KensingtonTHE December 2013 MAGAZINE January 2014 CHRISTMAS IN KENSINGTON Front Cover: Specially designed for THE us in celebration of our Christmas Issue by Ivana Nohel (see pg 22 for more information) KensingtonMAGAZINE As you will see, this month we are packed with events in and around Kensington - Bazaars, Fairs, Carol Concerts etc and mostly to raise money for charities. At this time of year in our consumer world we tend to think that Christmas is a time for giving, so how better than by supporting our local charities? We would like to thank our writers, Jenny, Ffiona, Elizabeth, Benedict, Alex, Sarah, Victoria, Aletta and Maria for yet another year’s contribution, and Isere our Intern for all her work. And of course thanks must go to our clients. We would ask, as we do every year (!), that you continue to support them as they each endeavour to keep ‘our’ Kensington special. And one last request: if you know of someone who might be alone at Christmas, please make their day and pop round with some Christmas cake. It could make all the difference to their Christmas, Lucy Elliott, Editor Have a lovely festive season and we will return with our February edition, Lucy Hidden Kensington: Kensington Authors 4 CONTENTS History of Kensington: Kensington Market 6 Hidden Talent: Catherine Faulks 8 Editor’s Review: The Old Swan and Minster Mill 10/11 Maria Perry: Christmas by Candlelight 12 Restaurant Review: The Amphitheatre, Royal Opera House 14 Kensington News 16/18/22 Get Well Spoon 24 Book Review: Two Middle Aged Ladies in Andalusia 26 Landscape and Horticulture: The Prunus 28 Science Bites: A Cutting Edge dramatic techique 30 What’s On in and around Kensington: 32/34 EDITOR & PHOTOGRAPHY: Lucy M Elliott [email protected] GET IN TOUCH PUBLISHER: The Kensington Magazine Ltd 0203 667 8762 07921 558520 WEBSITE: www.thekensingtonmagazine.com | www.lucyelliottphotography.com Elizabeth Reid, Jenny Davis-Peccoud, Ffiona, Isere Lloyd Davis, Alex Anderson, CONTRIBUTORS Benedict Bull, Sarah Goldsmith, Victoria O Neil , Aletta Richie and Maria Perry Read by 34,500 residents and businesses each month. The magazine is also available at Sainsbury’s Local, Virgin, RBKC Library, Waitrose, Waterstones, Marks & Spencers, St Mary Abbots, the Copthorne Tara Hotel, The Royal Garden Hotel, The Milestone Hotel, Peter Jones in Sloane Square and many other smaller outlets in W8. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure that the data in this publication is accurate, neither the publisher nor the editor, not its editorial contributors can accept, and hereby disclaim, any liability to any party for omissions resulting from negligence, accident or any other cause. All artwork is accepted on the strict condition that permission has been given for us in this publication. The Kensington Magazine Ltd does not officially endorse any advertising material included within this publication. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, without prior permission of The Kensington Magazine Ltd. 2 3 KENSINGTON AUTHORS Looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Why not give them a book by a Kensington author? Classic or modern, serious or fanciful - you’ve got your pick. Local resident Jenny Davis-Peccoud explores the neighbourhood reading list Both our Waterstones have a local author section so it won't be hard for you to find something for the book lover in your family. But here are a few suggestions to get your Christmas list started. Contemporary Lady Antonia Fraser writes from the fourth- floor of her family home in Holland Park. Over an almost-fifty year career, she has been the biographer of such famous figures as Mary, Queen of Scots, Cromwell and Charles II, and she has given voice to history's women, from Marie Antoinette to the every-day women of 17th century England. Fiction-lovers devour her Jemima Shore detective series. Her latest work, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, is out in hardcover and for Kindle. Simon Sebag Montefiore is another long-time Kensington resident who writes epic biographies. He started with a taste for Russia, writing on Stalin and Potemkin and Catherine the Radclyffe Hall at 37 Holland Street. James Joyce Great. He's explored History's Most Evil Men at 28 Campden Grove and Lord Macaulay at and Women, as well as the Titans of History. Holly Lodge, Campden Hill. TS Eliot, who Recently, he's chronicled the sweeping tale of won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, at Jerusalem. His latest release, One Night in 3 Kensington Court Gardens. And master Winter, continues his works in historical fiction. detective novelist Agatha Christie on Sheffield Terrace. Kensington has even welcomed Dan Burt is a more recent arrival in Kensington. American authors for more than a century, with Raised in South