Old Map of Notting Hill and Kensington in 1862 by Edward Stanford - Portobello Road, Shepherds Bush, Bayswater

Edward Stanford opened his map and chart business near Charing Cross in 1853 and within a decade had built it into the leading map-selling and publishing house in London, a reputation the firm would hold for well over a century afterward. As the city expanded rapidly in the 1850s and 1860s, Stanford issued a series of large-scale district maps covering London sheet by sheet, and this 1862 plan is one of that series, focused on the fashionable and fast-changing western districts around Notting Hill and Kensington. It is a distinct sheet from the Fulham, Brompton, Battersea, and Hammersmith map Stanford published in the same series, covering ground further north and west of that neighbouring sheet.

The map catches Notting Hill only two decades after the old Hippodrome racecourse on the hill had failed and been sold off for housing development, with the stucco terraces around Ladbroke Grove still comparatively new and Portobello Road shown as a lane running up from the Portobello Farm the street is named for, well before its market became famous. Kensington appears with Kensington Palace and gardens, and the South Kensington museum quarter then rising on land bought with profits from the Great Exhibition of 1851. Bayswater's grand stuccoed squares near Paddington and the newly built streets around Shepherds Bush toward the western edge of the sheet complete a snapshot of some of London's most rapidly gentrifying Victorian suburbs.

Anyone with a personal or family connection to these neighbourhoods, from long-time Notting Hill residents to those researching Victorian Kensington's museum and exhibition history, will find plenty of recognisable detail here, right down to individual streets and garden squares. It also appeals to collectors assembling a full run of Stanford's London district sheets, since each covers different ground across the growing Victorian city. The map has been reproduced at high resolution to keep its street-level detail crisp, and it's available in several sizes depending on how much wall space you have to work with.