NOTTING Hill wasn’t always a London enclave for bankers, Trustafarians and the merely stinking rich. It was once a relatively working-class area.
In 1950, Notting Hill bcame synonymous with a series of notorius murders.
At Pentonville Prison at 9 am on 15th July 1953, John Halliday Christie was hanged for one of the seven women he admitted killing, that of his wife, Ethel.
It is said that while waiting to drop with his arms pinioned, Christie complained that his nose was itching. The hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, told him not to worry, “it won’t bother you for long,” he said. Few tears were ever shed for John Christie but 1953 hadn’t been a good year for supporters of the death penalty…
A policeman in the garden of 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, London, where police found human bones buried a few inches under the soil.
They had been burned in an attempt to destroy them. The bodies of four strangled women have already been discovered at the address. Police are searching nationwide for suspect John Reginald Christie.
Ref #: PA.1161421
Date: 28/03/1953
You can read the story of John Reginald Christie and his victims here.
Mass-murderer, John Reginald Halliday Christie. An English serial killer active in the 1940s and ’50s, he murdered at least eight females, including his wife Ethel, by strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London.
Ref #: PA.11452857
Date: 01/01/1950
A crowd gathers at the entrance to 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, London, where a fourth body has been discovered today. Three other bodies were yesterday found in a niche, which had been concealed by wallpaper.
17/11/2004 Timothy Evans, who was wrongly hanged for one of the notorious Rillington Place murders, can at last “rest in peace” after two High Court judges on Wednesday November 17, 2004, made an unprecedented declaration of his innocence. In an extraordinary twist in one of the most infamous of all miscarriage of justice cases, his family lost their legal battle to get the case referred back to the Court of Appeal. In 1953 – three years after he was hanged – his downstairs neighbour John Christie, who had been a central prosecution witness at his trial, confessed to killing eight female victims at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, west London. The victims included Beryl and her 14-month-old baby, whose bodies were found buried in a washroom. Christie, too, was hanged.
Date: 25/03/1953
Ref #: PA.20995147
Life went on…
Party in Rillington Place, 6th June 1953 In front of decorated, boarded up 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, children settle down to watch an entertainment following their Coronation street party. It was in this house that the bodies of several murdered women were discovered, and a former resident of the house, John Reginald Halliday Christie, is now awaiting trial on charges of murdering two women.
Ref #: PA.4875726
Date: 06/06/1953
People seeking sanctuary made their home in Noitting Hill.
The Telegraph:
In 1948 Princess Margarita moved to London, where she worked as a nurse at St Thomas’. She was known as Nurse von Baden. She then worked in various hospitals and also undertook private district nursing.
At that time she was one of three German cousins in London who were much seen about together, the other two being Princess Christina of Hesse (who married Prince Andrej of Yugoslavia) and Princess Beatrix of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, later secretary and companion to Princess Margaret of Hesse at Wolfsgarten, near Darmstadt.It was in London that Princess Margarita met her future husband, Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia, then in exile – as were all the Yugoslav Royal family. He was the second son of King Alexander I (who had been assassinated in Marseille in 1934), and Queen Marie, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Tomislav was a brother of the exiled King Peter II .
Royalty – Princess Margarita of Baden marries Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia – London
The betrothed couple, Princess Margarita of Baden and Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia, seated between Reverend M. Nikolitch, left, and Prince Wolfgang of Hesse at the official engagement ceremony at the Serbian Orthodox Church at Notting Hill, London. Princess Margarita, niece of the Duke of Edinburgh and daughter of the markgraf and Markgrafin of Baden, is a nurse at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. Prince Tomislav, who farms in Sussex, is the son of Queen Marie of Yugoslavia and the late King Alexander.
