From Preston Community Library. Please note that the meeting on the 12th is in-person at the Library's temporary premises in Ashley Gardens. (Directions below) These meetings are part of their Heritage Project's Metroland Festival.
This event is on Zoom:
Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman in his poem Middlesex.
Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.
Guest blog by Chris Coates of Preston Community Library. Plenty of material here, especially the video, for local teachers who are teaching the Second World War to Year 6 next academic year.
Part 2 of The Preston Story ended in the early years of
the 20th century with Preston still a rural hamlet. Its small
population were employed on farms or as servants in the large houses starting
to appear along Preston Road – their middle-class residents now able to commute
into London from the ‘request stop’ Halt on the Metropolitan Railway. At
weekends, the population was swelled by visitors to the two golf clubs, the
shooting grounds and the various sports grounds owned by London-based
companies.
1.A 1930s postcard of Preston Hill, with bridge over the Wealdstone Brook in
the distance. (From the Wembley History Society Collection –
Brent Archives online image 8979)
The
years following the First World War brought fast moving change to Preston.
Local farms had specialised in producing hay for the 1000s of horses in London
- Uxendon and Forty Farms were 100% meadow land in 1900. As motor traffic
increased the demand fell, so some farms closed while others down-sized. In
1907, there were 66 farms in Wembley and by 1937 there were only nine.
2.The rib-making workshop for aeroplane wings at Hooper & Co, North
Wembley, 1917.
At the
same time, new industrial areas near Preston attracted workers away from
agriculture and, during the war,
women were encouraged to leave domestic service for better paid, though
often dangerous, work in factories. In Kingsbury, there were 4 aeroplane
companies including The Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which by 1918 was
employing 4,400 people, more than half of them women. Another company, Hooper
& Co, moved to East Lane, North Wembley in 1917 to build the Sopwith Camel
and produce spare parts for other planes. The site – later the GEC estate –
covered 40 acres including a flying ground and railway sidings. British Oxygen also moved to East Lane
in 1918, as did the Wrigley [chewing gum] Company in 1926.
From 1921, Christ
Church College, Oxford, Harrow School and other landowners sold their Preston
estates for building development. Developers were attracted by the good
transport links both into London and to the North. Local roads, including Forty
Lane, had been widened and improved to ease visitor access to the 1924-5
British Empire Exhibition and the train network had been extended and
modernised. The Metropolitan Line was electrified through to Harrow by 1908 and
the Bakerloo Line, running on L. & N.W.R
tracks, electrified out to Watford Junction by 1922. A large triangle of land
was created between the lines where commuters might find the Metroland dream of a modern home in beautiful
countryside plus a fast rail service into London.
3.The cover of the 1921 edition of the Metro-Land guide. (Image from the internet)
The term "Metro-land" was coined by
the Metropolitan Railway Company’s marketing department in 1915 to promote
sales of housing on its land in the North-west London suburbs. The Company did
not build housing in Preston, but other developers were clearly influenced by
the Metroland ideal of Tudor Revival design. Sadly, John Betjeman gives only a
passing [literally!] reference to Preston in his many Metroland poems:
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road, They saw the last green fields and misty sky….Baker St Station Buffet [1954]
Housing
and shops spread along Preston Road in the 1920s. Several builders were
involved in the development, notably Clifford Sabey who built the Preston Hotel
(now The Preston) c.1927 and Preston Park Primary School in 1932. The lovely
Harrow Golf Clubhouse, that we saw in Part 2, overlooking peaceful fields and the meandering
Crouch Brook, was demolished in 1928 and the Preston Park Estate began to cover
the whole golf course and fields beyond up to the Bakerloo Line boundary,
taking some 12 years to be completed.
5.An aerial view looking west from Preston Road, 1932.
(From “Britain
from Above”, image EPW037564)
This aerial photograph, taken in 1932, looks west across the growing Preston
Park Estate. Logan Road, Carlton Avenue East, College Road and Preston Road
down to St Augustine’s Avenue can clearly be seen, with the Crouch Brook
crossing Glendale Gardens, the school grounds and the fields beyond. Sudbury
Court Estate in the distance is nearing completion.
