Notting Hill Beyond Portobello Road

The market only sees Notting Hill on a Friday, when the stalls are up and the tourists photograph the pastel houses on Lancaster Road. Here is what the neighbourhood looks like the other six days.

The quiet streets

West of the market, around Ladbroke Grove and Clarendon Cross, the crowds thin out within two streets and stay thin. These roads have the same stucco terraces and communal gardens as the postcard end, at a genuine discount, because buyers who have only visited on a market day do not know they exist. Kensington Park Gardens and the roads either side of it are the ones we send clients to first.

What does not suit

Notting Hill does not suit anyone who wants a large freehold house with parking and a garden the children can leave a bike in overnight; that is further west, in Holland Park, at a different price. It also does not suit buyers who want quiet after 11pm on a Saturday within four streets of the market itself. We have talked more than one family out of a flat above a restaurant on Westbourne Grove for exactly that reason.

The neighbourhood rewards people who walk it before they view anything. A ten-minute loop off the main drag tells you more than any listing photograph.