp: ‘The Rock On shop is an arcade stall which first brought rare and re-issued 50s rock’n’roll records to London. The shoo-bop-a-woo-bop sounds emanating from the shop’s loudspeakers identify its location and lend musical backing to the other items being sold on the street.’
The Golborne Moroccan community dates back to the late 60s when there was a recruitment drive in Morocco. The first Moroccans who came to London under the work permit system were employed in the service industries in West End hotels and restaurants. Many of Golborne’s Moroccan’s hail from the town of Larache, on the country’s Morroccan coast, some 95 miles south of Tangiers.
Souad Talsi-Naji of Al Hasaniya, the Moroccan Women’s Centre, cites the Catholic nun, Sister Cecilia of the Little Sisters of the Assumption convent on Lancaster Road, as her local heroine for her work in the Moroccan community. ‘She tirelessly worked to provide whatever was required to those who were most in need. She was the interpreter, the social worker, the fund raiser and the mouth-piece for so many families.’
The recent addition of the Moroccan quarter to the market fits naturally into the Notting Hill scene, which already had a Moroccan influence from the hippies. Moroccan souk chic, as featured in the film Hideous Kinky starring Kate Winslet and based on of Esther Freud’s book, dates back to the beat hippy Morocco trail taken by Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.
The Venture Centre on Wornington Road was founded as the Notting Hill Adventure Playground, the first adventure playground in the country, after the 1958 race riots. This was where in the early 60s, the Carnival founder community worker Rhaune Laslett first joined forces with the steel band leader Selwyn Baptiste to teach children how to play pans.
The northern end of Golborne Road is the ‘Little Porto’ quarter of Portobello market between the 2 Portuguese cafes; the long-standing bohemian hangout Lisboa Patisserie at 57, and the Café O’Porto across the road at 62a on the corner of Wornington Road. Over the bridge along Elkstone Road there’s the Sporting Clube de Londres Portuguese restaurant.
In recent years the multicultural mix of North Kensington has been added to by refugees from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan.
More local history from Tom Vague.
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