6.Exterior and interior views of The Windermere, built 1938. (Images
from the internet)
Some developers
included outstanding designs. The Lawns Court estate on The Avenue, was built
in the Moderne style on the old Forty Farm estate around 1931. The Windermere, a Grade 2 listed pub in Windermere Avenue, was
built in 1938 in the Dutch style, with Art Deco interiors. To enhance
the attraction of the area for commuters, the old Halt was replaced with a
proper Preston Road station, built to the west of the road bridge in 1931-2,
and a new station, South Kenton, on the Bakerloo Line, was opened in 1933.
7.A newspaper article about South Kenton Station, from the Nottingham
Evening Post, 1 February 1934
By now it was clear that the new heart of Preston would be to the south of the
old hamlet. More shops appeared around the station in the 1930s and by 1936
Preston was being described as ‘a high class and rapidly growing residential
area with a population of between 6,000 and 7,000 people’. Under Wembley's Town
Planning Scheme 1931-2, the remaining country lanes in the area were improved
and Clay Lane re-named Preston Hill - both it and Preston Road became
straightened and widened suburban streets by 1937. Preston Manor Secondary
School was built in 1938 for the families moving into the area.
8.Carlton Avenue East from the corner of Longfield Avenue, c.1935. (Brent
Archives online image 10539) [Note the newly-planted lime trees, and the absence of traffic!]
Development moved north-east of Preston when the Metropolitan Railway extension from Wembley to
Stanmore (later the Bakerloo and today the Jubilee Line) was opened in 1932. The final remnants
of the old Uxendon Manor estate that we looked at in Parts 1and 2 were demolished to
make way for it. Forty Green began being
built over as early as 1923, but in the years that followed housing covered the
whole of Uxendon, except for Barn Hill Open Space, which had been purchased by
the Council from the owners of Preston Farm in 1927.
The demand for building workers far outstripped local availability. As in
previous times, migrant or incoming labour was vital. Government schemes
brought unemployed workers from ‘Distressed Areas’ in the North to meet the
inter-war development boom in the South East. My father came down from Durham
on such a Scheme and was put to navvying on building sites in Kingsbury. After
finding work more suited to his skills, he, like many generations of migrant
workers before him, settled in the area.
9.Bombs dropped on Preston, 1 October 1940 to 6
June 1941 (where multiple bombs fell, number shown).(Image from the bombsight.org website)
The
Second World War came to Preston in August 1940, when incendiary bombs were
dropped on Barn Hill. Later in the Blitz, the area was hit more severely. This
bombing map from the 1940s shows 43 High Explosive Bombs dropped from October
1940 to June 1941 in Preston, probably aiming for the rail networks or for North
Wembley’s industrial complex - especially the GEC Research Centre where radar
systems were being developed.
10.Wembley's A.R.P. Post 32, in The Avenue, c.1939. (From a Brent
Archives local history article)
The A.R.P.
[Air Raid Precautions] Post above was in The Avenue, Wembley Park. The wardens’
name-sign for their base shows a rattle, to warn residents of a possible gas
attack, and a bell to signal the ‘all clear’ afterwards. A.R.P. wardens also
enforced the ‘blackout’. Heavy curtains and shutters were required on all
private residences and commercial premises to prevent light escaping and
helping enemy bombers locate their targets.
At the
start of the war, Government evacuation schemes moved children out of the
cities. In 1940, the City of Benares, an evacuee ship on its way to
Canada, was torpedoed by a German submarine with heavy loss of
life, including 77 evacuated children. Many Wembley children were on the Benares
and 7 pupils from Preston Park Primary School were among those who died.
Further plans to relocate British children abroad were cancelled.
11.Excerpt from Preston Park Primary School diary, September 1940, listing 7
pupils lost on City of Benares.
British
Restaurants were set up for those made homeless, but later became open to all,
serving meals each day at 1 shilling for 3 courses. There were 8 British
Restaurants in Wembley, including Preston [1943] at 3-7 Lincoln Parade, Preston
Road - the building survives at the junction with Carlton Avenue East.
12.War Savings poster, 1942. (Image from the TUC Library Collection)
Everyone
on the Home Front was expected to contribute in some way – in war work, ARP,
the Home Guard or the War Savings Campaign. Elmstead Avenue’s War Savings Group
managed to collect £40,000 for the war effort through its activities. Children
were encouraged to help collect recycling. There is a short silent film of Kenton Boy
Scouts doing just that in Woodcock Hill!
