Earl’s Court as I first remember it was where Australian travellers found a cheap bed for the night. It was also the place to go for beers with unfamiliar labels, and bags of kiwi fruit, a rare delicacy in the 1980s. And at a time when Neighbours was riding high in the TV ratings there was fun to be had eavesdropping on conversations littered with ‘fair dinkum’ and ‘strewth’.

There are some troubling details: skyscrapers being built in a largely low-rise Victorian neighbourhood and the way streets at the perimeter of the site will be overlooked and overshadowed

Older generations will remember earlier waves of immigrants. There were the Polish soldiers who were resettled there after the second world war and set up shops, cafes and clubs. There were also new arrivals from Commonwealth nations, including V.S. Naipaul. His semi-autobiographical novel The Enigma of Arrival describes a discomfiting stay in a down at heel Earl’s Court guest house in 1950, surrounded by ‘drifters from many countries of Europe and North Africa’.

Others might remember visiting the Ideal Home Exhibition, which astonished postwar Britain by showing off the first fitted kitchens, vacuum cleaners and teasmades, or the annual Motor Show, which ran from 1903 to 2008. The Art Deco exhibition centre built in 1937 also became a landmark of the British music scene – during the 1970s you could have caught the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie or Queen performing.

Things were going rather well for this busy, affordable and slightly seedy part of west London until the start of the 21st century. The exhibition centre, sinking amid a sea of competition from more modern venues, was........

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