Notting Hill is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in central London. It is a cosmopolitan district known as the location for the annual Notting Hill Carnival, and for being home to the Portobello Road Market. Very run-down until the 1980s, Notting Hill now has a contemporary reputation as an affluent and fashionable area; known for attractive terraces of large Victorian townhouses, and high-end shopping and restaurants (particularly around Westbourne Grove and Clarendon Cross). A Daily Telegraph article in 2004 used the phrase the ‘Notting Hill Set’ to refer to a group of emerging Conservative politicians, such as David Cameron and George Osborne, now respectively Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, who were once based in Notting Hill. For much of the 20th century the large houses were subdivided into multi-occupancy rentals. Caribbean immigrants were drawn to the area in the 1950s, partly because of the cheap rents, but were exploited by slum landlords like Peter Rachman, and also became the target of white racist Teddy Boys in the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Since it was first developed in the 1820s, Notting Hill has had an association with artists and “alternative” culture. There are also areas of deprivation to the north, sometimes referred to as North Kensington, or Ladbroke Grove, from the name of the street.
