"West Kensington" is an early marketing construct, a ploy by two Victorian developers who found they had trouble selling their rapidly erected estate of terraced housing in the hamlet of North End on the outskirts of the village of Walham Green.

They succeeded in persuading the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham to have North End renamed 'West Kensington' to attract new investors to their empty houses.

The main topographical feature was Counter's Creek, a tributary of the Thames River, rising in Kensal Green, which marked the parish boundary.

[4] Margravine Cemetery and some of the streets near Barons Court station, recall the brief sojourn in the County of Middlesex of the last Margrave of Brandenburg, Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1736-1806) and his second wife, the English Lady Elizabeth Craven, who in 1792 bought the handsome mansion on the Thames at Fulham, originally built by Sir Nicholas Crisp in the 17th century and renamed it "Brandenburg House".

[6] A contemporary of Palliser was Sir Robert Gunter whose family also left its mark on a number of streets that were built on his North End estate.

After the severe bomb and landmine damage to the area during World War II, the Gunter estate donated Gwendwr Gardens, formerly the Cedars Lawn Tennis Club, to the public as a memorial to those who had perished.

[7] The railway developments at North End included the Lillie Bridge Depot, an important historic engineering workshop with secondary access from Beaumont Avenue since 1872.

The Earls Court Exhibition pleasure gardens, an international venue, was begun by John Robinson Whitley, visited by Queen Victoria in her Jubilee year, and subsequently frequented by the Royal Household.

The royal connection continued through the decades and Diana, Princess of Wales opened the barrel-shaped Earls Court II hall, which in 1991 straddled the boundary between Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea; but after a confidential decision taken by the two boroughs in 2008, demolition began in 2015.

Other notable structures on the site were the giant Ferris wheel (1895-1907) and the 6,000 seat Empress Hall (1894), built for impresario Imre Kiralfy, both long gone.

West Kensington Court was purpose built and completed in 1938 with a view of providing what were considered at the time luxury flats for young professionals and families wishing to move from older-style properties.

There are significant populations of Arabs, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Irish, Italians, Spaniards, and French, encouraged by nearby private schools teaching in their native language can be found around Brook Green.

The high-ceilinged Warwick Building was used as a depository for Whiteleys-sourced furnishings (grand pianos, chaise longues, oriental room dividers, mahogany wardrobes) for the use of customers who were resident in the colonies.

[14] West Kensington once had on its fringes the dominating presence of a terracotta cluster of Neo Gothic buildings amid lush playing fields, of St Paul's School backing onto the Talgarth Road, between 1884 and 1968.

It has since migrated to its fifth set of buildings now south of the Thames river in Barnes, since it left, centuries ago, the old cathedral cloister in the City of London.

[18] In the film Trainspotting, the flat that Renton shows the young couple around when he gets the job as an estate agent and ultimately stashes Begbie and Sickboy in is 78A North End Road, opposite West Kensington tube station.

In Hanif Kureishi's novel The Buddha of Suburbia, the main character moves from the southern suburbs of London to West Kensington and lives by the Nashville.

Heather Graham and Mia Kirshner play upper-middle-class dilettantes from West Kensington in the 2008 movie Buy Borrow Steal.

[32][33] The project, expected to span 15–20 years, would involve the redevelopment of 80 acres of land around the Earl's Court Exhibition Centres and the West Kensington & Gibb's Green Estate and a swathe of private businesses and other homes.

The developers sold on their loss-making venture in December 2019, while Hammersmith and Fulham Council have arranged with the buyers, Delancey to buy back the two housing estates still occupied by residents.