Families
with space were expected to accept billeted essential workers, Land Army women
working on the remaining Preston farms, or refugees. Wembley’s Empire Pool
acted as the Middlesex Reception Centre for European refugees and many were
found temporary homes locally. The Church of the Ascension church hall [built
1937] in The Avenue set up a refugee club. The Church itself was not built
until 1957.
13.Metropolitan trains come and go
at Preston Road Station, while a steam train races past on the British Rail
tracks. (Photograph taken by a trainspotter
in October 1962 – Brent Archives online image 8654)
After
the war, a prefab estate was built for bombed-out families at Tenterden Close,
Woodcock Hill, and was there until the late 1960s. Housing development
continued to the north and east of Preston Road, and The Mall was extended to
the Wealdstone Brook, cutting across playing fields to make a more direct route
from Preston Hill to Kingsbury.In 1947
another place of worship, a Liberal synagogue, was built on Preston Road. By
1951 Preston's population had risen to 12,408. The company owned sports fields
on Woodcock Hill were bought by Middlesex County Council for Wembley in 1957
and renamed the John Billam Sports Ground after a previous Mayor.
15.Shops in Preston Road c.1960, from
the junction with Grasmere Avenue. (Brent
Archives online image 8628
By the
early 1960s, all of Preston's old buildings in the original hamlet had been
lost. Preston Farm, Hillside Farm and the Preston Tea Gardens demolished for
flats and John Lyon’s farm replaced by John Perrin Place – a council housing
estate. After hundreds of years with little change, within 50 years the tiny
village of Preston had become a radically different place – and very much part
of London.
If you have memories of Preston in the Second
World War or the years following, please share them in the Comments box below. Do return for Part 4 of the Preston Story when we
will look at our area today.
The second part of a series of four by Chris Coates
We
left the end of Part 1 of the Preston Story in the 18th
century, with the landscape scarcely changing over the previous 500 years. In
the early 19th century, the population grew slowly – in Preston and
Uxendon together there were 64 people in 1831 and
105 in 1841. Preston was still very much a rural area, but not a
contented one.
Preston
and its surrounding area, 1832. (Extract from the Environs of London Map, 1832)
The
agricultural depression after the Napoleonic Wars caused problems for both
farmers and their labourers. Following the Enclosure Acts 1803 and 1823, the
continuing fencing off of common land by large landowners caused problems for
tenant farmers. An ‘Anti-Inclosure Association’ distributed manifestos
throughout Harrow Parish and there was a petition to Parliament in 1802 and
fence breaking incidents locally in 1810. In 1828, when there was a further
outbreak of violence in the area, Harrow’s
only fire engine and six crew were called into action at Uxendon as desperate workers burnt haystacks and threatened local landowners.
Unrest continued and in 1830 local workers were active in the Swing Riots, a widespread
protest across South East England, which used arson and machine breaking against the increasing use of
agricultural machinery and the subsequent unemployment and lower wages. The Uxbridge yeomanry cavalry and the
militia were mobilized to shield London when rioting spread to the Harrow area
at the end of November 1830.
Swing rioters (in Kent), 1830. (Image from the internet)
Tenant
farmers called for a reduction in rents. Lord Northwick, who held the manor of
Harrow with land bordering Preston, accused local farmer Thomas Trollope, the
novelist’s father, of conspiracy and had his crops seized. Anthony Trollope
described Lord Northwick as 'a cormorant who was eating us up'. Northwick received a threatening
‘Swing Letter’ demanding a reduction of rent and warning that “our
emisaris shall and will do their work - you have ground the labouring man too
long”. The 1834 Report of the Poor Law Commissioners showed wages of
agricultural labourers in Harrow district to be around 10/- per week or £26 per
annum “supposing work is available all year round - which for most it is not “.
Despite
poor wages, the area continued to attract migrant labour. In 1841, there were
415 migrant haymakers, mainly from Ireland, living in barns and sheds in
Harrow. The 1851 census clerk for Preston and Uxendon notes these conditions
for in-house migrant workers: “All
persons entered as lodgers are those only who occupy generally part of a bed,
at the usual charge of 1/6 per week, including washing and attendance, with a
seat by the evening fire”. Some seasonal workers settled down in Preston. In
1851, the Irish family occupying Forty Farm cottage had a child
born there, and there are Irish and West Country domestic servants elsewhere.
