Showing posts with label Kingsbury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kingsbury. Show all posts

Saturday 10 February 2024

Some history events in Brent which may be of interest!

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant 

 

Passport of Lotte Rosendahl, issued in 1939. [The Jawne Team / Courtesy of Yael Nemenoff]

 

There is a variety of history events taking place locally over the next month or so, which you may not have heard or read about. Martin has kindly agreed that I can share the details with you, so that you can make the most of what is on offer, if they are of interest to you.

 

Already on, in the family space at Willesden Green Library, is a small exhibition which opened on Holocaust Memorial Day called "Kindertransport Children in Willesden". It tells the stories of some of the around 10,000 unaccompanied children who were brought to this country to escape the growing Nazi threat to Jews in German-controlled lands in 1938-39. The passport pictured above was issued to one of them. This exhibition is only available to view until 28 February.

 

 

Also taking place at Willesden Green Library, in the Exhibition Gallery on the second floor from Monday 19 February, is a major Brent Museum / Learning through the Arts exhibition: “The Road to Freedom – Ending Slavery in Britain”. This free exhibition will be on until the beginning of September (but if you go in the opening week, you can also see the Kindertransport exhibition in the same visit!).

 

It is only 190 years ago that slavery was finally abolished throughout the British Empire. I wrote about the inhuman stain of slavery (and the indentured labour which followed it) on our history, in an article last month about why we should commemorate the centenary of the British Empire Exhibition

 

The title of Nabil Al-Kinani’s talk on Friday 16 February.


 

As part of that commemoration, Wembley History Society is welcoming Nabil Al-Kinani, to share a different perspective at its meeting on Friday 16 February at 7.30pm. Nabil’s talk, on “Decolonising Wembley” will explore the legacy of the 1924 Exhibition, examining the attitudes of the time, and asking whether the 21st Century developments in the Wembley Park area reflect a more modern and sensitive take on our post-colonial world. Visitors are welcome, for a small charge, at the Society’s meetings, which take place at St Andrew’s Church Hall, Church Lane, Kingsbury, NW9 8RZ.

 

Liam MacCarthy, and the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

 

One country which had recently been given semi-independent Dominion status, within the British Empire, in the early 1920s was the Irish Free State. Two men, whose names are now remembered through sporting trophies, for hurling and Gaelic football, are the subject of a much-anticipated talk at Willesden Green Library, on Thursday 14 March at 6.30pm. One was born in London, to Irish parents, while the other came to work here as a Civil Servant, and both were heavily involved in the capital’s branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Marcus Howard’s talk on “Liam MacCarthy and Sam Maguire: The Forgotten Sons of Ireland” will look at their political, as well as their sporting activities. You can find more details and reserve your free place for this talk on this Brent Libraries, Arts and Heritage Eventbrite page.

 

Sam Maguire (centre, with ball), captain of the London Hibernians Gaelic football team, 1903.

 

If you missed the premier of the film “Brent Women of Renown” last November, there is another chance to see it at a Willesden Local History Society meeting on Wednesday 20 March at 7.30pm. The three women featured are Kilburn suffragette Violet Doudney, aviator Amy Johnson and Dame Stephanie Shirley, who came to Britain as a five-year old Kindertransport child, and grew up to become a mathematician and pioneer computer engineer at the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill.

 

Amy Johnson working at Stag Lane Aerodrome, early 1930.

 

The film will be presented by its producer Angela Payne, and director Amanda Epe, who will also talk about the Cricklewood Town Team project which led to its creation. The meeting takes place at St Mary's Parish Centre, Neasden Lane, NW10 2TS. Non-members of the Society will be welcome to attend, for a small charge.

 

Car bodies under construction at Kingsbury Works in 1924.

 

The last event I will mention is a free illustrated local history talk which I will be giving myself, at a Kingsbury Library coffee morning on Tuesday 26 March at 11am. Kingsbury is now seen as a mainly residential area, but during the First World War its rural fields provided space for several aircraft factories. “Kingsbury Works, 1915 to 1980” tells the story of one of these (with lots of pictures!), and how the buildings there developed after they were taken over by Vanden Plas coachbuilders in 1923.

 

A 1935 Kingsbury-built Bentley limousine, which went on a sales tour around India.

 

Since I first gave this talk online during lockdown, I’ve found out even more about Kingsbury Works, and gathered many more illustrations, so I am looking forward to sharing this version at a Brent Libraries event. The most recent addition to my information is the site’s association with vampires (but no need to send for Buffy)! You can find more details, and book your free place for this talk, on the Eventbrite page for it.


