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Moving to Bayswater (London) - How is the neighborhood?

Moving to Bayswater (London) - How is the neighborhood?

Old Jul 28th, 2014, 01:43 PM
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Moving to Bayswater (London) - How is the neighborhood?

Without much prior knowledge about London neighborhoods, I’ve taken a flat in Bayswater. On most real estate company sites, the apartment was marked as part of “Notting Hill” (which was marked on these maps as the entire area north of Hyde Park as far east as Marylebone).

Now, doing more research into the area, I’m reading that Bayswater is certainly not Notting Hill, have seen it called a “wannabe Notting Hill.” I am now getting more concerned about safety and whether or not this will be a nice place to live. I don’t need 5 star luxury, but was expecting a nice residential area.

Is this a safe area? Are there nice restaurants and shops nearby (again, doesn’t have to be luxury, but nice)? Is it a clean neighborhood? Would be a great help to hear from people familiar with the area. Thanks!
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 01:49 PM
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I've stayed in Bayswater - there are a zillion hotels there and IME I felt totally safe - it is an ethnically diverse neighborhood with lots of ethnic restaurants, etc.

The many hotels - like Westbourne Grove area is near completely hotels it seems - takes a little of the neighborhood feel away but that is true of many tourist areas in London.

Relatively clean and lots of smaller shops, cafes, etc.

I think it meets your criteria but my only experience is staying there as a tourist several times - will be interesting to hear FodorLondonites' takes!
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 02:24 PM
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I don't like staying in Bayswater as a tourist (though I have more than once) But I'd have no qualms about living there. But it is also possible your flat isn't in Bayswater or Notting Hill . . . some owners play fast an loose describing locations.

If you give us the post code we can tell you what the neighborhood/street id like.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 09:13 PM
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Ghastly. Though it still might suit you.

It most certainly isn't a "wannabe Notting Hill" (who'd want to be THAT?), because it simply isn't the kind of area (most of it certainly isn't a "neighbourhood") that wants to be anything.

Bayswater (the area between Bayswater Rd and Westbourne Grove, west of Edgware Rd and east of Herford Rd) is a soulless wasteland of hotels, London hideaways for the poorest beneficiaries of third world kleptocracy and tat shops.

It's extremely safe (generally a screaming identifier of unbelievable tedium in a real city), though this is mainly because its neurotic temporary residents (in Bayswater a triple tautology) spend a small fortune on security to keep burglars out. None are sufficiently attuned to London to realise that no burglar would want to steal the tasteless bling the local shops sell: the real reason there's so much security is that those temporary residents all live the rest of the year in hellholes where preposterous security is a way of life.

The area is almost devoid of the things that make London liveable. Hardly a pub, no cinemas, no fringe theatre (or theatre of any sort), garden squares all restricted to keyholders, and hardly a single decent butcher,fishmonger or cheese shop (in fairness, there are a few decent greengrocers). No interesting shops - and although it's got a fair amount of stucco Regency houses, it's lumbered with the densest concentration of horrible apartment blocks in central London.

As a place so obsessively geared to transients, it's got lots of restaurants, and they're not all bland and meretricious: there are a couple of decent Chinese along Queensway, and the Fatoush places on the Edgware Rd stand out amid a gazillion mediocre Lebanese (and you can get decent cheese at the Waitrose on the east - non Bayswater - side of Edgware Rd). Unlike London's real cosmopolitan melting pots, this area's population makes no contribution to London, except to turn up, enjoy tolerable weather for a few months, then go back to Beirut.

I can't begin for a nanosecond to understand why anyone moving to London would want to live somewhere so unLondon-like. There ARE a couple of non-transient enclaves (like the Greeks round the Orthodox cathedral). But mostly the area is just a glorified airport transit lounge.

If that's what you want, fine. But don't delude yourself you're moving to London - and don't pretend when you move on to the next glorified transit lounge you ever lived in England.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 09:20 PM
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Flanny you should be in real estate.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 09:20 PM
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Or some other people person activity.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 09:47 PM
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flanneruk, just curious. Where would YOU chose to live in London, if you had your drothers...that is if you chose to live in London, at all?
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 09:50 PM
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Spell check..sorry: druthers.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 10:27 PM
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"Where would YOU chose to live in London"

Almost anywhere Londoners (= people who decide to live, as opposed to speculate in property for a year, in London) live.

Practically anywhere in the 2 km-deep arc of early to mid 19th century terrace housing north of the A501 from about Haggerston to Maida Vale (though I'm iffy about Maida Vale itself). Or its equivalents south of the river, round Fulham or in the odd enclave in bits of K&C.

Tougher now than when I lived there (the Islington house I bought for three times my salary in my mid thirties now costs nearly twenty times the salary of my roughly as financially successful nephews and nieces of the same age) - but you simply move a mile or two further away from the office, and you're still in real London.

