A WALK IN THE DARK 2026

In the spirit of spooky season I’ve written a review of my stroll last Halloween through Notting Hill to Kensington in search of plastic skellingtons………..in the vague hope that it might inspire....

Notting Hill

I set off from Westbourne Park station with a camera, a printed route and the serene confidence of a man who has never once held a map the right way up. Westbourne Park Road is the kind of street that exists chiefly to make visitors feel their own houses are painted the wrong colour and in the wrong place. Every third front door was the shade of a sugared almond, and every second step had a pumpkin on it, looking faintly embarrassed to be there.

The British came late to Halloween and still approach it like someone accepting a canapé they can’t identify. In most of the country this means one carved pumpkin and a note on the door saying the sweets have run out. In W11 it means something else entirely.

Arundel Gardens is a terrace so uniform that six identical decorated doorways in a row read either as a study in rhythm or as evidence of a cloning programme. I shot it both ways. Then up Ladbroke Grove to Elgin Crescent, the street the press photographers came to in 2024 because several houses had gone, in the technical term, completely bananas.

Here I committed my first deliberate navigational error and overshot by one block to The Elgin, on the corner of Blenheim Crescent. It was once a horse-bus depot and later a Teddy Boy hangout, and it contains a Victorian glass-and-timber screen so lavish that the Campaign for Real Ale says it knows of no other like it. I had a pint and resolved not to photograph the screen. Twenty minutes later I had photographed the screen.

Lansdowne Crescent curls around St John’s church, which stands on the hill where, for a few hopeless years in the 1830s, someone tried to run a racecourse. The church makes a superb gothic backdrop, and it is a comfort to know that the most sinister thing on this street was once a bad investment. Clarendon Road then takes you south and downhill, the houses growing grander as you descend, as though slowly inflating.

Holland Park

At the bottom, a short stroll along Holland Park Avenue brings you to The Mitre. It stands on the site of the old Notting Hill Farm and, during a lapse nobody now discusses, spent some years trading as the Rat & Parrot. It has since recovered its dignity, which is more than I can say for myself after the hill.

Abbotsbury Road and Ilchester Place are where the mansions live. The displays here were the first I have ever seen that appeared to have been installed by a contractor working to a method statement. Somewhere in W14 there is a ghost with a valid risk assessment.

If you come on the 31st itself, the park next door becomes the Playful Park of Peculiar: a skeleton parade led by a dancing skeleton nine feet tall, accompanied by a mariachi band. I have seen many things in London parks, but never a skeleton that would need to duck to get through my front door. Last year it ran from 4pm to 7pm; check this year’s times before planning your evening around a dancing corpse.

Kensington

Phillimore Gardens was, in 2022, the most expensive street in England, with an average house price of £23.8 million. At those prices I had rather assumed the skeletons would be real. I looped round Upper Phillimore Gardens, Phillimore Walk and Argyll Road, past houses whose lanterns cost more than my first car, and my current car come to think of it.

Then a short uphill detour to the Windsor Castle on Campden Hill Road, built around 1826 and named, so the story goes, because on a clear day you could see Windsor from the upper windows. Inside, old timber screens divide the bars and contain little doors meant only for the staff. I tried one. I do not recommend it.

The walk ends in Kensington Square, laid out in the 1680s and one of the oldest squares in London. It was decorated, though with the restraint of a place that has seen three centuries of fashions come and go and is not about to get excited over a rubber bat.

All that week, High Street Kensington runs its own Halloween trail, and there is usually a dog parade along Kensington Church Walk. It features dogs dressed as pumpkins, wearing the expression of animals mentally composing letters to their solicitors.

A few practical warnings

  • The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October. Having spent all summer saving up daylight, Britain hands back an hour in exchange for nothing. Afterwards, blue hour runs roughly 4.40–5.20pm and leaves without saying goodbye.

  • Bring something fast. A quick 35mm lens and 800-speed film, or HP5 pushed a stop, will handle a lit porch. Anything slower and you are photographing the idea of a pumpkin.

  • These are people’s homes. Stay on the pavement, off the steps and out of the front gardens. Ask before photographing anyone’s children; nothing spoils a portfolio like a conversation with a man called Rupert about trespass.

  • Halloween night is the most atmospheric and the most crowded. For clean frames, go on an earlier weekday evening.

  • The displays change every year. Treat each street as a likely bet, not a promise, and wander the side roads.

Pub stops

The Elgin, 96 Ladbroke Grove W11

Between Arundel Gardens and Elgin Crescent

One block north on Ladbroke Grove

Grade II listed; one of London’s finest Victorian pub interiors

The Mitre, 40 Holland Park Ave W11

End of Clarendon Road

A few minutes along Holland Park Avenue

Food-led, roomy, good for a sit-down halfway

Windsor Castle, 114 Campden Hill Rd W8

During the Phillimore loop

A few minutes north, uphill

Late-Georgian, Grade II, panelled 1930s snugs; the ideal finish