South Kensington is best known as a museum district. Get off the tube here if you want to see the Natural History, the Science or the Victoria and Albert Museums. And this is the best way to get to the Royal Albert Hall as well. We will have a separate post about museums, now I'm going to write about the first part of one of our latest walks which started here.
West from the station is the French district. Here, you find the Lycée Francais, the Embassy, the Institut Francais and shops and stores with some relation with France.
Based on some estimation, about 3-400 thousands French people live in London and so it is the 6th biggest French city in the world.
Most of the expats live in the East End or other outer part of London but their cultural centre is located here.
We started the walk from Cromwell Place and went through small mews up to the Lycée Francais.
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| A mews close to the Lycée. See the Natural History Museum's roof in the background |
From this we went till Bute Street to visit the French Bookshop. In the street, they just started closing the market so I couldn't see whether it was a usual market or a French one.
The bookshop was nice and I was keen to check their comics offer. I found a lots of it, but they were a bit too expensive, so I will continue to order them from the Amazon.
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| The bookshop on the left |
After Bute Street we walked into the small and cosy Reece Mews. Francis Bacon, one of the most influential painters of the second half of the 20th century lived in this place. The ground floors of some houses in the mews are occupied by Peter Bradfield’s car shops with amazing old cars. It is worth to check it out.
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| Shop window in Reece Mews |
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| The entrance of Manson Mews from Queen's Gate |
After this we walked down to Old Brompton Road through Queen’s Gate and Manson Mews and then started off towards the cemetery. We went past the building of the Royal British Society of Sculptors which contains the offices and exhibition rooms of this charity which is patronised by, among others, the Queen.
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| Royal British Society of Sculptors |
After this we turned left to Roland Gardens and cut across Roland Way to returning to Roland Gardens again. Here you face painting studios right opposite side of the end of Roland Way.
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| Studio in Roland Gardens |
We walked forth till Gilston Road where we turned right and get to the Boltons. The Chinese wisteria was just flourishing which made the whole street beautiful.
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| Chinese wisteria |
The Boltons is a wealthy street with an oval private garden in the middle; there are so many similar in London with entrance just for the residents.
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| Residents only |
In the middle of the garden, accessible and surrounded by a public way is situated St Mary the Boltons. We sat down with the children for a rest and were watching the angels on the roof of the church whether they moved when we closed our eyes.
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| Angels |
After this short break we returned to Old Brompton Road. On the site of the school on the corner was the house of Beatrix Potter, the famous author and illustrator.
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| Plaque of Beatrix Potter |
Over the corner of Warwick Road and Old Brompton Road we went into the Pembroke public house for a drink and to rest a little bit. The pub wasn't special though the staff was friendly so we spent just a half an hour there.
However, the next door was the Troubadour’s one which is one of the last remaining café house from the 1950’s and it is a famous one. It is (used to be) a gig venue and here used to perform, among others, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Morrisey.
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| Troubadour's door |
It takes just a couple of minutes from this door to get the Brompton Cemetery, walking down Brompton Road. The cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven Cemeteries, which are London big cemeteries; all of them established in the 19th century. This one was consecrated in 1840 and you will find here more than 205 thousands of graves.
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| The cemetery's northern entrance from inside |
This part of our trip took about 2 hours including the rest in the pub and on the bench in the church garden.
I used Lomo effect on the pictures because the weather was grey at that time.
Next post will be about the cemetery and the second part of our walk in Chelsea…
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