90 years ago my Uncle Ron lamented the loss of trees in Honeypot Lane

 

Honeypot Lane (Centre) 1923

 

 

Honeypot Lane beginning to be built up (1935)

When he was 18, my maternal Uncle Ronald (Jefferies) lived with the family in Church Drive, Kingsbury, having only recently moved from Peckham. They all enjoyed what remained of the countryside around Kingsbury, my mother often reminded us when we said we were bored that she used to jump over the ditches of the Welsh Harp and urge us to get off out from under her feet. My Aunt Muriel worked at Bush Farm in Kingsbury during World War 2 and she and my mother kept a pair of goats in the garage of their Crundale Avenue home!

 

When a child my mother looked up to her big brother Ron who tried to educate her about Shakespeare, poetry and music and he clearly made a big impact. He later joined the Communist Party and as an ETU shop steward was indirectly involved in the 1961 controversy LINK.

 

Back in 1935 he was a romantic teenager and on Saturday 15th February wrote a poem about Honeypot Lane that was then undergoing development that seems to have involved the loss of woodland. It is a fairly typical teenage poem (I have some embarrassing examples of my own) but captures a moment of change in our area  that I thought was worth sharing:

 

Ronald Wilfred Jefferies

 

Thanks to Philip Grant for this photograph of Honeypot Lane probably taken around the time of Ron's poem.

 

The Lane

I mourn the loss dearest friend,

No more happy ways I wend,

Amidst thy green and shaded grove, 

Men will execute and move, 

What God gave for their delight,

And put instead an ugly sight,

 

The wind thunders in my ears,

It confirms, trees all they fears. 

'Tis the crack of doom for thee.

Gaunt fingers upraised you plea,

To a grey and windswept sky,

But all in void, for you must die,

 

As they shine through boughs and leaves, 

Moonlight or sunlight magic weaves,

A fairy web along the lane,

Shadows I'll never see again.

Farewell! Around another bend,

Perhaps there lurks some new friend.

 

Ronald Jefferies 

 

1976 - not currently available

 

The volume above contains some background on Honeypot Lane  LINK

 

There is something incredibly rural and homely about the name 'Honeypot Lane' and yet, in the late 20th century, it is an unsuitable and incongruous title for a highway which includes a dual carriageway for part of its length and many factory buildings along its eastern flank.

One explanation for its unusual name was given in Volume 3 but a reader has reminded us that there is at least one other probable reason for the 'Honeypot' title.  There was, and still is, an old country saying, "Stuck like bees on a honeypot", when referring to the effects of a strong adhesive.  Villagers used this expression when describing Honeypot Lane during wet weather, at which times the sticky nature of the moist clay made it almost impassable.  This theory is supported by the existence of another lane of the same name in Alperton, where similar conditions prevailed.

The history of this old lane stretches back over aeons of time; it has been trodden by the feet of armies, robbers and labourers - and even earlier by the Druids and possibly Stone Age men.  It was a brief stage on the long route which connected Dover with Brockley Hill, before continuing on to Holyhead.

It is quite an awe-inspiring thought when one considers that this route, which was once a path, then a track and later a lane, had altered very little in concept for more than two thousand years - until suddenly, in the late 1930s, the whole scene began to change radically.  Put another way, it means that the last forty years in which it has adopted the modern motor highway image represents less than one fiftieth of its known existence.

An interesting aspect of this revelation is that many residents who are not very much beyond the stage of middle age can clearly remember the old Honeypot Lane, which was alternately grassy and muddy, depending upon the season - and even with the advent of the 1930s - was still unmade.  One resident described it as a "one cart track.  Two carts could not pass unless the driver of one opened a gate and backed into a field".

The only signs of civilisation in its entire length were a few isolated cottages (four of which, namely Marsh Cottages, still remain near the 'Green Man'), a sewage farm and an isolation hospital, which later changed its function to that of a maternity centre.

The public house near the junction with Whitchurch Lane was built in the late 1930s but the previous establishment was more commonly known to the local residents as the 'Hog and Donkey'.  Other long-standing public houses in the Lane are The Queen of Hearts' and 'The Honeypot'.

 

Honeypot Lane 2021

 

John Betjeman, of course,  wrote nostalgically about Middlesex LINK:

Dear Middlesex,

Dear vanished country friend.

Your neighbour, London,

Killed you in the end. 

 But I wonder if anyone has written poetry about the more recent changes in Wembley Park, Northwick Park or Alperton? 

