Earls Court - Local Attractions

Local Attractions

Earls Court is within easy walking distance of High Street Kensington, Holland Park, Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park, the Royal Albert Hall, Imperial College, the Natural History, Science and Victoria and Albert Museums.

The largest draw for visitors to Earls Court is the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, opened in the present building in 1937, with its striking Art Deco facade facing Warwick Road. A new entrance to Earl's Court tube station was constructed to facilitate easy access to the Exhibition Centre, including direct entrance from the underground passage which connects the District and Piccadilly lines. This was however closed in the 1990s at around the time the capacity of the Exhibition Centre was expanded by the construction of a second exhibition hall, Earls Court 2, which was opened by Princess Diana, herself a former Earls Court resident.

In its heyday the Earls Court Exhibition Centre hosted many of the leading national trade fairs, including the annual Motor Show and Royal Agricultural Show, as well as Crufts dog show and the military Royal Tournament. The biggest trade fairs migrated to the National Exhibition Centre at Birmingham International Airport when it opened in 1988. The longest-running annual show is now the Ideal Home Show in April, which still attracts tens of thousands of visitors. Otherwise, it has increasingly been used as a live music venue, hosting events such as the farewell concert by then boy-band Take That. At the other end of the scale, it has been used for arena-style opera performances of Carmen and Aida. Archive Movietone newsreel footage (which can be seen on YouTube) captures a unique and powerful rehearsal of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler playing the end of Brahms' Fourth Symphony during a post-War reconciliation visit to London.

Capital & Counties - the owner of the Earls Court Exhibition Centre - has the intention of closing the venue, and it is expected that the site will be redeveloped by 2020 with a mixture of office and residential buildings.

A further landmark building is the Empress State Building, located in Lillie Road, which was completed in 1962, and is a unique triangular office building with concave bow facades. It was occupied by the Ministry of Defence for 30 years. It underwent extensive refurbishment and updating prior to its occupation by the Metropolitan Police around 2003.

The multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre, which opened in 1980, is the neighbourhood's local theatre.

The Troubadour is a coffee house and a small music venue, which has hosted emerging talent since 1954 - including Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Costello. In 2009 Les Routiers UK gave The Troubadour their Best UK Cafe Award.

Earls Court Village is the centre of the Filipino British community, where it has a number of Asian restaurants, Filipino supermarkets (many of which also serve take-away food), and Filipino banks.

The area is also home to the UK's only real-life "TARDIS", so called because it resembles The Doctor's time machine in the BBC television series Doctor Who. The blue police box located outside Earls Court underground station in Earls Court Road is actually a modern day replica of the traditional GPO police signalboxes that were once a common sight in the UK until the early 1970s. Used as a kind of specialised telephone kiosk for policemen on their "beat", the boxes were eventually phased out with the introduction of personal radios in the police force.