London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead. Story time.
History time.
Kensington.
The wealthiest residential district in the United Kingdom.
Or is it?
As always in this country, it’s complicated.
Great word, complicated.
You dissect the word complicated you get that little prefix “com”, which means “with”.
And “plicated”, which comes from the Latin word plicare, which means to fold.
The way to make easy work of this is to visualise it. Visualise a short bolt of cloth. Or even just a scarf. Or a towel. Now bunch that scarf up a bit so it’s got four or five folds in it.
But if there’s something inside one or two of those folds what’s in there is hidden away. You can’t see it. Maybe there’s a penny in one fold, and a thimble in another fold, and a pencil in a third fold.
But smooth those folds out and there they are. The pencil. The thimble. The penny.
What’s in the folds, those odds and ends, that’s why it’s complicated.
Plicated. Plicare. Folds.
Com. With.
Folds with things tucked away in between them.
Something that’s complicated… there’s more to it than meets the eye.
And while we’re at it, let’s mull over a sister word.
Explicate.
A word English Lit professors are partial to.
They explicate a poem.
Or the opening of Dickens’s Bleak House.
The prefix is “ex”. Which means out. Exit. Same word.
An exit is a door you go through to get out.
So if you explicate Richard III’s great speech, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York…”, you’re unfolding it. Folding it out. Laying it out. Seeing what’s tucked away in the folds.
Implicate is another member of the same verbal family.
Im is in.
Plicare, fold.
Implicate. In the folds.
If you’re implicated in something, you’re in there somewhere. Involved. Part of it.
Ok.
Back to Kensington.
The wealthiest residential district in the United Kingdom.
It’s true.
But it’s complicated.
You know something, pretty much everything in this country is complicated. It’s one of the reasons I love the place. It’s endlessly fascinating.
If I had to hazard a guess I’d say that has something to do with the age of the place.
Think about old trees.
No two old trees look remotely alike.
Saplings, a different story.
They all look much the same.
But I digress.
Let’s put the needle back in the groove.
Kensington.
Wealthiest residential district in the United Kingdom.
It’s true.
But it’s complicated.
By way of example, consider Hampstead.
Hampstead has more millionaires than any other neighbourhood in the UK.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the wealthiest neighbourhood.
Yes, Hampstead has more millionaires than Kensington.
But Kensington’s millionaires are richer than Hampstead’s millionaires.
Kensington’s millionaires have more millions.
Or let’s touch down on the City of London for a minute.
That’s a further complication.
The City of London is the wealthiest district in the UK.
But you wouldn’t really describe it as a residential district.
It’s the Wall Street of Europe.
Maybe the wealthiest square mile on God’s green earth.
Make that God’s greenbacks earth.
But precious few people live there.
It’s not a neighbourhood in the way Kensington is.
So.
We’ve got Kensington.
We’ve got the City.
We’ve got Hampstead.
And now we bring in the numbers.
Because the numbers complicate things beautifully.
These are government figures. The most recent government figures. From 2023.
From the Office for National Statistics.
What they measure is something called gross disposable household income per head.
Now that’s a mouthful.
But it’s worth slowing down for a second.
Disposable income.
That’s the money you’ve actually got to spend.
After tax has been taken off.
And after what the government calls direct benefits have been added on.
Direct benefits, that’s cash payments. Money that lands in your bank account.
Think Universal Credit, State Pension, Child Benefit.
Not the NHS. Not schools. Those are services.
This is cash.
Right.
Per head is the key bit.
Per person.
And here’s how London lines up.
Top of the pile.
The City of London.
£129,429.
Second.
Kensington and Chelsea.
£110,651.
Pause on that.
Six figures.
The only two in the six figure league.
Then we drop.
Third, Westminster. £76,381.
Fourth, Camden. £61,657.
Fifth, Hammersmith and Fulham. £51,554.
Sixth, Richmond upon Thames. £49,666.
And then slide down the board.
Near the other end.
Hillingdon. £25,649.
Newham. £24,253.
And at the bottom.
Barking and Dagenham.
£21,179.
Just let that settle.
From £110,000 a head…
to £21,000 a head.
Same city.
Same London.
That’s not a gap.
That’s a canyon.
And here’s where it gets really interesting.
Because remember what we said about folds.
Kensington and Chelsea.
£110,651 per head.
That’s an average.
Across the whole borough.
And anyone who knows Kensington knows perfectly well there are streets, estates, pockets where incomes are nowhere near that.
Nowhere near.
So if the average is £110,000…
and some people are way below that…
then the people at the top…
the ones tucked into those folds…
they are not just wealthy.
They are staggeringly wealthy.
And if you want to see those folds for yourself…
well, tomorrow I’ll be guiding Kensington.
We’ll be out there on the pavement, doing exactly this.
Reading the place.
We’ll walk along what’s often called Millionaires’ Row.
Though that name doesn’t really cut it anymore.
Because the houses there aren’t ten million.
They’re not twenty million.
They’re fifty, sixty million pounds.
And what’s next door?
Another one.
Another sixty million pounds.
Door to door.
Wall to wall.
That’s one fold.
Now ease the camera back a touch.
Because here’s another.
Just the other day I was showing a group a tiny house.
Modest.
Utterly charming.
Completely tucked away.
The sort of place you’d fall in love with.
It was let ten months ago…
for a thousand pounds a week.
A thousand pounds a week.
And in Kensington?
That’s not the top end.
That’s the lower end.
That’s the “affordable” end.
And then there’s a house in Kensington Square.
Sold a couple of years ago…
for nine million, nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
So.
That’s the spread.
That’s the fold.
And then beyond even that…
there’s the rest of London.
Where people are doing the sums.
The big three.
Housing.
Food.
Transport.
Three hundred and twenty five pounds a week just to stand still.
Just to exist.
And in Kensington?
Housing alone can swallow that whole…
and keep going.
And then come the rest.
Clothes.
Phone.
Broadband.
A drink now and then.
A meal out if you dare.
The dentist.
Something breaks.
Something always breaks.
And suddenly…
it’s tight.
Very tight.
So how do people do it?
Flat shares.
Second jobs.
Long commutes.
Careful, careful budgeting.
Or – at the other end of the scale – not having to think about it at all.
Again.
Folds.
Layers.
Lives lived very differently…
sometimes on the same street.
Sometimes within a few yards of each other.
Because once you start smoothing out those folds…
once you start looking properly…
the numbers stop being numbers.
They turn into streets.
Doorways.
Lives.
And that’s when London really comes into focus.
And if you want to see it for yourself…
come along tomorrow.
Stand there on the pavement.
Look at a sixty million pound house.
Look at the next one.
Then think about the little house.
Tucked away.
A thousand pounds a week.
Hidden.
And then look again.
Because it’s all there.
Folded in.
Waiting to be seen.
See you tomorrow.
If not in Kensington, back here.
See you then.