From the Windrush Era to Now: roots in Black British historyBarbados • Dominica • Jamaica • St Lucia • Trinidad
The Windrush Star is a living marker in North Kensington, a major site of Caribbean and Black British history in London. This mosaic star honours not only arrival, but also survival, creativity, resistance, culture, and generations of contribution that shaped local and national life.
Four chapters that frame the local story before the deeper sections below
From the 18th century onward, Black people, including people with Caribbean connections, lived and worked in London as sailors, musicians, workers and craftspeople under conditions shaped by empire and slavery.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, North Kensington had become a densely populated working-class area. Housing conditions, transport links and local employment helped shape settlement in the neighbourhood.
After 1948, Caribbean men and women came to rebuild Britain, working across transport, the NHS, factories and services. Their presence helped shape North Kensington into an important local centre of Caribbean community life.
Across the 1950s and later decades, Caribbean community life in North Kensington grew through homes, churches, shops, music, and local networks that sustained families and public culture.
Racist violence, grief, and organised community response
In the late 1950s, Black residents in Notting Hill faced racist attacks and intimidation. In 1959, Kelso Cochrane, an Antiguan man, was murdered in North Kensington.
These events caused deep fear and anger, but they also strengthened calls for solidarity, self-organisation, and public action across the community.
On 30 January 1959, Claudia Jones organised an indoor Caribbean carnival in London as a response to racist violence and as a celebration of Caribbean culture.
Notting Hill Carnival later developed in west London through community organising and Caribbean traditions, including masquerade, calypso and steelpan. It remains rooted in local Caribbean history while drawing a very large public audience today.
A continuous carousel of carnival organisers, community leadership, and moments across the years.
The Mangrove Restaurant on All Saints Road, founded by Frank Crichlow, became a Caribbean restaurant, meeting place, and community hub in North Kensington.
After repeated police raids and protests, the Mangrove became central to the Mangrove Nine case, a landmark in Black British legal and political history.
Read the case details →
Five Caribbean communities in a shared local history
Research fact: During the Windrush period, Barbadian arrivals came to Britain as Citizens of the UK and Colonies under post-war nationality law, which made settlement in London legally possible before later immigration restrictions.
North Kensington oral histories record family migration from Barbados in the 1960s, showing how Windrush-era movement into this neighbourhood continued after the 1948 arrival.
Research fact: Dominicans migrated under the same Citizens of the UK and Colonies framework that shaped Windrush-era settlement routes into London.
Professor Gus John recalls that Dominicans were active in Notting Hill during the 1960s and 1970s, including through steelbands and calypso tents that helped build local Caribbean public culture.
Research fact: Jamaica was the largest country-of-last-residence group on the Empire Windrush in 1948, with 539 passengers recorded on the voyage.
In North Kensington, Jamaican-born organiser Basil Gabbidon (arrived in Britain in 1955) later helped found and run Notting Hill Carnival through the Caribbean Development Committee.
Research fact: St Lucians, like other Caribbean Citizens of the UK and Colonies, could settle and work in Britain before tighter immigration controls in the 1960s changed that route.
North Kensington oral history from Beverley Wilson records migration from St Lucia to the area in the 1960s, linking St Lucian family histories directly to this neighbourhood.
Research fact: Trinidadian-born Frank Crichlow founded The Mangrove at 8 All Saints Road in 1968, and it became a major community meeting place in North Kensington.
After the 1970 Mangrove protest, the 1971 Mangrove Nine trial became a landmark in Black British legal history, with the judge noting evidence of racial hatred in the Metropolitan Police.
These photographs reflect Windrush pioneers, their children, and later generations who helped shape community life in North Kensington.
Contribution from Joanna Edward, who lives in North Kensington and is a lecturer and community worker. Ms Edward is a former councillor for Colville Ward in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and was the borough’s first Black female councillor.
This is a reference to the positive input the Windrush community has made to Britain, much of which has had lasting social value for the whole of the United Kingdom. Most of the projects created were very much needed and were replicated elsewhere. Much of the time these contributions have been ignored. These contributions include housing trusts, law centres, and supplementary schools. Supplementary school culture is now accepted in British culture and is enjoyed not only by Caribbean children but by many other groups. Many very successful organisations have evolved from projects started by the Windrush Generation.