Ref #: PA.15611049
Date: 27/01/1957
Not only royal refugees sought a new life in Notting Hill. The British Postal Museum & Archive takes a look:
The Notting Hill Carnival takes place this Sunday and Monday in West London. Carnival was originally staged in 1959 as a response to the state of race relations in Britain at that time. A decade earlier immigrants from the Caribbean began to arrive in large numbers to fill post-war labour shortages, but this caused resentment amongst some white Britons. Throughout the 1950s white racists and West Indian immigrants clashed, with riots taking place in Notting Hill for four days and nights during the Bank Holiday weekend in 1958.
Police walk along the edge of the pavement to ensure that the crowd keep moving at Notting Hill, in London, where more racial disturbances flared up.
Ref #: PA.1330826
Date: 01/09/1958
British Crime – Riots – Notting Hill Race Riots – London – 1958
Police officers with dogs at a street in London’s Notting Hill area, during renewed race rioting between whites and blacks which broke out the previous night.
Ref #: PA.1330824
Date: 01/09/1958
The BBC:
August 1958 saw some of the worst rioting in British history in what is now one of London’s most trendy and sought-after neighbourhoods. But 50 years ago the working-class area in west London, known as ‘Notting Dale’, was little more than a slum. Newly arrived migrants from the Caribbean had settled in the Colville area alongside the white working-class, and it was an uncomfortable existence. ‘Colour bars’ saw black people turned away from pubs and consequently ‘shebeens’ or illegal bars sprung up providing social places for black people.
Landlords refused to rent to black families, advertising for rooms to rent specifying ‘no coloureds’ while other crammed several people into one room and charged over the odds.
Velma Davis remembers arriving in the area as a young woman from Trinidad in 1957.
“Accommodation was the big problem. In those days they had big signs. “Signs were up at the windows – no blacks, no Irish, no dogs, no children. So that was difficult.” She said Teddy boys hung out on street corners, and at night they took to ‘hunting’ black men who they perceived to be ‘taking their women’… I didn’t know they were talking to me because where I came from I didn’t know about black and white.”
There were isolated beatings in the months preceding the August Bank Holiday but it was riots in Nottingham that prompted an eruption of violence in the already tense Notting Hill.
Local historian Tom Vague said it began with an “innocuous domestic dispute” between a Jamaican guy, Ray Morrison, and his Swedish wife Majbritt outside Latimer Road Tube station. “It was a really poor area at that time. A group of white men were heckling Ray and then she shouted back at them. Some West Indian men turned up. It was just a scuffle between the black and white men but that was the incident which set off the riot weekend.”
It was the catalyst for widespread attacks on black homes by white mobs, wielding sticks, bottles and iron bars.
The black community responded with the height of the fighting raging outside Totobags Café in Blenheim Crescent – a black hang-out now famous for the travel bookshop which featured in the film Notting Hill.
Mr Vague said: “At the climax of the riots the mob surged out of Notting Dale to the east across Ladbroke Grove to attack the Colville area”.
Hundreds of people were arrested, the majority of which were white.
While racism was overt, slum housing and poor living conditions have previously been blamed for the tensions between socially excluded groups.
The riots led to a strong desire to heal the social wounds inflicted by the fighting which eventually gave rise to the Notting Hill Carnival.
But the fighting in 1958 also paved the way for the first Race Relations Act of 1965 which outlawed racial discrimination.
A man shows how he was injured during the race riots in Notting Hill Gate.
Ref #: PA.5969188
Date: 02/09/1958
Not everyone was against the new arrivals.
A West Indian man and his white girlfriend walk through the streets of Notting Hill Gate despite the threat from right-wing thugs following the race riots in the area.
Ref #: PA.5969196
Date: 02/09/1958
In response, Claudia Jones, a Trindad-born, New York-raised black activist and political campaigner, decided to organise a festival through which white and black Britons could understand each other’s cultures. Originally called Mardi Gras and staged in St Pancras Town Hall, the event moved to the streets of Notting Hill in 1964.
Caribbean Carnival – St Pancras Town Hall
22 year old Faye Sparkes was elected as Caribbean Carnival Queen
archive-339037
Ref #: PA.4499177
Date: 30/01/1959
Guests dancing to the music of the Trinidad All Star Steel Band at the Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Hall, London.