Or (more relevant to me these days), to a tiny pied a terre around Bloomsbury (such places still do exist, especially close to Kings Cross) or in Edwardian mansion blocks round Marylebone or Albertopolis (about an extra zero on the price of something similar near KX).

Z1&2 London is stuffed with nice places to live. None of them ever crop up in the depressing lists churned out by travel writers like those paid to rehash press releases on sites such as this.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 10:50 PM
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As a general rule of thumb, I would NEVER trust an estate agent's indication as to a neighbourhood: the boundaries are notoriously fluid, and they have a habit of inventing names that weasel somewhere less well thought-of into somewhere posher, like (near me) West or indeed East Greenwich.

The only secure indicator is a postcode, since that ties a place down to a very small area, and can be plotted on the map and linked to any number of other databases - such as Yell for local services, and (if you're worried about safety):
http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 10:57 PM
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PS: With a postcode you may well be able to locate community organisations with websites and forums for residents; though some of those may well be the sort that should come with the usual internet health warning about people with axes to grind, and so on (that Her at no. 37 keeps complaining about litter doesn't mean it's all that serious).
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 11:30 PM
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Depends on the street in Bayswater.
Hereford Road - according to Flanner's description the edge of Bayswater/Notting Hill, is nice - with many restaurants, and close to Notting Hill Gate, Queensway, Bayswater stations.
Between Hereford Road and Edgeware Road, some squares and streets are very nice, some a bit run down, and with cheap hotels.
Connaught Street is great, with some excellent small shops, bakeries (look up Connaught Village). Anywhere near Paddington Station less so. There are some awful looking 60s blocks (Porchester Square).

There's a Waitrose at the top of Queensway. Planet Organic on Westbourne Grove, some small greengrocers (many Persian shops for some reason). There's a cinema in Whiteley's.

So some streets are better than others. I would prefer to be west of Queensway, of somewhere near Connaught Street. It's a great central location, easy for transportation, mostly residential - and that includes many UK residents.
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 11:32 PM
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of somewhere near Connaught Street
OR somewhere near Connaught Street
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Old Jul 28th, 2014, 11:43 PM
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Flanner, you excelled yourself.
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Old Jul 29th, 2014, 01:50 AM
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As others have said, with any of these location questions, you need the actual postcode. They are very precise. Mine is rural and covers 15 houses. In a big city, it could cover Just one large building. From a pistol code you can get a real feeling of a place through online resources
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Old Jul 29th, 2014, 01:52 AM
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Pistol code? Damned autocomplete. We are West but not Wild West
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Old Jul 29th, 2014, 03:15 AM
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Hi FLANNER,

"Practically anywhere in the 2 km-deep arc of early to mid 19th century terrace housing north of the A501 from about Haggerston to Maida Vale (though I'm iffy about Maida Vale itself)." Isn't MAIDA VALE quite upscale?

On my recent trip I took the Tube to WARWICK AVENUE, then walked down to LITTLE VENICE to get a canal boat to CAMDEN TOWN. Wow, that was a high rent neighborhood! I believe that many of these palatial residences were designed by John Nash.

I understand that this district is not that far from ST. JOHN'S WOOD which I recall was the residence of "the woman" in Sherlock Holmes's "Scandal in Bohemia." Just wondering.

PATRICKLONDON, what's the difference between EAST and WEST GREENWICH? London is so vast...
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Old Jul 29th, 2014, 05:11 AM
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>>PATRICKLONDON, what's the difference between EAST and WEST GREENWICH? village is a tiny (a Jacobean manor house and green, and a couple of streets) remnant of something that, in the right light and with a squint, might look a teeny bit like Hampstead - so the estate agents have invented an area called "Charlton Slopes" which is creeping down the hill towards the poundshops, DIY stores and kebab shops on the ever-clogged main road.
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Old Jul 29th, 2014, 06:26 AM
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" Isn't MAIDA VALE quite upscale?"

Ish. But what's that got to do with anything? Can't Americans consider anything except poshness and likelihood to get stabbed?

Part of the reason London's worth living in is that it doesn't, generally, do social homogeneity: in the poshest of areas, you're almost never (not even in Mayfair) more than 150 yards from a downmarket housing estate. Another reason is that Londoners don't go into conniptions at ther thought of sharing their living space with someone poorer.

One of Bayswater's many unsatisfactorinesses is that it's almost as devoid of social mixing as America. A lot of Maida Vale is a bit like that, though it has its reassuringly grubby bits: the real reason I'm iffy about it is that it's mostly long avenues of dull mansion blocks. Nothing personal: I just don't like it.

"CAMDEN TOWN. Wow, that was a high rent neighborhood!
You're joking, surely?

Rents are high everywhere these days. But Camden Town is as mixed as anywhere between the North Circular and the Circle Line. If you've only seen the Nash Terraces, you've missed most of it.
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Old Jul 29th, 2014, 06:36 AM
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"conniptions" something from across the pond?
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