The 2024-2025 Kensington Society annual is here

The Kensington Society annual for 2024-2025 was recently sent out to all members. Beside a foreword from our president, Lord Carnwath; a report from our chairman, Amanda Frame; a summary of the 2024 AGM and the speech from the AGM’s keynote speaker, Sir Stuart Lipton; the financial statement for 2024; 8 pages of planning reports; and 15 pages of reports from 14 of our affiliated societies; it contains the following special articles:

• A fascinating article about celebrated royal photographer Hugo Burnand, whose picture from Kensington Gardens is the cover of the annual, with more of his favourite pictures adorning the article – of royals as well as nature, the indigenous people of Panama, and his own children through the years.
• Kensington’s many boundaries that used to separate different areas and social classes. Some have now disappeared or are forgotten, while some are still both real and figurative, such as the Poor Wall between the Notting Dale and Holland Park wards: in the Notting Dale ward a female resident’s average life expectancy is 74.3 years, but just a few streets away in the Holland Park ward it is 93.2 years…
• An article about the French Institute and its director, Anissia Morel, centred in the South Kensington French enclave which consists of the 110-year old French Lycée, French restaurants, cafés and shops. In 2024 they celebrated 120 years of the Entente Cordiale.
• An in-depth article about Kensingtons two opportunity areas, Earl’s Court and Kensal Canalside, which the council will make critical decisions about in 2025. Will the outcome enhance the borough, creating successful new neighbourhoods that appeal not only to their occupants but also to neighbouring communities, passers-by, visitors and future generations? Will the next generation be comfortable with the choices made?
• An article about Nucleo, the fascinating youth orchestra programme that began in in North Kensington in 2013 and currently involves more than 400 local children.
• A blue plaque story about 10 Palace Green, which from 1940 to 1945 was the centre of Norway’s resistance against the German occupation and the formal home of Norway’s King Haakon. It became the centre of a vast network of shipping, military bases and clandestine activities in both Britain, Canada and Sweden.
• A profile on the Hornets vintage men’s clothing store in Kensington Church Walk, which now has been a Kensington institution for over 40 years, operated in three shops next to each other.

A digital copy of the new annual be found in the Archive, or by clicking this link.