Philadelphia, he read English Henry James living at 34 De Vere Gardens from at Cambridge and eventually made London his 1886-1902. home in 1994. He began his literary career after successful terms as a lawyer and businessman, Childrens publishing his first chapbook Searched for Text If a younger audience is your target, Kensington in 2008 and his first complete collection We Look also offers great classics. Beatrix Potter grew up Like This in 2012. In Cold Eye, he collaborated in Kensington, worshipping at St. Mary Abbotts. with an artist to pair ten images with ten poems Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind in the to explore the creative process. His memoir You Willows on Phillimore Place. And of course, JM Think It Strange was released last month and Barrie's Peter Pan remains a classic for the ages. recounts the underbelly of his home town. So whether you buy a book for a book worm or Classic a notebook for an aspiring author, you're sure to The contemporary authors above are simply find inspiration in Kensington this Christmas continuing a long history of Kensington as time. a haven for creativity. William Makepeace Editor’s Note: We should also include Maria Perry Thackeray lived at 2 Palace Green. who has written, amongst others, The Sisters of Henry Max Beerbohm on Palace Gardens Terrace. VIII and The Word of a Prince. 4 The Mayor of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s Charity Carol Service for Trinity Hospice readers include Diana Rigg and Huw Edwards St. Mary Abbots Church, Kensington High Street Monday 16th December 2013 7.00 p.m. Wine and mince pies afterwards at Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, W8 7NX. To find out more visit www.rbkc.gov.uk/mayor or phone 020 7361 3659 Tickets: £20 30 November - 6 January In 1699, King William III opened up Kensington Palace for a season of parties, games, music and entertaining. This Christmas celebrate in royal style as Kensington is again transformed into a winter play palace. hrp.org.uk/crowns 5 History of Kensington: The Kensington Market By Sarah Goldsmith Ever wonder where Boy George and Adam Michael, Simon LeBon… (the list seems not only Ant bought their outrageous costumes? Ever endless but diverse). Fashion designers shopped wonder where the seeds of punk and glam rock there for ideas. By the 1990’s, it was a melting pot germinated? Where the hippies and bohemians of every sub-culture and genre, even becoming congregated in Kensington in the 1960’s? home to the first store to sell Western clothes in Believe it or not, it was on the very spot where London. a PC World and a Maplin now stand at 49-52 Kensington High Street where the ex-Mrs. The Kensington Market was analogous to Ronnie Wood worked, Freddie Mercury ran a the Camden Market and Portobello Market, stall, and drug dealers would openly yell out “red with roots in the same era. Before its rise as a lab” before “the Establishment” knew what they commercial denizen catering to youth culture, meant. And where did all of this happen? At the the land where the future Market stood was aptly named Kensington Market, a mishmash owned by the Brasenose College, Oxford estate, of vendors and customers, as much a part of the which undertook a survey in 1802. By the 1960s, sub-culture as the wares they were selling and Brasenose had partnered with City Centre buying. Properties to commercially develop numbers 35- 53, but in 1969, Brasenose sold to Land Securities As a teenager while I was browsing Commander Investment Trust. In those 160-plus years, the Salamander in Georgetown, USA, far cooler High Street had undergone several commercial youth were exploring and creating London renaissances – from milliners and drapers in the counter-culture at the Market. For those coming Old Court era to the advent of Barkers in the of age in the Market’s heyday, like long-time Victorian era and the onslaught of department Kensington resident Zoe Schieppati-Emery, a stores in the 1920’s. trip there was “a special Saturday treat, a rabbit warren of shops and stalls which always felt By the early 1970’s, when the Market was coming cool and intriguing to wander about.” A three- into its own, the big stores on the High Street story structure, the Market always reflected the were waning and fashionable boutiques and underbelly of that era. Hippies and bohemians stores like Biba were opening, catering to new gave way to punks and glam rock, which then cutting-edge fashion coming out of London and gave way to goths. Freddie Mercury and Roger the popularity of the Kings Road in Chelsea. And Taylor ran a stall selling art (most of it Freddie’s) the Kensington Market, just east of Biba, had and clothes on the third floor, which wasn’t become an alternative to the shops on the Kings closed until well after the release of Queen’s Road.