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4 unusual facts about Westbourne Grove


Omnibus Life in London

A view of Westbourne Grove can be seen through the rear windows, near Egley's home at a chemist's shop on the corner of Hereford Road.

Westbourne Grove

Though now popular and expensive for home-buyers, much of the area had become run-down in the 1950s, when it was the centre of the activities of notorious slum-landlord Peter Rachman, after whom the phrase "Rachmanism" was coined.

Amongst the well-known residents of this house were Sir William Yorke, baronet; the Venetian ambassador; the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell (a great great nephew of the diarist Samuel Pepys); and the General Commander in Chief of the Army, Viscount Hill, who left in 1836 (and who gave his name to the modern road bridge north of Westbourne Grove called Lord Hill's Bridge).

Also north of what is now Westbourne Grove was Westbourne Farm which was the home, between 1815 - 1817, of the actress Sarah Siddons, who lived there with her daughter.



see also

William Garrett Lewis

He was an apologist author of two books, Westbourne Grove Sermons and The Trades and Industrial Occupations of the Bible, published by the Religious Tract Society.

William Whiteley

In his autobiography, Drawn From Memory, E. H. Shepard said the fire could be seen from Highgate Hill, and some days later when he and his brother Cyril were allowed to visit Westbourne Grove, that, "The long front of the shop was a sorry sight with part of the wall fallen and the rest blackened."