Ref #: PA.7694473
Date: 30/01/1959
Carnivals & Festivals – The Caribbean Carnival – London – 1959
Guests dancing to the music of the Trinidad All Star Steel Band at the Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Hall, London.
Ref #: PA.7694476
Date: 30/01/1959
Guests dancing to the music of the Trinidad All Star Steel Band at the Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Hall, London.
Ref #: PA.7694481
Date: 30/01/1959
Guests dancing to the music of the Trinidad All Star Steel Band at the Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Hall, London.
Ref #: PA.7694481
Date: 30/01/1959
The Carnival Queen is chosen at the Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Hall, London.
Ref #: PA.7694482
Date: 30/01/1959
Notting Hill had altered.
Royalty – Duke of Edinburgh – Harrow Club, Bard Road, Notting Hill, London
The Duke of Edinburgh waves to the crowd waiting for him as he leaves the Harrow Club in Bard Road, Notting Hill, London. The club, entirely supported by the Harrow School, was one of those visited by the Duke, who is patron of the London Federation of Boy’s Clubs.
Archive-PA77699-5
Ref #: PA.12607106
Date: 25/05/1959
Things were going up.
British Politics – The Conservative Party – Henry Brooke – London – 1959
From the 10th floor of a new block of flats in Treverton St, Notting Hill, Housing Minister Henry Brooke gets a magnificent view over London. He was inspecting progress in rehousing and slum clearance in Finsbury, Bethnal Green and Kensington.
Ref #: PA.1416215
Date: 10/06/1959
But some things never change.
Politics – British National Socialist Movement – Notting Hill, London
Nazi salutes from Colin Jordan, leader of the British National Socialist Movement (centre, white coat), and some of his followers as he leaves his Notting Hill headquarters in London after taking part with his wife, Francoise Dior (not pictured), in an old Nordic ‘Blood-letting’ ceremony following their wedding at Coventry register office.
Ref #: PA.16213979
Date: 08/10/1963
Film – “10 Rillington Place” – Notting Hill, London
Actor Richard Attenborough, left, visiting the former No. 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, the home of mass-murderer, John Reginald Halliday Christie, who was hanged in 1953. Attenborough, in the guise of the murderer, is portraying Christie in the film “10 Rillington Place”. With him is actress Judy Geeson, who portrays Beryl Evans, one of the eight known women murdered by Christie.
Ref #: PA.11452842
Date: 17/05/1970
Violence returned on 29/30 August 1976 at the 11th Calypso Carnival.
The Press Association reported:
The scene in London’s Notting Hill after West London’s calypso carnival became a carnival of terror. Police fought running battles with young people as rioters went on an orgy of violence and destruction, smashing shop windows and attacking fleeing whites.
Watched by a policeman some of the carnival go-go dancers find the beat as they follow a steel band float in the eleventh Notting Hill Carnival, which today entered its second and final day at the West London district.
Ref #: PA.7694381
Date: 30/08/1976
Waiting to form up for the procession, some of the majorettes appearing in the eleventh Notting Hill Carnival, which entered its second and final day.
Ref #: PA.7694251
Date: 30/08/1976
The BBC:
Tempers were boiling among young black men over police use of the “sus” law, under which anybody could be stopped, searched and held, even if only suspected of planning a crime. Anticipating some trouble, 3,000 police officers turned up – ten times the amount of previous, relatively peaceful, events.
This raised the tension, but what sparked the riot is still open to question. White fascist gangs were said to be at large. Police said it began after attempts to arrest a pickpocket.
The great The Clash were there. Patick Sawer:
Caught up with his band mate Paul Simenon in the fury of the Notting Hill Riots of ’76 , and failing miserably to set a car alight, Joe Strummer did the one thing he could do – and do well.
He wrote a song about it. The result was The Clash’s debut single, White Riot, released on March 18, 1977
The cover to the Clash album Black Market Clash featured the 1976 Notting Hill riot on the sleeve cover. The man in the top hat is Don Letts. The aggro inspired The Clash song White Riot.
