The Wembley Elm – why is it special?

Guest post by Philip Grant

I agree with Martin’s comment, in his blog about the Marriage Garden willow LINK, that ‘trees are too often an undervalued part of our local heritage’. His article jogged my memory about an unresolved local history enquiry that I received last year about “the Wembley Elm”. I wonder whether “Wembley Matters” readers can help to solve the mystery around why this particular tree is special?

“The Wembley Elm”,

outside the former Greyhound pub,
at the junction of Oakington Manor Drive and Harrow Road.

Elm trees have been part of Wembley’s history for centuries, and have left their legacy in place names around our area. Hundred Elms Farm in Sudbury existed in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and may even have belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury before her father, King Henry VIII seized their local lands in the 1540’s. An avenue of elm trees is shown leading to the farm, across Sudbury Common, in a mid-18^th century map, and Elms Lane still survives as a local street today, between the Harrow Road and Sudbury Court Road.

An extract from John Rocque’s  1746 map
 of London and environs,  showing

Hundred Elms Farm and the avenue of elm trees.

The Read family were tenant farmers in Wembley from Tudor times, and Brent Archives holds some of the family’s farm and personal records from the mid-18^th century onwards. At various times they farmed land at Wembley Hill and around East Lane, but one of the main family homes was at Elm Tree Farm, in Blind Lane near its junction with Wembley Hill Road. Just before the First World War, part of the land they rented was sold off to Wembley Urban District Council, to create King Edward VII Park, with Blind Lane renamed Park Lane. When the rest of their farmland was earmarked for housing development, the Reads sold off their livestock and machinery in 1922, and emigrated to Australia.

  

Elm Tree Farm, Park Lane, in the 1920’s.
 [A painting by Norah Parker, in the Wembley
History Society Collection at Brent Museum]

A hundred years ago the elm was a common sight around Wembley, often growing as tall individual trees in hedgerows. During the First World War a local architect, Ernest Trobridge, studied the properties of its timber, which was soft and easy to work when first cut, but really solid within two months when it had seasoned. He developed the compressed green wood construction system, using the abundant supplies of elm wood (many hedgerows were being removed to widen roads for motor traffic) to build cheap and comfortable “homes for heroes” from 1920 onwards. His Elmwood Estate in Kingsbury was one such development, and although Elmwood Crescent still exists, only four of the original elm-built houses from it survive in Stag Lane. If you would like to discover more about Ernest Trobridge and his work, Brent Archives has an online local history article about him LINK.

Rose Cottage in Stag Lane, Kingsbury, one of the surviving Ernest Trobridge houses from the Elmwood Estate, built 1922-1924.

The English Elm (Ulmus procera) was still a widespread feature of the landscape until the 1970’s, when millions of its trees were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease (caused by a fungus spread by elm bark beetles). You can still find young elm saplings in Fryent Country Park, growing through suckering from the roots of old trees, but the disease kills off the trees before they can reach maturity. That may be one reason why the mature “Wembley Elm” is special, and the man who wrote with the enquiry about it has said it is an unusual species of elm (Ulmus laevis) - the European white elm - which is rare in this country. However, the main reason for the query is the plaque set into the paving beside it:-

“The Wembley Elm” plaque.

The plaque, put here by the London Tree Forum (if it still exists, I can’t find it on the internet), states: ‘The Wembley Elm, one of the great trees of London, has been a focal meeting point since 1900.’ What I am trying to find out is when this particular tree was first known as “the Wembley Elm”, why it was considered so important and why it became ‘a focal meeting point.’

In 1900, the tree, if it existed, would have been near the edge of a farmer’s field. After the Great Central Railway opened a branch line through Wembley Hill in 1906 (with a station now known as Wembley Stadium), these fields were to become the Wembley Hill Garden Suburb. Planned in 1913, its first roads and houses appeared in 1914/15, but the rest of the homes on this estate were built between the early 1920's and mid-1930's.

A 1914 advertisement for homes in

the Wembley Hill Garden Suburb
(surrounded by beautiful country /
 12 minutes from Marylebone)

From the size of “the Wembley Elm”, it is thought to be at least 80 years old, but it seems unlikely that it was a significant tree as early as 1900. As it is a rare elm species in England, it may have been planted to mark a special occasion, perhaps the opening of Oakington Manor Drive (the first main street laid out in the garden suburb, although the varieties planted along it were mainly lime and white beam trees), which it stands at the entrance to.

As the tree is outside “The Greyhound”, it might have been part of the landscaping for this landmark pub, which opened in 1929. The licence for the pub was transferred from “The Greyhound” in High Street on Wembley Hill, which began life as a beer shop in 1810, but was too small for the crowds who came to events at Wembley Stadium, and was demolished when the new pub opened. Perhaps it was for F.A. Cup final crowds that “the Wembley Elm” became ‘a focal meeting point’!

Crowds outside the old “Greyhound”
in High Street, for the first Wembley
F.A. Cup Final in April 1923.

If you have any information which might throw some light on the history of “the Wembley Elm” and why it is special, please include this in a comment below. Thank you.

Philip Grant