The Fryent Country Park Story - Part 5

The fifth is a series by local historian Philip Grant

 

The Fryent Country Park Story – Part 5

So far, our journey has brought us from Saxon times up to the late 1930s, when the land which is now our country park was first protected as “open space”. If you missed Part 4, you can find it here.

 

1. An autumn field in Fryent Country Park.

When war broke out in 1939, it was clear that the country needed to produce more of its own food. By the following year, at least one field behind Slough Lane had been turned into allotment gardens, but most of the meadows were still grazed by sheep belonging to a farmer from Edgware. Then, in 1942, Middlesex’s Food Production Committee had 56 acres of the old hay meadows on their Regional Open Space ploughed up, to grow wheat.

 

2. Threshing the wheat at Little Cherrylands field in 1942. (Brent Archives – Wembley History Society Colln.)

One long-time Kingsbury resident, who was a schoolboy at the time, remembers stacking sheaves of wheat in Richards Field East, to help with the harvest, as a number of local people did. He also remembered that there was a military observation post at the top of Gotfords Hill. There is rumoured to be a bunker underneath the hill, reached through a trap door, but that was supposed to be top secret! (Recent comments suggest it was 1960s Cold War, not WW2.)*

 

3. Muriel Jefferies helping with the harvest at Bush Farm in 1942. (Photo courtesy of Martin Francis)

In July 1944, a V1 flying bomb exploded in Salmon Street, killing a lady in a house there. One of the five others injured was blown from the top of a stack of straw, at nearby Little Bush Farm. By that time, the end of the war was in sight, and the government was beginning to look ahead to post-war problems, such as the urgent need for new housing.

Wembley Council had said that it wanted 400 of the temporary factory-made bungalows, which the government planned to produce. By November 1944, land near the southern end of Fryent Way had been identified as one possible site for these “prefab” homes. Middlesex C.C. refused permission, as this was part of its Regional Open Space. However, in 1946, after Wembley had used up all its sites at the edge of parks and sports grounds, the County Council relented, on the promise that the land would be returned to open space after the 10-15 years these prefabs were due to last.

 

4. A row of prefab homes at Pilgrims Way, c.1950. (Photo from Brent Archives)

Work had hardly begun on the 114-home estate when the severe winter of 1946/47 intervened. It was too cold for the German prisoner-of-war labourers to lay the concrete roadway. By April, work was underway again, and the first aluminium bungalows began arriving on site in October. All of the new homes were occupied by July 1948, and the Council had named the estate Pilgrims Way. This was because the ancient footpath (“Eldestrete”), which ran across it, was thought to have been used by pilgrims visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Willesdon, in the late 15^th and early 16^th centuries.

One of my best sources for what the area was like in the 1950s and 1960s are the memories of children who grew up on the Pilgrims Way estate, collected as part of a “Prefabs Project” ten years ago. Maureen said: ‘it was an amazing place in which to spend the long summer hours of our childhood. A huge area of rolling hills, trees, woods and fields.  Many of the fields with cows in them. At the top of Barn Hill there was a pond that was the focal point, which as a child l thought was massive. Wally me and the other kids would spend hours fishing in this pond for ‘red throats’ and other tiddlers using a jam jar with string tied around the top.’

 

5. Barn Hill pond, c.1950. (Photograph by Ian Stokes, courtesy of Barn Hill Conservation Group)

Paul remembered the woods and fields as ‘a child’s paradise to play in’, and not just in summer. ‘When it snowed we’d sledge at great speed down a very long steep hill next to Barn Hill pond, stopping only when the barbed wire fence of the cow’s field at the very bottom loomed into sight.’ Sheila’s summer days included: ‘just playing in the fields, making endless daisy chains, looking for grass hoppers, climbing trees, walking amongst the cows, never feeling unsafe only popping home for a slice of bread and jam then out again.’

 

6. Cattle grazing in a field on Barn Hill, c.1960s. (Source unknown!)

The cows belonged to a farmer from Edgware, as all of the active farmsteads along Salmon Street had gone. The farmhouse at Bush Farm was demolished around 1939, Little Bush Farm after its V1 damage in 1944, and Hill Farm to make way for housing in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the farmer began ploughing up some of the old meadows to plant crops. When he started to cut down some of the centuries-old hedges, the recently formed Brent Council put a stop to this, and ended his tenancy.

