Kensington

Kensington has been owned by people who don't live in it since the Domesday Book, when the earls who held the manor never moved in and ran it from a courthouse, which is how Earl's Court got its name. The tradition has been kept up with real devotion. The garden squares are fenced off for the people with keys, the stucco terraces were carved into flats generations ago, and a temporary cycle lane on the High Street once got the whole country shouting, which tells you how rarely anything here is allowed to change.