 

Philip Grant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 7 February 2024

Spring flowers and rubbish in the historic Old St Andrew's churchyard

 


I always enjoy a stroll through Old St Andrew's churchyard in Kingsbury at this time of year as the first signs of Spring emerge. Naturalised snowdrops and crocuses mix with lesser celandine and the first leaves of bluebells.

The flowers  had lifted my heart but the amount of litter was truly depressing: beer cans, plastic bottles, fast food packaging  and items of clothing were everywhere, even on the less walked paths. Full black plastic bags of rubbish were thrown into the undergrowth and as you can see below even furniture had been discarded.

Walkers on the Capital Ring often take a detour to see Old St Andrew's Church, Brent's oldest buiding and Grade 1 listed. 

It is not just the churchyard that suffers there is also regular fly-tipping in the shrubbery outside the Riverside care home and on the verge opposite the Welsh Harp Sailing Club on Birchen Grove. People in cars parked along the road adjacent to the allotments in the evening leave fast food packaging, cans tissues and even used condoms.


 




Wednesday 20 September 2023

A Musical Journey along the Danube – at St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, Saturday 23 September at 7pm

 

Following on from its successful Heritage Open Day last Saturday, St Andrew’s Church in Kingsbury is opening its doors to the local community again next Saturday evening, for a concert. The Magic Violin String Trio and Mihajlo Stojanov Gruen will be performing music from along the River Danube, “From Vienna towards the Black Sea”.

Tickets are £10 each, either in advance on Eventbrite or at the door, and the proceeds will go towards the restoration of the beautiful Victorian building you will be sitting in as you enjoy the music. The concert begins at 19:00hrs (7pm), and you can find out more and book tickets via the Rekindling St Andrews website.

Saturday 9 September 2023

Heritage Open Day at St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, on Saturday 16th September 10am - 4pm

 


 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

St Andrew’s Church, in Church Lane, Kingsbury, is inviting residents and visitors to a Heritage Open Day on Saturday 16 September, as part of its Rekindling St Andrew’s project. The beautiful Grade II* listed “new church” building, with its magnificent interior decoration by top Victorian artists and craftspeople, will be open to explore between 10am and 4pm. The Grade I listed “old church” will also be open, but inspection of the inside will only be available from 10am until 12 noon.

 


A watercolour sketch of St Andrew’s Church, in 1810 (when it was already around 700 years old!)
(Source: Brent Archives, Naimaster Collection)

 

There is a programme of events taking place during the Heritage Open Day, as listed on the programme below. I don’t think booking is essential for the talks / tours, which are all free, but if you do book it would guarantee your place, if more people turn up for it than can be safely accommodated. More details and bookings can be found here.

 


I am leading the first event, Old St Andrew’s Church, which is a short, illustrated talk in the “new church” followed by a guided visit to Old St Andrew’s, just a short walk away. If you would care to join me at 10.20am next Saturday morning, to discover the history of this fascinating building (Brent’s oldest), you will be very welcome! The other events will be equally interesting and informative.


Philip Grant.

 

Saturday 1 July 2023

Fun, stalls and activities at Open Day at St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, on Saturday 8th July 11am - 4pm

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant 

 


 

As part of its Rekindling St Andrew’s project, the whole community is invited to come and enjoy an Open Day at St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, next Saturday 8 July. 

 

There will be lots of activities for adults and children, music and a barbeque. There will also be community tables, where you can talk to people who know about things like the environment and local history, and discover more about these and other subjects.

 


 

Best of all is the chance to explore the inside of this beautiful Grade II* listed heritage building and find out more about how it started life in the 1840s in Central London, and was moved to Kingsbury in the 1930s. The work of some of the best artists and craftsmen of Victorian times is on show as you walk around the inside of the church, something that anyone can appreciate, whatever their faith, or of none. You may even hear the bells!

 

St Andrew’s Church, Church Lane, Kingsbury. (Photo by Des Blenkinsopp)

 

It’s free to come along to this Open Day, between 11am and 4pm, so I hope to see you there. I will be at the Wembley History Society table for much of the day (probably in the hall behind the main church building) if you have any local history questions you would like to ask.


Philip Grant.

 

Editor's note: And I will be on the Brent Friends of the Earth stall come and say hello.

Saturday 18 March 2023

Ernest Trobridge – Kingsbury’s Extraordinary Architect: Kingsbury Library, Tuesday 28 March

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

Title slide from the talk.

