Escorts in Earls Court, SW5: who is close, and how soon
A guitar case leans on the railings of the Old Brompton Road, a door stands open onto a narrow stair, and from the room below comes the sound of a singer tuning up in front of the chairs. Earls Court has been staging that scene since the 1950s, in rooms small enough to hear a string buzz, and it is the right way into a district whose evenings have always been built round a stage of some size: a folk club, a theatre above a pub and, for most of the last century, a hall big enough for the loudest bands in the world. This page walks through them for anyone booking escorts in Earls Court, with the museums of South Kensington and the halls at Olympia on either side.
On the ground
Earls Court in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameSW5 9NB, SW5 0EW, SW7 4LH, SW7 4QH.
Nearest stations
Walking timeEarl's Court, 1 minute. West Brompton, 7 minutes. Gloucester Road, 8 minutes.
Getting there
SW5Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Earls Court
Who works here
On the board in Earls Court
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Earls Court tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
The coffee house on the Old Brompton Road
The Troubadour opened in 1954 as a coffee house, just as London's folk revival was starting, and its basement club became one of the rooms where the revival happened. Bob Dylan played there on his first visit to London in the winter of 1962, still unknown in Britain, and a long line of the era's singers passed through the same small room.
It is still a place for live music, and for a guest who likes his songs close enough to see the fingers on the frets, a room like this is the district's best evening.
Note 03
A theatre above a pub
Further south, towards West Brompton, the Finborough Theatre works from a small room above a Victorian pub on Finborough Road. Since 1980 it has built a reputation out of all proportion to its size, for new plays and for forgotten ones brought back to the stage.
The room is small enough that no seat is far from the actors, and a play there makes a compact evening: the performance, a conversation about it on the way out, and the short walk back north through the squares.
Note 04
The halls that were
For more than a century Earls Court meant exhibitions. The grounds opened in the 1880s, and in 1887 Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West show here, watched by Queen Victoria herself. A great wheel turned over the site from the 1890s, and in 1937 the vast exhibition centre opened on the Warwick Road side.
The centre held the Royal Tournament, motor shows and, for decades, the biggest indoor concerts in London: Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd both played long runs there. In the 1960s and 1970s the streets round the halls filled with young Australians and New Zealanders on their way round the world, and the nickname Kangaroo Valley stuck for a generation. The centre came down in the 2010s and the ground was cleared for a new district, so the culture of Earls Court now lives in its smaller rooms.
Note 05
Blue plaques and a famous garden wall
The residents did the rest. Alfred Hitchcock lived at 153 Cromwell Road through the years he was making his British films, and the house carries a blue plaque. Freddie Mercury spent his last years at Garden Lodge on Logan Place, a house hidden behind a high wall just north of the Cromwell Road.
Beatrix Potter grew up nearby too, in Bolton Gardens, and the district's best literary story begins with her. Television has its landmark as well: outside Earl's Court station on the Earls Court Road stands a blue police box of the old Metropolitan Police pattern, the shape every Doctor Who viewer knows as the TARDIS, and a slow walk from plaque to plaque to box is an evening's culture in itself.
Note 06
Brompton Cemetery
At the southern edge of the district lies Brompton Cemetery, one of the seven great Victorian cemeteries laid out in a ring round London, and its central avenue runs from the gate on the Old Brompton Road between rows of Victorian monuments to a domed chapel flanked by long colonnades, a walk laid out as deliberately as any stage set. Emmeline Pankhurst, who led the fight for women's votes, is buried there.
Its best-loved story is literary. The headstones carry names such as Nutkin, McGregor and Jeremiah Fisher, and the young Beatrix Potter, living a short walk away, is said to have borrowed them for her animals. Nobody has proved it and nobody has disproved it, and the names are there for anyone to read.
Note 07
Bigger stages next door
The larger stages are a short journey away. The Royal Albert Hall and the museums of South Kensington lie east beyond Gloucester Road, the halls at Olympia to the north west still fill with exhibitions, and Chelsea lies to the south east.
An evening built round a performance needs one thing settled first: the hour the curtain comes down. Earls Court escorts are booked around that hour like any other evening: tell the office when the show ends and where you will be, she reaches you roughly an hour after it confirms, later at rush hour, the chat gives her exact time, and the rates list every length.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Earls Court
Asked most often
Earls Court, asked and answered
Is the Troubadour really where Bob Dylan played?
Can she come with me to a play at the Finborough?
What stands where the exhibition centre was?
Did Beatrix Potter take her animals' names from Brompton Cemetery?
One zone either way
Next along from Earls Court
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.