Preston House and tea rooms, 1912. (Brent
Archives online image 331)
Early in the century, Preston House was built on Preston Hill near four cottages recorded therre in 1817. The census shows Preston House was initially a ‘country
residence’ leased to various professional men, including a corn merchant, a
surgeon, a cigar importer and a solicitor. Around
1880,
Preston House was acquired by George Timms (d. 1899), who turned the grounds into the Preston Tea
Gardens.
An
advertising card for the Preston Tea Gardens, c.1910. (Brent Archives online image 6864)
The
Tea Gardens flourished well into the next century and the building survived
until the 1960s when it was demolished for flats. By 1864, the four cottages
were replaced by a pair of Victorian villas, now 356-358 Preston Road – the
oldest surviving houses in Preston. They must have had a fantastic view over
the surrounding countryside, to Harrow-on-the-Hill.
356 and 358 Preston Road. (Image from Google Streetview)
Further
down Preston Hill, Hillside Farm was also hosting the 'Rose & Crown'
beershop in 1851, run by the farmer’s wife, Sarah Walker, and her daughter.
Hillside Farmhouse was also demolished in the 1960s, but Hillside Gardens
recalls its location. Lyon Farm remained in the hands of tenant farmers with
its profits going to the Harrow School that John Lyon founded [see Part 1]. The
Uxendon Manor Estate had sold Preston Farm to the Bocket family some time before 1799 and it was held by various people until last farmed
by the Kinch Family, after whom Kinch Grove is named, in the 20th
century. By 1820, the Wealdstone Brook at the bottom of the Hill had a ford and a footbridge, making the route to
Kingsbury more accessible.
Farms at Preston in the 1890s. (Extract from a large-scale Ordnance Survey
map)
At
Uxendon Manor, life had settled down after the tumultuous events of the 16th
and 17th centuries, with the Page family still owning the farm until
1829 when the land passed to Henry Young (d. 1869), the junior partner of the
Page's solicitor - with some suspicion that he had
obtained the lands fraudulently!The original Manor House was demolished and a
new farmhouse built just a little further north [now 18-20 Uxendon Hill]. The
farm drive led west to a gated entrance lodge. In the 19th century,
this was the only building on Preston Road between Preston House at the top of
the hill and Wembley Farm [built around 1805] at the junction with East Lane.
Forty Farm, with the farmer showing off one
of his horses, c.1910. (Brent
Archives online image 1205)
In
1850, the tenant farmer John Elmore made Uxendon a venue for steeplechases and
was well known for its "sensational water jump”, while Forty Farm was
famous for horses. By the 1880s, Forty Farm was also known as South Forty Farm because
a new farm, North Forty Farm, had been built [now Newland Court on Forty Avenue].
Part of the fields on the southern slopes of the hill behind the farm became
Wembley Golf Club in the 1890s – the course stretching up over Barn Hill pond.
I wonder how many golf balls were lost in there!
The Harrow-on-the-Hill cutting, London
& Birmingham Railway, 1838. (Image from the internet)
It was
the arrival of the railways which started the slow change of the area from
countryside to suburbia. The world’s first main line - the London to Birmingham
Railway, built by Robert Stephenson and opened 1837, carved its way through
Harrow Parish and soon a network of railway lines crossed the district. Horse
drawn buses ferried passengers from villages like Preston to Wembley station,
known from 1882 as Wembley and Sudbury. The 1881 Census shows several railway
workers - railway
plate layers, clerks and train drivers – living in cottages along East Lane to
what is now North Wembley Station. Some settled, but others moved on as the network grew.
An 1890s map showing how railways were
shaping the Preston of today. (Extract from an O.S. map, c.1895)
In
1863, the first Underground railway opened. By the 1870s, it was expanding
north-west from Baker Streetvia Willesden
Green to reach Harrow-on-the-Hill in 1880. The construction of the Metropolitan
Railway effectively destroyed Forty Green, although South Forty Farm continued
into the 20th century. Further changes were underway – following the 1894 Local
Government Act, Preston broke its historical connection with Harrow and became
part of the newly formed Wembley Urban District. No longer ‘rural’ – at least
officially.
