Escorts in SW7, South Kensington: who is close, and how soon
The Great Exhibition of 1851 filled the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park for a summer, drew some six million visits and made a profit, and Prince Albert saw to it that the money went on land. The commissioners bought the ground south of the park, and on it rose the concert hall, museums and colleges that made SW7 what it is. Londoners called the result Albertopolis, half in fun, and the name has lasted.
SW7 is also one of the postcodes where the board has homes of its own: three names give South Kensington as theirs and three more give Knightsbridge, which runs across SW7 and SW1X, so escorts in SW7 seldom start far away. The office's window stays the same as anywhere central, usually about an hour after it confirms, with her exact time written into the chat when she leaves, and every length and its figure sits on the rates.
On the ground
SW7 in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameSW7 1DW, SW7 3ER, SW7 5EX, SW7 5BB, W8 5DL, SW5 9NB.
Nearest stations
Walking timeSouth Kensington, 2 minutes. Gloucester Road, 5 minutes. Earl's Court, 10 minutes.
Getting there
SW7, W8, SW5Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
Who works here
On the board in SW7
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for SW7 tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
What the 1851 money built
Start at the top. The Royal Albert Hall, opened by Queen Victoria in 1871, faces across the road to the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, where the gilded prince sits under his canopy holding a catalogue of the exhibition that paid for all of it. Exhibition Road, named after the same event, runs south from there between the institutions.
At its foot, the Natural History Museum opened in 1881 in Alfred Waterhouse's building, faced in terracotta with animals and plants modelled into the walls: living species on one wing, extinct ones on the other. Across Exhibition Road, what had been the South Kensington Museum became the Victoria and Albert in 1899, when Queen Victoria, by then nearly eighty, laid the foundation stone of its long front on the Cromwell Road.
Note 03
The tower left standing
One building on the estate has almost gone. The Imperial Institute was raised to mark Victoria's Golden Jubilee of 1887, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was pulled down to make room for Imperial College, all except its tall central tower. The Queen's Tower now stands on its own among the college buildings, a Victorian landmark with none of its old building left around it.
The commission that began it all still exists, and still funds fellowships from the estate it bought with the exhibition's profit. Few other parts of London can point to the single year that made them.
Note 04
Reading the story on foot
The plan reads best in order: from the memorial steps across to the hall, then down Exhibition Road past the colleges and the two great museums to the Cromwell Road, oldest ambition to newest stone. Taken after dinner with one of the SW7 escorts, it is an evening walk with a thread running through it. West, the same streets carry on into Kensington, and south-west towards Earls Court, while the station end of the district is South Kensington.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for SW7
Asked most often
SW7, asked and answered
Why was this part of London nicknamed Albertopolis?
What is the gilded figure on the Albert Memorial holding?
Why does one tower stand alone among the Imperial College buildings?
Which museum has animals built into its walls?
One zone either way
Next along from SW7
escorts in High Street Kensington
W8Same ladder, same honest hour, one zone further across the map.
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.