  

 

 

 

Edwards Yard – a name that’s part of Alperton’s heritage: let's retain it

Guest post by Philip Grant

 

One of the large schemes approved at Brent’s Planning Committee meeting in February 2021 was for a mixed-use redevelopment of the Abbey Manufacturing Estate and Edwards Yard, at Mount Pleasant in Alperton. I’ve since found out how Edwards Yard got its name. This is the story behind it, and the reason why that name should be retained in the new development.

 

1.   Aerial impression of the Abbey Estate development. (From application 20/3156 drawings, with notes added)

 

My quest began when I was seeking information about another Alperton business, Cousland & Browne, to help answer a local history query I’d received. They had been timber merchants, beside the canal. One of the answers I received was from Diane, whose father used to deliver timber for them. She remembered, along with her mother, going in the lorry with him all the way to Saundersfoot in Wales, on one of those trips in the late 1950s.

 

2.   Cousland & Browne advert. (From Curley’s Directory of Wembley. 1956)

 

The Paddington branch of the Grand Junction (now Grand Union) Canal opened in 1801. It cut its way through the village of Alperton, and helped bring lots of trade and small canal side industries to this mainly rural part of Middlesex. Bricks, gravel and hay were sent into London, while rubbish and other waste products were brought out to be processed. The boiling of food waste to feed the pigs at three farms, and the manufacture of oil and manure from fish refuse meant that Alperton had a smelly reputation in late Victorian times! 

 

3.   A busy canal wharf at Alperton, 1923. (From Geoffrey Hewlett’s “Wembley”)

 

Diane’s grandfather, John William Edwards, was born in Wembley in 1869. By the early 1900s he was employed as the farm bailiff at Clyde Vale Farm. He lived in Alperton Cottage, at the eastern end of Honeypot Lane (later renamed Mount Pleasant), where the rear entrance to Lyon Park School is now. He and his wife had a number of children, including Diane’s father, David, who was born in the cottage in 1909.

 

By the early 1920s, John Edwards was trading as a haulage contractor. His sons Albert, Henry and David joined him in what became the family business of J. Edwards & Sons. At first it was horse-drawn carts, and as well as general haulage the jobs they took on included delivering materials to Wembley Park, for construction of the Empire Stadium and some of the British Empire Exhibition buildings.

4.  J. Edwards & Sons horse and cart, 1920s.

 

In 1923, the sports equipment manufacturers, Charles Webber & Co, had purchased a 5-acre site in Honeypot Lane, formerly the Alperton Park brickfields. The following year they sold a plot of land to John Edwards, as he needed a larger base for his business. The rest of the Webber’s land became the Abbey Trading Estate.

 

Edwards built a house, with stables for 11 horses in a yard behind it, in 1925. “Meadow View”, soon to be addressed as 122 Mount Pleasant, was beside a row of workers’ cottages built by Alperton’s Victorian entrepreneur, Henry Haynes. In 1931, John Edwards bought more land behind the cottages, creating the site which has been known as Edwards Yard ever since. 

 

5.   John with one of his horses at Edwards Yard, 1930s.

 

The extra land was used to build garages for the firm’s growing number of lorries. The family home, where John Edwards lived for the rest of his life, was also where the business was run from. A sign on the front of the house read:

 

Meadow View
J Edwards & Sons
Motor & Horse Transport Contractors
Phone Wembley 1922

6.   John Edwards with one of his sons, sitting on the running board of a lorry, 1930s.

 

The rapid expansion of suburban estate building in Wembley and surrounding areas, from the mid-1920s onwards, meant that J Edwards & Sons were rarely short of work. John Edwards finally retired from the business in 1943, gifting it and the yard to his three sons. After the end of the war their lorries were busy, both with general haulage work and clearing of bomb-damaged sites.

 

Henry Edwards retired from the partnership in 1954. As not all of the yard was still needed, some of the garage buildings were rented to other small businesses. David was left running the business by himself once Albert retired in 1963. He kept on transporting goods and clearing rubbish from local factories, with several lorries and a couple of employed drivers, until he retired in 1967 and the haulage business ceased. After that, all of Edwards Yard was let out to small businesses, many of which operated from there for decades.

 

7.   An artist’s view of the Abbey Estate development, with the potential new Edwards Yard on the left.
(From planning application 20/3156 drawings)

 

The yard stayed in the ownership of the Edwards family until it was finally sold to Zedhomes Limited in 2019. Now Diane has asked the developer to retain the Edwards name as part of the new development. A block of four houses is planned to be built on the site of the old yard. Edwards Yard would be an ideal name for these, to remember a place that has been a part of Alperton’s heritage for nearly 100 years!

Philip Grant (with thanks to Diane for the information and Edwards family photos).