“As first generation British born blacks, we copped it the worst. But we came up with a good soundtrack. Tell you what!” says Letts, brightening: “They’d better come up with a good soundtrack, these eastern Europeans – that’ll help ‘em!”
NOTTING HILL 1976: Police with drawn truncheons and using dustbin lids as shields in Notting Hill – a West Indian area of London – after the calypso carnival became a carnival of terror. Police fought running battles with people as rioters smashed shop windows and attacked fleeing Whites.
Ref #: PA.1416370
A policeman with a dustbin lid for a shield stands by a shattered shop window in Notting Hill – a predominantly West Indian area – tonight after a riot broke out during the mostly broken windows shop front peaceful Calypso Carnival.
Police fought running battles with black youths as rioters went on an orgy of destruction.
Ref #: PA.7694390
Date: 30/08/1976
NOTTING HILL 1976: Police stand guard as a workman boards up the windows of the Co-op supermarket and off licence in Westbourne Park Road following last night’s scenes of violence in Notting Hill, West London, when a West Indian carnival exploded into a riot.
Ref #: PA.1416217
Date: 31/08/1976
Rubbish is strewn across Acklam Road, West London, following last night’s scenes of violence when the Notting Hill West Indian carnival erupted in rioting.
Ref #: PA.1416218
Date: 31/08/1976
On display at Notting Hill police station tonight is some of the personal property – mainly purses, mostly empty, a few cheque books and credit cards – which have been found after yesterday’s violence at the Notting Hill Carnival.
Ref #: PA.7694462
Date: 31/08/1976
Reading an evening paper in bed at St Charles’ Hospital, Ladbroke Grove, west London today, is Inspector Ian Quinn, part of a police reinforcement from Gerald Road police station, Pimlico, called in to deal with yesterdays race riots at Notting Hill. The inspector received a head wound and was among 325 policemen injured when the Notting Hill Carnival turned violent.
Ref #: PA.7694405
Date: 30/08/1976
One of the 325 policemen injured when yesterday’s West Indian Carnival in Notting Hill turned to bloodshed, rioting and looting. Detective Constable Frank Rivers, of Notting Hill police station, who was stabbed in the stomach. The violence was triggered by police attempts to arrest pick-pockets.
Ref #: PA.7694418
Date: 30/08/1976
At a flat in Marylebone Road, London, tonight is Gillie Holme, who was released on bail today pending an appeal against a one month sentence for looting during yesterday’s Notting Hill riot.
Ref #: PA.7694425
Date: 30/08/1976
The violence gets the headlines. But the Notting Hill Carnival is a hit.
Hume/Notting Hill Carnival
Cardinal Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, with eight year old Simone Parrish (L) at the Notting Hill Carnival. Cardinal Hume was attending an open air service at a church in the heart of the carnival area.
Ref #: PA.1199244
Date: 26/08/1979
Dancing at the Notting Hill Carnival
Her body swaying to the music of a reggae band, this sultry lady enjoys the Notting Hill Carnival, oblivious to the crowd around her.
Ref #: PA.1326915
Date: 25/08/1980
A Notting Hill Carnival witch doctor gets magical aid in the form of a policeman’s helmet during peaceful festivities.
Ref #: PA.7740092
Date: 29/08/1982
Dancing in the streets during the Notting Hill Carnival.
Ref #: PA.1326916
Date: 30/08/1981
Resplendent in her metal outfit this maiden from an ‘armoured regiment’ marches in the Notting Hill Carnival in London, day two of the August Bank holiday festival.
Ref #: PA.7740090
Date: 30/08/1982
Police constable John Corbett joins an impromptu knees-up with Notting Hill Carnival revellers. PC Corbett, from Harrow Road police station, found his can-can partners on the second day of the August Bank holiday festival.
Ref #: PA.7740097
Date: 30/08/1982
The haves and the have nots live side by side.