7. The Pilgrims Way prefab estate, and fields at the southern end of Fryent Way, mid-1960s.
                         (Brent Archives – aerial photographs collection)

Brent had inherited the Pilgrims Way estate when Wembley joined with Willesden to form the new London Borough in 1965. Although only meant to be temporary, the last of the prefabs there remained in use until 1972. All of the land was supposed to be returned to open space, but the Council persuaded the Greater London Council (which had taken overall responsibility for this “Green Belt” land when Middlesex C.C. was abolished in 1965) to let them retain three acres for housing. A new Pilgrims Way was built, with two Closes off of it, called after old local field names, Saltcroft and Summers.

 

8. The “Pilgrims Way” footpath in 2019, and the old estate entrance at the top of the hill in Fryent Way.

The rest of the former prefab estate was allowed to become woodland, with its old entrance still just visible. But what should the Council do with the land they had taken back from the farmer? One group of Labour councillors, mainly from the Willesden wards, said that Council housing should be built on it. Another group, of Conservatives, thought that it should be turned into a municipal golf course. In 1973, however, Brent Council decided to retain the fields as meadowland, that would be open for the public to use.

There was one more threat to our future enjoyment of this open space that had to be overcome – the Olympic Games! Fryent Way had been part of the course for the marathon at the 1948 Games (British athlete, Tom Richards, won the silver medal, after a Korean runner ahead of him dropped out on the long climb up the hill from Kingsbury, in the final stages of the race back to Wembley Stadium). In 1980, London wanted to bid for the 1988 Games, and the fields at Fryent Way were the only suitable site for the athletes’ village that would be needed. Luckily, the government decided to back a bid from Birmingham instead (which was unsuccessful).

9. A cutting from the "Wembley Observer" about the Olympic Village site, February 1980. (Brent Archives)

I apologise for the poor quality of the picture above, but hope that, as well as its caption, it shows the sorry state the hedges were in then. Something needed to be done to improve this area of ancient Middlesex landscape. Please join me next weekend, for the final part of The Fryent Country Park Story to discover what that was (there’s a clue in the title!).

As before, please add any information, memories or questions you have in the comments section below.

Philip Grant

* Comments by readers of Part 3 have provided information about, and photos of, the
bunker at Gotfords Hill, referred to above. An “extra” article about the bunker will
be published in the next few days.

LINKS TO OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES
 

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 1

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 2

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 3

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 4

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 5

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 6

History of Fryent Country Park – Bunker Special

 

The Fryent Country Park Story – Part 1

The first of a series of guest posts by Wembley History Society member, Philip Grant.

Some of you may be thinking of our beautiful local country park as a peaceful place, where you can go for fresh air and exercise while still “social distancing”. Others are looking forward to spending some time there, once we are no longer asked to ‘stay at home’. But have you ever wondered how we came to have this special open space, or what it was like here 100 or 1,000 years ago? Over the next few weekends I hope to share its story with you.

1. Looking north across Little Hillcroft Field, towards Kingsbury.

When were people first living on what is now the country park? There is evidence that there was a farm in Roman times near Blackbird Hill. An ancient trackway, that crossed the River Brent (a Celtic name) by a ford at the bottom of the hill, continued northwards, just to the west of the modern Fryent Way. You can follow it as a footpath, branching off on the left about 100 metres north of the Salmon Street roundabout. The Saxons called this route “Eldestrete” (the old road), and in the 10^th century they used it to mark the boundary between Harrow parish (where the land was owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury) and “Kynggesbrig”, now Kingsbury (a place belonging to the King).

2. Harvesting in the 11th century. (From a manuscript, probably in the British Library)

There was already some farming here by AD1085, when King William I’s Domesday Book survey was conducted, but much of the land was still woodland. This was enough to feed 1,000 pigs in the larger Tunworth manor, given by the Conquerer to one of his knights, Ernulf de Hesdin, with enough woodland for 200 pigs (‘silva.cc.porc.’) in Chalkhill manor, owned by Westminster Abbey (‘abbé S.PETRI’) after a gift by King Edward the Confessor.

3. An extract from the Domesday Book, including the Westminster Abbey land in "Chingesberie".

On the Harrow side of Eldestrete, there were some common fields by this time. Here crops were grown on ploughed strips of land, each a furrow long (hence the old distance of a furlong, or 220 yards). Some freemen rented fields, where they could graze sheep or cattle. Hilly ground such as Barn Hill was still wooded, and villagers who kept pigs could pay “pannage” (one penny per pig) to the lord of the manor, to let them feed there.