A
Metropolitan Railway steam locomotive, early 1900s. (Image from the Wembley History Society
Collection)
Towards the end of the
century, and especially after the development of the Wembley Park pleasure
grounds in the 1890s, the Preston area began to be seen as a pleasant location
for other leisure activities. Uxendon became
popular with shooting enthusiasts. By 1900, the Lancaster Shooting Club was
established there and the celebrated Bond Street gunsmiths Holland &
Holland had a shooting ground nearby. An Uxendon Shooting School was set up
behind the rebuilt farmhouse, roughly
where Alverstone Road is now, and had a 120 ft high tower for hurling
targets. It survived until 1932 when the Metropolitan Line extension from Wembley Park to Stanmorecut
across the land and housing development started on the site.
Uxendon
Shooting Club, c.1910, showing the rebuilt farmhouse. (From the collection of the late Geoffrey
Hewlett)
When
the Olympic Games were held in London in July 1908, the ground was sufficiently
important to be used for Olympic
clay pigeon shooting competition. The
shooting club, which was a two-mile walk from the nearest station, joined local
residents in petitioning the Metropolitan Railway Company to open Preston Road
Halt on the opposite side of Preston Road to the current station in May 1908. [A proposal for a station in 1896 was rejected because
there were not enough residents].
Clay bird shooting competition at Uxendon,
1908 Olympic Games. (From the “Daily
Mirror”, 7 July 1908)
The station’s status as a halt meant it was a
request stop and initially many trains failed to slow down enough to enable the
driver to notice passengers waiting on the platform. Eventually, the booking
office clerk was instructed to wave a red flag from the platform when
passengers turned up.
Houses on Preston Road, c.1920 [note the
unmade road and gas street lamp!]. (Brent Archives
online image 329)
Preston Road Halt triggered the first commuter
development in the district. Several large Edwardian-style houses [a few of
which survive] were built along Preston Road opposite the Avenue from 1910 to
1912, and the Harrow Golf Club opened just south of the station in 1912. The
photograph below shows a view across what would become the Preston Park estate.
The Clubhouse was demolished during the development of Grasmere Avenue in the
1930s.
The absence of a full-time station and the purchase
of unused fields for staff sports clubs by companies like Debenhams and
Selfridges, kept Preston as a rural area into the early 20th
century. Preston Road was still a twisting country lane and the Wealdstone
Brook could be described as ‘one of the most perfect little streams anywhere,
abounding in dace and roach’.
"Pretty Preston Road" - postcard
of a rural scene from the early 1900s. (Brent
Archives online image 328)
However, in 1915,an employeeat the Metropolitan Railway Company coined the name
“Metroland” – and things started to change – which we will look at in Part 3,
next weekend.
I don’t often recommend TV programmes, especially ones that I have yet
to see, but if you are interested in social history and housing you might want
to know about this one. “Phil Spencer’s History of Britain in 100 Homes” is an
eight-part series on the More4 channel, beginning on Wednesday 30th
January at 9pm. You can see a little more about it here LINK
What has this got to do with Wembley? Last September, a researcher
from the TV production company wrote to “Wembley Matters”, to ask whether there
were still any original “Metroland” homes locally. Martin passed the enquiry on
to the blog site’s “local history correspondent”, and I was able to assist with
information, and some illustrations. As a result, a Wembley house will be one
of the ‘100 Homes’ featured in the series (probably in part 6).
“Metroland” was a name coined by the Metropolitan Railway Company
around the time of the First World War, to promote housing development on the
surplus land it had acquired to build its railway over in the late 19th
century. It published a yearly booklet, setting out the attractions of healthy living
in pleasant countryside, on an estate of modern homes, but close to a station
where its fast electric trains could carry the man of the house to work “in Town”.
A 1922 advert for the Metropolitan’s Chalk Hill estate (Yes,
our Chalkhill!)
I have not been let into the secret of which Wembley house will be
featured, but Park Chase in Wembley Park has been mentioned. The Manor Estate
was one of many developments by the firm of Comben & Wakeling, which set
the standard for local homes in the 1920’s and 30’s. They had acquired the site
of the former Wembley Park mansion from the Metropolitan Railway, and built
mainly family-sized semi-detached homes there in the early 1920’s.