In North Kensington, the Unity Association started many projects. The association consisted of a group of people from various islands in the Caribbean that were British colonies. Members of the Unity Association included Roddy Kentish, Edward Romain, Mary Bedeau, Tony Sealy, Tony Soares, Roden Gordon, Andre Shervington, and others. The Unity Association was formed due to the strong apprenticeship ethos of the Caribbean people of that generation and the needs of the community. On a voluntary basis, they built underneath the flyover, as it was considered by them to be a wasted space. Young people were trained in carpentry, mechanics, building, dressmaking and design. They also built the Unity restaurant, where young people were taught cooking. The Amenity Trust, now known as the Westway Development Trust and housed under the flyover, is a direct result of those projects. The original organisation was started by members of the Unity Association.
The Westway Housing Trust, which is a completely separate organisation from the Westway Development Trust, evolved from Unity Association apprenticeships. It was also started by the association, and its members began by fixing houses, including hostels. Other housing trusts set up by the Windrush Generation of North Kensington include Notting Hill Housing Trust (now Notting Hill Genesis) and Ujima Housing Association, which was eventually merged with Notting Hill Housing Trust. Members of the Windrush Generation, for example Norman Mullings, continued this contribution to housing in other areas, including Westminster and Brent. Often, the contribution of the Windrush Generation is not appreciated or even referred to.
An example is the contribution of people such as Mrs Pansy Jeffrey. After she left nursing, she was appointed social worker at the local Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB). Working with other people, she went on to found social institutions which became monuments in helping others to gain a better quality of life. She was active in founding Notting Hill Housing Trust in 1963, working with Rev. Bruce Kenrick and colleagues, after becoming appalled by the “damnable housing conditions” in the area, as Rev. Kenrick wrote in his then unpublished biography, before his death in 2007. The Notting Hill Trust (Notting Hill Genesis) is now one of London’s largest social housing providers, accommodating thousands of Londoners, some of whom came from all parts of the world, now settlers and citizens of the United Kingdom. The Trust was one of the first social housing providers at the time. Pansy was also a founding and active member of the local Notting Hill Social Council. She founded the Pepper Pot Centre (PPC) in 1981 to help combat discrimination, isolation, depression and loneliness amongst the growing generation of older Caribbean people. She was also a member of the earlier committee of the Notting Hill Carnival, the largest summer event in London. Pansy initiated and worked with Lord Gifford in 1980 in founding one of the first law centres in Britain, based in North Kensington. A place where the poor could go and get legal support on important legal issues. From that initiative, law centres spread across Britain and elsewhere.
Mrs Jeffrey was a Justice of the Peace at Horseferry, Marlborough and Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, London, for over 20 years. Pansy’s work was also appreciated from the highest echelons of society, as Queen Elizabeth II opened the PPC in the Swinbrook Community Centre in 1981 and visited the organisation again in its current premises, 1A Thorpe Close, in 2009. There were other initiatives in the community, far too many to mention here, including other youth recreational and training facilities. One of these was the OMNIBUS THEATRE, DANCE AND YOUTH GROUP. The Omnibus Theatre Company was founded in 1971 by two young Black actors, Loftus Burton and Lee Davis, to create opportunities not only for performers of Caribbean heritage who were under-represented in the mainstream, but also for newcomers of any nationality to the entertainment industry who were struggling to find work. A number of its members went on to very successful careers in different fields as well as entertainment and were trailblazers in their own right. The centre founded by Loftus Burton in East Row is now known as Acorn Hall and has been inherited by other organisations. I catalogue the above with pride in order to demonstrate to all an example of the many immigrants who came to Britain and made significant and lasting contributions to Britain’s social history. Immigrants, particularly those from the Caribbean, including those from Britain’s ex-colonies, should be confident to name themselves legitimate stakeholders in Britain. We must say to the Windrush Generation, ‘Thank you. Britain is a better place for your arriving and devoting yourselves so selflessly.’ Author: Joanna Edward CHE DipHE BSc (Hons)