4. Ploughing in the 11th century.  (From a manuscript, probably in the British Library)

Around 1244, about 300 acres of Chalkhill manor were gifted to a religious order, the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. To help provide food for their priory in Clerkenwell, they established a farm on Church Lane (where the Co-op now stands) which became known as Freren Farm, after the Norman French word for “the brothers” (monks and lay brothers) who farmed it. The modern name, Fryent, comes from that farm.

By 1300, parcels of land in Tunworth manor, had been let out to tenants who cleared small fields out of the woodland, a process known as “assarting”. Three of these landholdings to the west side of Salmon Street became farms that lasted until the mid-twentieth century; Hill Farm (at the top of the rise near the junction with Mallard Way) and two named after the original farmers, Edwin’s (later Little Bush Farm) and Richard’s (which became Bush Farm, opposite the junction with Slough Lane). There were thick hedgerows between the fields and some woodland remained.

This increase in farming activity suffered a set-back in the mid-14^th century, when a great plague, carried by rats and called the “Black Death”, spread across Britain killing over one million people, around 40% of the total population. The records of Kingsbury’s manor court for 1350 alone show 13 deaths ‘at the time of the pestilence’.

The country got through that pandemic, just as we will the present one, and the farming community on what is now our country park recovered. In 1439 much of Tunworth manor (together with land in Edgware and Willesden) was bought by Archbishop Chichele of Canterbury. He donated it to a new theological college he set up in 1442, All Souls in Oxford, which collected rents from the tenant farmers for the next five hundred years. The Archbishop also had an oak wood in Harrow cut down, to supply timber for the college roof, which meant some of his tenants lost their supply of firewood, and acorns for their pigs!

5. The brass memorial to John Shepard and his wives in Old St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury.

For more than 100 years, the tenants at Hill Farm were members of the Shepard family. We know that they became quite wealthy, from the earliest surviving memorial in Old Saint Andrew’s Church. This is to John Shepard, who died in 1520, and shows him flanked by his two wives, Anne and Maude, with the eighteen children he had by them, all depicted wearing fashionable clothes. 

When All Souls College had a map of its lands in Kingsbury drawn in 1597, it showed Thomas Shepard as the tenant of Hill Farm and many of the nearby fields. Edmund, John, Richard and William Shepard were among other tenants in Kingsbury. The Hovenden Map, named after the Warden of the College, is a remarkable record of the area, giving the names and sizes of the fields, and who was the tenant of each. 

The map extract below shows the farm and the Hillcroft fields, and you can walk across this part of Fryent Country Park along a footpath. Treat the short section of Eldestrete, in the top left corner of the map, as if it were Fryent Way. At the brow of the hill you will find the footpath, which takes you along the ridge, with lovely views over the fields, to Salmon Street, near its junction with Mallard Way.

6. The Hillcroft fields on the Hovenden Map of 1597. (© The Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford)

Enjoy the walk, or at least looking forward to it, and I will take up the story again next week. If you want to ask any questions, or add some information, please leave a comment below.

Philip Grant

LINKS TO OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 1

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 2

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 3

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 4

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 5

History of Fryent Country Park – Part 6

History of Fryent Country Park – Bunker Special

Making hay while the sun shines in Fryent Country Park

I had the first class of the Autumn term in Fryent Country Park today.  The Year Ones were studying seeds and seed dispersal and eagerly searched for seeds and fruits in the meadows and hedgerows of the park and found them in great abundance, although the squirrels seemed to have had all the acorns.

They enjoyed watching a pair of kestrels hovering while hunting over Gotsford Hill and were excited by toads, tadpoles and newts as children have been for centuries.

Walking back across the fields from Kingsbury to Wembley I found hay making in progress.  Few realise that Fryent Country Park is a certified organic farm for hay which is sold off contributing to park expenses. Harvest was delayed by bad weather and sodden ground difficult for tractors to negotiate. Hay prices have gone up as a result but today's crop looked in pretty good shape.

Enjoy the pictures below and reflect on how fortunate we are to still have a little Middlesex countryside in our borough.

This is  a black and white photograph of my Aunt Muriel hay making at Bush Farm in 1942 complete with horse and cart. Today's baling machinery is much more advanced than her pitch fork but the hay left to dry before baling would be familiar.

Anyone wanting to book a class or club trip to Fryent Country Park should go to the Brent School Without Walls website HERE