Labour MP for Chesterfield, Tony Benn addresses a meeting and rally at Notting Hill, London when he called for total support from the Labour movement for the miners in their fight.
Ref #: PA.2879259
Date: 25/10/1984
And then the smart set moved in. Property prices began to rise.
Prince William headed to kindgarten in Notting Hill.
Diana, The Princess of Wales looks on as Mrs. Jane Mynors greets Prince William at the Victorian terrace house on his first day at Jane Mynors nursery school in London
Ref #: PA.1233465
Date: 24/09/1985
Jane Mynors welcomes Prince William on his first day of school at her private kindergarten as his parents, Princess Diana, left, and Prince Charles watch in Notting Hill, London, England, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1985. The three-year-old Prince is the first heir to the British throne to receive his pre-school education at a private kindergarten. (AP Photo/Redman)
Ref #: PA.8684153
Date: 24/09/1985
Royalty – Prince William Nursery School – Notting Hill Gate, London
The Prince and Princess of Wales with Prince William on arrival at the kindergarten in Notting Hill Gate, London, for his first day at school.
Ref #: PA.8429544
Date: 23/09/1985
The Princess of Wales and Prince William on arrival at the kindergarten in Notting Hill Gate, London, for his first day at school.
Ref #: PA.8429543
Date: 23/09/1985
Royalty – Prince William Nursery School – Notting Hill Gate, London
The Classroom in the Victorian terrace house where Prince William attended his first day at Jane Mynors’ nursery school, in London.
Ref #: PA.1233463
Date: 24/09/1985
Whatever happened to Christobel?
Royalty – Prince William Nursery School – Notting Hill Gate, London
The Classroom in the Victorian terrace house where Prince William attended his first day at Jane Mynors’ nursery school, in London.
Ref #: PA.1233463
Date: 24/09/1985
Royalty – Prince William Nursery School – Notting Hill Gate, London
A Peg with the name Prince William in the cloakroom of Jane Mynors nursery school in London in which the Prince attended his first day
Ref #: PA.1233462
Date: 24/09/1985
The garden at the Victorian terrace house where Prince William attended Jane Mynors’ nursery school in London
Ref #: PA.1233461
Date: 24/09/1985
More school for Wills.
After kindergatren, the future King changed school, staying in Notting Hill.
Four year old Prince William waves at onlookers before his first day at Wetherby School in Notting Hill Gate, London. He is watched by his mother the Princess of Wales and headmistress Frederika Blair Turner.
Ref #: PA.8429494
Date: 15/01/1987
Prince William waves at onlookers after his first day at his new school, “Wetherby School” in Notting Hill Gate, London.
Ref #: PA.1233794
Date: 15/01/1987
There was more trouble at the Carnival.
Notting Hill Carnival – Trouble – London – 1987
Two female police constables with riot protection head gear take a break following disturbances at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival in London.
Ref #: PA.16395650
Date: 01/09/1987
Notting Hill Carnival – Trouble – London – 1987
Two female police constables with riot protection head gear take a break following disturbances at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival in London.
Ref #: PA.16395650
Date: 01/09/1987
Prince Harry went to school in Notting Hill.
The Prince and Princess of Wales and big brother Prince William lead three-year-old Prince Harry to Chepstow Villas in London’s Notting Hill, for his first day at kindergarten.
Ref #: PA.1183640
Date: 16/09/1987
Prince Harry, three-year-old son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, zooms in on the army of press photographers waiting outside his new kindergarten in London’s Notting Hill, using a homemade pair of binoculars.
Ref #: PA.8429506
Date: 16/09/1987
Pop star Bob Geldof and his wife TV presenter Paula Yates. * 17/9/2000: 41 year old Yates has died, her solicitor Anthony Burton confirmed. Scotland Yard said officers were called to an address in St Luke’s Mews, Notting Hill, west London, by an ambulance crew. The spokesman said a body was found in a bedroom and the cause of death will not be known until the post mortem.
