“The Beggars Roost” plaque comes home to Kingsbury

Guest post by Philip Grant, local historian

Thirteen months ago I posed the question ‘Where was “The Beggars Roost”?’ in a local history guest blog LINK. I was writing about a photograph I had been sent by a lady in Nashville, Tennessee, of a hand-painted coat of arms she had bought in a charity shop there. It appeared to have been created for Wembley’s A.R.P. (Air Raid Precaution) Warden Post 12 during the Second World War.

I still don’t know exactly where Post 12 was located, or why it was named “The Beggars Roost”, but further research has suggested that it was probably somewhere in the Roe Green area of Kingsbury (though not in Roe Green Village itself, whose wardens had Post 11). However, last summer an amazing piece of generosity happened – Cheryl, who had bought the plaque for her own home, decided that its proper place was back in Wembley, so that people here could see and enjoy the coat of arms in its historical context. 

Cheryl donated the plaque to Brent Museum, and it now forms the centrepiece of a small exhibition which has just opened at Kingsbury Library:

A.R.P. – Wembley’s Air Raid Wardens in the Second World War.

For the past few months I have been working with Alison, a Brent Museum volunteer, and Museum staff, to put this exhibition together. It includes objects and pictures from the Brent collections, and some loaned by fellow Wembley History Society members, and tells the story of Wembley’s A.R.P. Service (wardens, first aid and rescue teams) from 1938 to 1945.

It is a story of thousands of local men and women who gave their time, and in some cases their lives, to help protect their neighbours from German bombing raids. 

This was a very difficult period in our history, and one that those of us born after 1945, including young people to whom it is just something that happened long ago, could benefit from understanding better. Residents whose families have come to our area in recent decades, sometimes from countries which themselves have suffered war, could also see that people here have had that experience too. One of the air raids that the A.R.P. Service had to deal with, and which is pictured in the exhibition, happened within sight of Kingsbury Library.

The exhibition will be on display every day, during library opening hours, until around the end of May 2018. I will be giving a “coffee morning” talk, linked with the exhibition, at Kingsbury Library (522-524 Kingsbury Road, London NW9) on Tuesday 24 April, 11am to 12noon.

I hope that you will take the opportunity to visit Kingsbury Library, to enjoy one or both events. This is the official Brent poster for them:

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For anyone who would like to know more about this subject, but won't be able to attend Philip's talk on 24 April, there is an online local history article available on the Brent Archives website LINK

Where was “The Beggars Roost”? – a Wembley mystery

Many thanks to Philip Grant for this fascinating guest blog. My late older brother, David, had a lifelong passion for motorbikes that probably started with the 'Wembley Lions.

 

You were probably living in Wembley during the Second World War, more than seventy years ago, or have talked to someone who was, if you can answer this question. But even if neither applies to you, you may still be interested to know why I am asking.

I deal with email local history enquiries on behalf of Wembley History Society, and they sometimes set some fascinating puzzles. One arrived recently from a lady in the United States. She was looking around a Goodwill store (charity shop), and saw a very attractive coat of arms, hand-painted on a wooden plaque. She bought it, took it home, and then began to wonder what it was, and the story behind it.

The name “Wembley” was almost certainly a place, and she found out that the letters “ARP” stood for Air Raid Precautions, in Britain during the Second World War. By searching online, she discovered that there was someone she could contact who might know more about the history of Wembley at that time, so she sent me a photo of her plaque.

A.R.P. Post 12 Plaque, from Cheryl Hutton

 I have no doubt that this home-made coat of arms came from “our” Wembley, as the lion in the top right quarter is copied from the badge of the “Wembley Lions” motorcycle speedway team. They were based at Wembley Stadium, and were hugely popular during the 1930’s, when they were national champions several times. 
 

The blue and yellow quarter below it shows an air raid warden’s helmet, gas mask and rattle, so there can be little doubt that the plaque was first made for, and probably displayed at, ARP Post 12, in Sector 8 / 9 of the Borough of Wembley. But where was this, and why did the wardens call their base ‘the Beggars Roost”? Is the chicken (or “rooster”) a clue, and who is the beggar above it on the plaque? I don’t know, and would certainly welcome any information that readers, or anyone they can forward this article to who might be able to help, could provide.

Eighty years ago the Borough of Wembley was a separate local government area, with a population of just over 100,000 people. Even before the war, the local Council was making A.R.P plans, and starting to build public air raid shelters, in response to the threat from Germany. After war broke out, a full-scale air raid wardens service was mobilised, which at its height had 2,500 wardens, 95% of them unpaid volunteers. 

I know, from an elderly neighbour (the son of a warden), that the A.R.P. post for our 1930's-built estate was in the requisitioned garage of a local bungalow. His father was one of the first on the scene when a German "parachute mine" hit a row of shops in Kingsbury Road one night in September 1940, killing two mothers, a baby boy and a seven year old girl, in the flats above. This is an official "war damage" photo of the scene, taken the following day, which shows the sort of event that the wardens had to deal with (thankfully, not too often!).

Bombed shops and flats in Kingsbury Road, 1940

As well as the A.R.P. wardens, first aid and rescue teams were also organised. After the bombing raids started in earnest, in August 1940, nearly all civilians had to undertake "fire watching" duties (around 7,500 of the c. 9,000 bombs which fell in the Wembley area between 1940 and 1945 were incendiaries), so around 25,000 Wembley people in total were engaged in some form of Civil Defence work during the war. The Borough lost 149 civilians killed in air raids, including several A.R.P. wardens, with over 400 more seriously injured.

The “Beggars Roost” plaque, which somehow found its way to the U.S.A. after the war, is a reminder that the bombing of civilians, horrible as it is, is not just something that happens in far-away places like Syria or Yemen. It happened in Wembley as well, and the volunteer men and women of A.R.P. Post 12, and others like it, did their best to protect their neighbours from such atrocities. I hope that, perhaps with your help, I can find out more about them.

Philip Grant.