 

Back in February 2020, I wrote about an exhibition of this name which had opened at Kingsbury Library. I was meant to give a talk in conjunction with that display, but then Covid happened! Three years later, and I’m finally able to resume giving free local history talks for Brent Libraries, and at last local residents will have the chance to see my illustrated presentation about Ernest Trobridge, and his remarkable legacy of architectural designs.

 

3 & 5 Buck Lane, Kingsbury.

 

Who else would have thought the answer to providing comfortable and affordable “homes for heroes” after the First World War was to construct them of local timber, and give them thatched roofs? Trobridge didn’t just think it, he developed and patented a method of doing so, and built them.

 

Then, in the 1930s, he took the idea that “an Englishman’s home is his castle” to new dimensions. But as well as helping the occupants of his castle flats to feel protected, he gave them comfortable homes with a variety of convenient features. The central turret of this “castle”, at the corner of Buck Lane and Highfield Avenue, conceals the chimneys from bedroom fireplaces, while the battlements to either side are part of the deckchair cupboards on their roof gardens!

 

The front entrance to the upstairs flats at Highfort Court, Kingsbury.

 

My talk will take place at a Kingsbury Library Coffee Morning, on Tuesday 28 March from 11am to 12noon. This is a free event, but if you would like to attend, Brent Culture Service ask you to book on their Eventbrite page for “Ernest Trobridge – Kingsbury’s Extraordinary Architect” (I think this is so that they know how many people they need to provide coffee, or tea, and biscuits for!)

 

I’ve been looking forward to sharing this talk with local residents for more than three years (although I have been lucky enough to have had some extra pictures from 100 years ago shared with me in the meantime, which have found their way into the 2023 version). If you are interested in discovering more about the man behind Kingsbury’s cottages and castles, I look forward to you joining me for the talk on 28 March.

 

Philip Grant.

Thursday 22 December 2022

Burst main in Fryent Way cuts off water supplies in parts of Kingsbury and Wembley - repair now completed

 

 

Affinity Water informed customers registered with its text service  early this morning that following a mains burst in Fryent Way, Kingsbury that water had been cut off. The repairs team is has been working at the site and had repaired by about 12.15pm when I visited the site. Seemed to be a great working relationship with the foreman fist bumping the repair gang as they completed the repair and started to fill in the hole with a mountain of London clay.

Unfortunately a secondary burst was discovered  in the same area and was still being worked on this afternoon. Water in Wembley is still lower than normal pressure.

For latest information go to LINK where you register for text updates.

This is the latest I have. Repair carried out and testing progress - supply restored soon .



Tuesday 20 December 2022

Wembley History Society Christmas Picture Quiz - the answers!

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

Thank you to everyone who had a go at last weekend’s Wembley History Society Christmas Picture Quiz, 2022. It was a chance to take a short break from a number of more serious issues covered by “Wembley Matters”, and I hope you enjoyed it. 

 

I included a clue, ‘in 1923’, in question 2, so hopefully at least those of you who remember the original Wembley Stadium (demolished twenty years ago) will have spotted that the men in the photograph were building one of Wembley’s “twin towers”. 

 

Workers building the concrete walls of the Stadium, winter 1922/23. (Screenshot from an old film)

 

Next year will mark the centenary of the building which made the name of our district famous around the world. We will celebrate that in 2023, but I wanted to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the workers who built this reinforced concrete landmark in just 300 days (without the benefit of modern machinery, or hard hats!).

 

Were there a few of the pictures that you didn’t know the answers to? If that’s the case, you have the chance over the Christmas / New Year break to discover more about Wembley’s past. I’ve included “links” with most of the answers, which will take you to illustrated articles giving more information, if you want to take advantage of them.

If you were feeling competitive, you can now see how many of the questions you got the right answers to. There are no prizes, but if you want to publish your score out of ten (just to let others know how well, or badly, you did), you are welcome to add a comment below – only honest claims, please!


Philip Grant,
for Wembley History Society.

 

Friday 16 December 2022

It’s time for another Christmas Picture Quiz!

 For the past two years, “Wembley Matters” readers have been invited to have a go at the Wembley History Society Christmas Picture Quiz. If you fancy testing yourself (gently) with this year’s quiz, the “question paper” is attached below.

 

There are ten photographs again this year, but only one question with each. All of them are to do with the area covered by the former Borough of Wembley (which from 1934 included the previous Urban District of Kingsbury), which the Society was set up to promote the history of in 1952.


A stained glass window with the Borough of Wembley’s coat of arms,
which was in the Council Chamber at the Town Hall at Forty Lane until 1965.


See how many questions you know the answers to. Share the quiz with friends and family living locally, if you think they’ll enjoy it too.

