Very Victoriana

SOUTH Kensington defies geography. No amount of fiddling with compass and northings can explain why stately Queen’s Gate or the museum-lined expanse of Exhibition Road are labelled as South, yet Young Street, at the same latitude, is bundled with the rest of Kensington. But if the geography is muddled, the identity of this stuccoed slice of London is clear: this is where the Victorians made their mark.

Of course, a village stood here long before Victoria’s Coronation; indeed, more than one—the hamlets of Brompton, clustered around today’s Old Brompton Road, and Little Chelsea, now the handful of streets between Thistle Grove and Redcliffe Gardens. But neither was