Located in the southern portion of Royal Oak, Westbourne Park is connected to the areas of Bayswater and Notting Hill, with similar Victorian architecture. Westbourne Grove is the main high street, with many restaurants and shops lining the road. The road leads up to Portobello Road and its famous market in Notting Hill. The area otherwise is predominantly residential, with small garden squares interspaced, though not as large or plentiful as Bayswater and Notting Hill nearby. The buildings to the north of the postcode sector are slightly less grand, with more conventional bricks and modest facades. There are also some post-war council tower blocks near the railway lines. Westbourne Park and Royal Oak underground station are located to the far west and east of the postcode sector, both on the Hammersmith and City and Circle lines. The area is also close to the Westway.

The area was already built-up when the Hammersmith & City Railway arrived in 1864, with Porchester Square being one of the last parts of the area to be developed. Porchester Centre was constructed in 1929, and includes a hall, library and Turkish baths, further accentuating the class divides between the north and south, which had already emerged and expanded when the railways came. Porchester Hall today hosts numerous weddings. The houses have gradually been subdivided into flats, with West Indian immigrants moving in the 50s, and hippies in the 60s. Today the area is considered far more ‘chic’, with celebrities and figures from fashion and music moving in.

Guglielmo Marconi lived on 71 Hereford Road from 1896 to 1897. He was an Italian inventor and engineer, notable for marketing the first successful long distance wireless telegraph and broadcasting the first transatlantic radio signal. His invention, sold via his company Marconi, ended radio silence for ocean travel, and helped save hundreds of lives, including the surviving passengers of the Titanic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work in 1909.

Westbourne Grove underground station leads to Kings Cross and up to Bank/Monument station. The Hammersmith and City line, as well as the Circle line, particularly eastwards, was notoriously infrequent and unreliable, with numerous cancellations. As are part of the Four Lines Modernisation programme, which will be finished in 2023, both lines were selected for improvements and upgrading, boosting their capacity and improving their reliability. Users are already reaping the benefits of the upgrades. Since September 2021, journey times between Hammersmith, Stepney Green and Monument have improved by approximately 10%, which has even Transport for London (TfL) the opportunity to increase train frequency on the lines from 27 trains an hour to 28 trains an hour during the busiest times.

The Elizabeth Line, which opened in early 2022, connects Paddington to Ealing Broadway and Heathrow to the west, and to Bond Street, Moorgate and Canary Wharf to the east. Paddington’s Elizabeth line platform is a 20-minute walk away and, in fact, the first two tunnel boring machines were lowered in the area.