 

The quiz is just for fun (no prizes!), and you’ll get the answers on this blog site in a few days’ time. And as before, the more questions you don’t know the answers to, the more you’ll discover then about Wembley. Good luck!

Philip Grant.

 

 

Sunday 11 December 2022

Kingsbury: The Bells of St Andrew’s ring out again

 Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

A typical English Church Bell. (Image from the internet)

 

If you think you’ve heard church bells ringing recently, you might have believed you were imagining it. But the chances are that you were hearing the chimes from the bells at Saint Andrew’s, in Church Lane, Kingsbury. After being silent for around twenty years, the eight bells in the tower above the church are ringing out again, especially on Sundays.

 

St Andrew’s New Church, Kingsbury.

 

The peal of eight bells was cast by C.J. Lewis of Shepherds Lane, Brixton, in 1880. They were a gift to the church from Mrs Imbert-Terry, in memory of her daughter. The Imbert-Terrys were from a French landowning family, who lived at Chester Terrace on the edge of Regent’s Park, and worshipped at St Andrew’s. It was then a fashionable Victorian church in Wells Street, in London’s West End. If you don’t know the story of how the church, with its bells, came to be where it is today, you can read my article about Kingsbury’s Recycled Church on the Brent Archives local history website.

 

A record of some notable bell-ringing events on the St Andrew’s bells in Victorian times.
(From “St Andrew’s Church, Wells Street, 1874-1897”, reprinted in the 26 November “Order of Service”)

 

Musical bell ringing, or change ringing, has been going on (mainly in Britain or countries with a British tradition) for centuries, and is now a hobby for pleasure as well as part of church life. It needs a team of ringers, and a fellow Wembley History Society member, now living in the USA, recently wrote:

 

‘I was an avid Church Bellringer when I lived in the UK.  I learned to ring while at University, and rang at Kingsbury, St Andrew’s during the University vacations, and also for the year I still lived in Kingsbury after I graduated.  When I rang there in the 1980s the bells were “rough-going”, and I heard that they’d subsequently become unringable.’

 

I believe the reason why the St Andrew’s bells stopped ringing was that the structure of the church spire was found to have become too weak. The whole “ring” of eight bells weighs 4.25 tonnes, with the largest “E flat” tenor bell weighing more than a ton. They could not risk any bells becoming dislodged, and falling on the bellringers far below!

 

So that the bells could ring again, they’ve been fitted with an electronic chiming mechanism. This allows them to be rung by a hammer hitting the bell, rather than the original manual method of pulling on the bell rope, and the bell being swung round on a large wheel. The bells were rededicated by the Bishop of Fulham, following a Mass for the Feast of St Andrew on Saturday 26 November.

 

The Bishop rededicating the bells at St Andrew’s on 26 November 2022. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

A peal of bells was rung straight after the rededication, and will ring out every Sunday at around midday, after the main morning service at the church, and on other special occasions. Every day, at 8.30am, 12noon and 6pm, a single bell will ring the “Angelus”. This is a call to prayer, common in the Catholic Christian faith, and also followed by some C. of E. “Anglo-Catholic” churches like St Andrew’s. The Angelus is three chimes of the bell, rung three times with a short break between each, to remind the faithful to say three prayers, three times a day.

 

Martin has kindly recorded the peal of bells at St Andrew’s, and put it into a video, so that you can enjoy them, even if you are not within earshot of the church when they are ringing.

 


 

Towards the end of the video, you will also hear singing from the Romanian Orthodox congregation at St Andrew’s Old Church. If you don’t already know the long and fascinating history of that heritage building, hidden away in the churchyard just behind “new” St Andrew’s, you can read it in this illustrated article on the Brent Archives local history website.

 

A team of church bellringers, ringing a “change”. (Image from the internet)

 

It is hoped that work can be carried out to strengthen the spire at St Andrew’s, so that the bells can be rung manually again, as well as mechanically. This would allow anyone, from whatever faith, or none, to come and learn the art of bellringing, and enjoy this traditional musical hobby (and way of keeping fit!).

 

The church has recently been awarded a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and will be launching a project, “Rekindling St Andrew’s” aimed at sharing the church’s history and facilities with the wider local community. I’m sure that many people will enjoy the chance to take part in secular activities within the beautiful Victorian interior of this Grade II* listed building – and some, in time, to have the opportunity of making the bells ring, in teamwork with new friends. 

 

Look out for news of this project in 2023, and in the meantime, enjoy the bells of St Andrew’s!

 


Philip Grant.