ANTIQUES SHOPPING ALONG THE TRAIL
When it’s appropriate to travel again, why not combine a day’s blue plaque browsing with a li le antiques shopping?
Start at Bond Street Tube station.
Just over the road at Stratford Mansions, 34 South Molton Street, there’s a plaque to the trade union leader and statesman
Ernest Bevin. Then head down Davies Street to the wonderful Grays Antique
Centre. On leaving Grays, keep going down Davies Street and you’ll soon come to Brook Street. Here there are plaques to architects Jeffry Wyatville at number 39 and Colen Campbell at 76.
Your next destination is Holland Park. Either head back to Bond Street and take the Central line to Notting Hill Gate or, if you’re after a stroll, walk along Oxford Street towards Marble Arch, then keep going along Hyde Park Place and Bayswater Road until you reach Notting Hill Gate station. On the way, keep an eye out for plaques to the statesman Lord Randolph Churchill at 2 Connaught Place, Marble Arch and the novelist Sir James Barrie at 100 Bayswater Road. At Notting Hill Gate, pop into Antiques of Wimbledon and then work your way up and down the slew of antiques shops on Portobello Road ( Alice’s at number 86 is a good starting point). Head in the other direction down Kensington Church Street for high-end stores such as Patrick
Sandberg Antiques (numbers 150–152) and Reindeer Antiques
(number 81).
You’ll spot a plaque to the composer
Muzio Clementi at 128 Kensington Church Street. A little further on, take a right down Bedford Gardens, where there are plaques at number
4 to the composer Frank Bridge and at number 27 to Sir William
Beveridge, a founder of the welfare state. Go back down Kensington Church Street until you get to Gloucester Walk. A plaque at number 15 marks the home of the lauded composer Jean Sibelius.