The Chalkhill Estate that never was!

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

1. Cover of the January 1963 Wembley Borough Council booklet.

 

When I wrote an illustrated article, “Chalkhill – 1,000 years of history”, in 2012, I was aware of three versions of the Chalkhill Estate, dating from the 1920s, late 1960s and early 2000s. I recently became aware of plans for a different renewal of the Chalkhill Estate, drawn up by Wembley Borough Council and published in January 1963. Although these plans for the Chalkhill and Barnhill Roads Redevelopment Area were overtaken following the creation of the London Borough of Brent in 1965, I think that readers may be interested to see what might have been!

 

Why was Wembley’s Borough Engineer and Surveyor considering the redevelopment of a private housing estate which had been laid out just over forty years earlier? He was responding to guidance issued by the then Conservative Government’s Minister of Housing and Local Government, Henry Brooke, in 1960:-

 

2. The “National Policy” paragraphs from the opening section of the January 1963 booklet.

 

Planning permissions for most of the suburban housing developments in Wembley and Kingsbury from the late 1920s and 1930s had specified housing densities of eight or ten homes per acre. The “Metroland” Chalkhill Estate was probably chosen as the area for Wembley’s first response to this call for ‘redevelopment at higher densities’ because its individual building plots had been sold off at sizes from a quarter of an acre upwards (with many homes there on half acre or one-acre plots). The grounds of “The Shalimar” at 43 Chalkhill Road were large enough for garden parties to be held there, as I’d discovered when I shared the remarkable story of “Ram Singh Nehra - a Wembley Indian in the 1930s” in 2021! By the 1960s, different builders had already started buying up properties there with large gardens for possible redevelopment. 

 

3. An early 1920s advert for building plots on the Metropolitan Railway’s Chalk Hill Estate.

 

From the mid-1920s onwards the Government had required local Councils to draw up a Development Plan for their area, which had to be approved by a Minister. Wembley’s outline amended proposals for the Chalkhill area had already been agreed by Whitehall:

 

4. An extract from the Redevelopment Area booklet, and 5. ‘the plan attached’ to it.

 

Under the proposed plan, the area would remain residential, with mainly low-rise homes, although with the possibility for up to three “tall” blocks of flats (no more than 11 storeys – compare that to Wembley Park today!) close to the station. Existing trees would be ‘preserved wherever possible’, and there would be good ‘pedestrian access through the area affording safe, convenient and attractive footways towards shops, transport and other public facilities.’ As more families then had cars, each development would ‘be provided with adequate parking spaces for motor vehicles.’

 

6. Paragraph about the types of homes from the Redevelopment Area booklet.

 

 

7. The key to the Redevelopment Area map.

 

Traffic problems in the Chalkhill neighbourhood were also addressed in the Redevelopment Area proposals. One of the most radical ideas was to make a short section of Chalkhill Road, nearest to Wembley Park station, a cul-de-sac, and to include a multi-storey car park there for station users and the shops in Bridge Road, with some new shops opposite.

 

8. Paragraph about fixing the through-traffic problem from the Redevelopment Area booklet.

 

 

9. Extract from the Redevelopment Area map with proposals for the western end of Chalkhill Road.

 

What had been the next section of Chalkhill Road would have become green open space under the proposals, with footpaths across it leading to Barnhill Road and the remaining part of Chalkhill Road. Having blocked the through-traffic “rat run”, the new main entrance to the estate would be from Forty Lane, opposite the Town Hall steps, running straight down to curve into Barnhill Road. New housing along the Forty Lane frontage would be set back from the main road, and accessed from service roads.

 

10. Extract from the Redevelopment Area map showing the new access from Forty Lane,

 

The Redevelopment Area proposals recognised that the higher density of homes on the estate would lead to a larger local population, with the Borough Surveyor writing: ‘A residential neighbourhood, if it is to include the means of satisfying the needs of its inhabitants, should contain adequate religious, education and social activities.’ One of the needs identified was for a new Primary School, and another was for a park. Although the exact locations for these could not be settled, the proposals recommended reserving land for these facilities between Barnhill Road and the Metropolitan railway lines.

 

11. Possible sites for a school and park on the Redevelopment Area map.

 

Chalkhill Primary School was built on part of this “reserved land” in Barnhill Road, with the infants’ section finished by the end of 1970, and the primary school fully open by 1972. However, residents had to wait until 2013 for the opening of Chalkhill Park!

 

Another of the proposals by which ‘the tendency for traffic to use residential roads for through travel will be stopped, and the obstruction of Blackbird Hill [and Bridge Road] by right-turning traffic will be avoided’, was ‘the connection of Chalkhill Road and Barnhill Road near the site of the proposed Catholic Church.’ How this was originally proposed, compared with what was actually constructed, can be seen on these maps:

 

12. Extract from the Redevelopment Area map and the modern Google Maps satellite view.

 

The two roads were connected via Ken Way, and Chalkhill Road was diverted round what became the site for the church, closing off a junction which was too close to the Blackbird Cross intersection. When the new English Martyrs’ Roman Catholic Church was built in 1969/70, to replace a temporary wooden church in Chalkhill Road which had opened in 1930, it was not the traditional rectangular shape shown on the 1963 map, but a beautiful modern round design.

 

13. English Martyrs’ R.C. Church under construction in 1969, and seen from Blackbird Hill
across the former Chalkhill Road junction in 2013.

 

Wembley Borough Council did not envisage building this new Chalkhill Estate itself. Instead, it set out its Redevelopment Area proposals as an overall guide for private developers of the principles it wanted to see applied by them in putting forward individual plans, which would work together over time to form a cohesive well-designed estate. This was explained in the booklet’s final section:

 

14. The final “Summary” paragraph from the Redevelopment Area booklet.

 

“Speculators” had already been buying up properties with large gardens, suitable for the what the Council proposals suggested as ‘satisfactory redevelopment units of not less than four acres’. One such planned development was already in the pipeline, and in the same month that the booklet was published this was the local newspaper’s front page story:

 

15. Headline about the start of Chalkhill’s “New Town”, 18 January 1963.

 

I’m not sure which development on the site of six houses the “Wembley News” article was referring to (possibly Windsor Crescent?), and if you know please share that information as a comment below. Clearly a start was made on the Wembley Borough Council Redevelopment Area scheme, but it did not get very far before Brent Council came into being in April 1965, and decided to build its own Chalkhill Estate!

 

16. An aerial view of Brent’s newly completed Chalkhill Estate, 1970. (Courtesy of Barbara Phillips)

 

Looking at the area now, you could believe that this late-1960s development was “the Chalkhill Estate that never was”, as the concrete “Bison” blocks of flats were demolished from 1997 onwards, to make way for another version of Chalkhill. But I hope this look at an alternative 1960s vision of the estate has provided an interesting piece of local history for you.

 

Philip Grant.

 

Acknowledgement: The late Geoff Hoggett worked in the Chalkhill area in the 1960s, and at some point acquired a slightly muddy copy of the Redevelopment Area booklet and plan. His interest in local history caused him to save them, and they were found by his daughter, Julia, rolled up in a cardboard tube, after his death. I’m grateful to her for sending them to me, so that I could share this story with you.