Named after Kensington, the homestead of a Saxon called Chenesi or Cynesige.
Kensington appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Chenesitone. The station, opened in 1868, stands where the old village of Brompton was centred; its name came from ‘broom tun’, a gorse farm. The railway called the station South Kensington, not Brompton, and the new name spread over the district; Brompton lives on in Old Brompton Road.