Ref #: PA.1291349
Date: 12/04/1988
Four year old Prince Harry, youngest son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, holds hands with a fellow shepherd boy as they arrive at their kindergarten to act in a nativity play. Prince Harry donned embroidered robes for his part as a shepherd boy at the Jane Mynors school in Notting Hill.
Ref #: PA.1618761
Date: 08/12/1988
The Princess of wales follows her sons Prince Harry (right), five years old, and Prince William, seven, on Harry’s first day at the Wetherby School in Notting Hill, West London.
Ref #: PA.1137755
Date: 15/09/1989
Police struggle with youths during violence which flared at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival in London.
Ref #: PA.16395640
Date: 29/08/1989
Ref #: PA.1090906
Date: 30/08/1993
NORMAN LAMONT RETURNING TO HIS HOME IN NOTTING HILL WITH THE NEWSPAPERS IN WHICH HE COMMENTS ON THE CURRENT POLITICAL SITUATION. IT IS A YEAR TO THE DAY SINCE ‘BLACK WEDNESDAY’, THE DAY NORMAN LAMONT, THEN CHANCELLOR, ANNOUNCED BRITAIN WOULD LEAVE THE ERM. (European Exchange Rate Mechanism).
Ref #: PA.821910
Date: 16/09/1993
Kate Moss models on a balcony at the Ladbroke Hall, Notting Hill Gate, venue for the Matthew Williamson catwalk show of his vibrant Spring/Summer collection, being aired for London Fashion Week today (Friday). See PA story FASHION Week. Photo by Stefan Rousseau/PA
Ref #: PA.1060914
Date: 26/09/1997
Then Richard Curtis wrote a film called Notting Hill. The mega-rich soon arrived. What was cool became history.
The front of the House featured in the hit film ‘ Notting Hill ‘, situated on Westbourne Park Road, in West London.
Ref #: PA.1214526
Date: 03/08/1999
Three members of The Clash (from left), Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon at the premiere of the BBC2 documentary “Westway To The World” in Notting Hill in London. The film is about the career of the band, who split in 1986.
Ref #: PA.1228647
Date: 21/09/1999
The Prince of Wales, after a shopping expedition to an organic supermarket, in central London, where he chose a brand of organic olives, surprising staff and customers with an unannounced visit. * Prince Charles, a longtime proponent of natural foods, spent almost an hour walking around Britain’s biggest organic food shop, Planet Organic, in Notting Hill.
Ref #: PA.1243683 Date: 11/11/1999
Greg Watson who was fatally stabbed at Notting Hill Carnival, with his new born daughter Amber, and his mother Janet Watson. Mrs Watson appealed for witnesses into her son’s death at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard in London.
Ref #: PA.1337927
Date: 04/09/2000
Portobello Gold pub in fashionable Portobello Road, London, where President Clinton popped in accompanied by wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea, but left without paying for his lunchtime snack. *… After serving the President with some Cajun shrimp, a ciabatta sandwich, a glass of organic lager and a cola, landlord Mike Bell asked “Who picks up the tab for this? The President spent 20 minutes in the pub where Mr Bell was already having a difficult day. The electricity had been off since earlier in the morning and so he was unable to offer the most powerful man in the world a hot meal.
Ref #: PA.1375032
Date: 14/12/2000
Grammy Awards nominee, veteran American rock and roll singer Carlos Santana, performing on stage at Tabernacle, in London’s Notting Hill, where he played a special performance for invited guests.
Ref #: PA.1264186
Date: 26/01/2000
Spectators take advantage of a balcony to enjoy the Notting Hill Carnival in London.
Ref #: PA.1335922
Date: 28/08/2000
A menu of showing some of the food available at the Notting Hill Carnival 2000 in London.
Ref #: PA.1335925
Date: 28/08/2000
Women with a shopping trolley filled with cold beer at the Notting Hill Carnival 2000 in London.
Ref #: PA.1335980
Date: 28/08/2000
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