Manor Estate advert from the 1922 edition of “Metro-Land”
James Comben and William Wakeling had come to Wembley in 1907, when it
was still a new “Urban District” with a population of less than 10,000. The
first homes they built were in St. John’s Road. Before the First World War they
were developing plots of land on the Stanley Park Estate, near Wembley
Triangle. One of the firm’s three-bedroom terraced houses in Jesmond Avenue
(with gas lighting – no electricity!) then would cost £350. Inflation during
and after the war pushed up the cost of homes, but Comben & Wakeling’s
houses were still affordable to ordinary people in regular employment.
Pairs of
mid-1920’s Comben & Wakeling show houses, at the corner of Park Lane and Clarendon
Gdns.
In the mid-1920’s, Horace Comben and Eric Wakeling joined their
fathers in the business, which was now a limited company. They were building on
the former Elm Tree Farm land, north of King Edward VII Park. By 1929, their
developments stretched across East Lane, between St. Augustine’s Avenue and
Preston Road. An advertisement that year proudly announced: ‘Nearly 2,000
houses sold’. Their homes offered ‘… all labour-saving fitments. Electric light
and gas. Tiled hall, scullery and bathroom.’ Most were in the “mock-Tudor”
style, which was so fashionable at the time.
The end of that decade saw them start work on their biggest
development yet, the Sudbury Court Estate. Much of this “Garden Suburb” estate,
with around 1,500 homes built between 1928 and 1935, is now a Conservation
Area. It contained a mix of house sizes, to meet the needs of a range buyers,
from the skilled manual worker earning £4-£5 a week, to the experienced school
teacher on an annual salary of around £300, or the businessman making a bit
more than that!
Comben & Wakeling’s advert from the 1932 Wembley Official
Guide.
By the late 1930’s, Comben & Wakeling had moved on to develop the
Lindsay Park Estate in Kenton. The company built new offices nearby, at
Kingsbury Circle (now the Kingsland Hotel). They had expanded into other
building work as well, but could still say in 1953 that they had built 6,000
homes in Wembley. Most of those houses are still providing well-built homes for
families in the borough.
An advert
appearing in the 1953 book
“Wembley through the Ages”.
Wembley’s story could have been very different. When the District
Council (with James Comben as a councillor) was considering what to do with the
disused Wembley Park pleasure grounds, their 1920 Town Planning Scheme
earmarked the land for “Garden City” housing development. Then, the government
chose it as the site for the British Empire Exhibition, so instead of another
Comben & Wakeling “garden suburb”, it became home to the Stadium and all of
the Exhibition buildings. 80 years later, Quintain began to redevelop much of
land.
The suburban housing estates built in Wembley in the inter-war years, by
Comben & Wakeling and other firms, generally had 8-10 houses per acre.
Nowadays, a growing population and shortage of building land in the area means
that a much higher density of homes is needed. But are the new developments we
are seeing, at Wembley Park and elsewhere in the borough, at too high a
density?
One of the great advantages of “Metroland” was that it gave thousands
of families the chance to move out of the over-crowded and polluted areas of
inner London. Their children could grow up in homes with gardens, in streets
lined with trees and with parks and open spaces nearby. Although Quintain’s
Wembley Park has some trees, and open space areas like Elvin Gardens and the
7-acre park currently being created, is this as healthy an environment?
Junction of Carlton Avenue West and The Fairway, Sudbury
Court Estate.
Brent’s core planning policies (CP17) give a commitment that: ‘The
distinctive suburban character of Brent will be protected from inappropriate
development.’ They also say that: ‘Development of garden space and infilling of
plots with out-of-scale buildings that do not respect the settings of the
existing dwellings will not be acceptable.’ However, proposals in the new Local
Plan, which will cover the 2020’s and 2030’s, include changes which would allow
higher density developments along main roads in some of Brent’s “Metroland”
suburban areas.
It is not just the historian in me that hopes ‘The Metroland Dream’
can continue, and that families can enjoy living in Comben & Wakeling
“garden suburb” homes in Wembley for many decades to come.
