Design Tour of Kensington

Walk preview

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   Step 1: This tour is designed by Josephine Chanter, Director of Audiences at the Design Museum.

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   Step 2: It’ll take you past Leighton House Museum to the Design Museum, ending at Japan House, with an array of fascinating stops along the way.

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   Step 3: Begin your jaunt outside 20 Holland Park Road, where caricaturist Phil May lived and worked between 1864 and 1903.

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   Step 4: May played an important role in moving away from Victorian styles of illustration towards the creation of the modern cartoon.

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   Step 5: As you move on, notice 14 Holland Park Road, the site where Pre-Raphaelite painter Valentine Prinsep’s studio house once was.

6. Step 6: Continue along Holland Park Road to visit Leighton House on your left. A colony of artists’ houses grew around here in the late 1800s, known as the ‘Holland Park Circle’.