Fryent Country Park – Our green and pleasant land (but other green spaces matter too)

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

A few weeks ago, I was able to write an article about horse racing on what is now Fryent Country Park in Victorian times, thanks to research by the author William Morgan. William was able to visit Kingsbury last week, as part of a research trip, and has shared two photographs with me, taken from a drone, for local interest.

 

Barn Hill, and the south-west corner of the Country Park. (Courtesy of William Morgan)

 

We only have the beautiful green spaces shown in these photographs because of the good sense of our local Councils in the 1920s and 1930s. Haymills Ltd had bought the former Wembley Golf Course (which covered the southern slopes and top of Barn Hill) to develop for housing. Wembley Council realised that the area’s new residents would need space for outdoor recreation, so purchased land from Haymills in 1927 to create the Barn Hill Open Space.

 

Haymills built the original Barn Hill Estate, closer to Wembley Park Station, before selling the rest of their land to George Wimpey & Co. That firm then built further west along the slopes, including the homes you can see to the right of the wooded hill top in the photo above. Wimpey applied for planning permission to put roads for housing development across the fields in that picture. However, as part of their new “Green Belt” powers, Middlesex County Council put a compulsory purchase order on this land in 1936.

 

On the opposite side of a new road, Fryent Way, Salmon Estates Ltd had outline planning permission to extend their major suburban housing development. However, Wembley Council blocked their full application in 1936, on the grounds that the land was now reserved for public open space. This allowed Middlesex C.C. to buy the fields, seen in the photograph below, to create the Fryent Way Regional Open Space in 1938. You can read more details about this in Part 4 of The Fryent Country Park Story.

 

Looking east across Fryent Country Park, 22 April 2022. (Courtesy of William Morgan)

 

I am lucky enough to be within a few minutes walk of both Fryent Country Park and Roe Green Park. I am also fortunate to live in a house with a garden. I know how important it is to be able to spend time in green open spaces, especially at when the pressures of life build up on you. 

 

I also know that there are other parts of Brent which are much less fortunate in terms of green space and which have significant “open space deficiency”. This has been recognised for many decades, as shown by Willesden Borough Council’s “The Willesden Survey, 1949”:

 

A map comparing then existing and actual open space per resident. (Source: The Willesden Survey, 1949)

 

This was in the heyday of Post-War town and country planning. A paragraph from the Survey’s section on Open Space Standards reads:

 

‘The open space standards recommended in the Greater London Plan vary between 7 and 10 acres per 1,000 of the population, depending upon the residential density of the district. Thus it is quite evident that the standard of existing open space in Willesden falls far short of the suggested standards of the Greater London Plan. This deficiency will continue even if the proposed decentralisation of some 48,000 of Willesden’s population to New Towns has been achieved and the population of the Borough reduced to approximately 140,000.’

 

[It is perhaps interesting to note that 7 acres is the size of Quintain’s Union Park, to be provided as the main open space for the Wembley Park development, which will be home to many times more than 1,000 people!]

 

While it could not completely remedy the shortage of open space, Willesden Council was taking steps to improve the position. These are the paragraphs from the Survey on the two most open space deficient areas in the borough in 1949, Kilburn and Carlton (South Kilburn):

 

From the “Open Space” chapter of The Willesden Survey, 1949.

 

Willesden Council expected that the clearance of some overcrowded Victorian housing in Kilburn would ‘be turned into open space’. Yet 70 years later, Brent Council is proposing to take away much of the green space and trees on its Kilburn Square estate, in order to build 144 more homes. This would add to the area’s already high open space deficiency, and local residents are right to resist such bad planning (which actually goes against the Council’s policies!).

 

Willesden Council did create a ‘large open space’ adjoining its Granville Road baths in South Kilburn. Sadly, Brent Council now plans to build on the remnants of that green space, as part of its New Council Homes programme.

 

These are not the only green spaces under threat. Brent’s plans for the St Raphael’s Estate will mean building homes on part of Brent River Park. Other plans for “infill” developments on existing (and well-designed) Wembley Borough Council post-war housing estates are likely to see existing green spaces lost at several sites in Kingsbury, and at Gauntlett Court in Sudbury.

 

Green spaces and trees at Gauntlett Court, Harrow Road, Sudbury.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Brent Council building genuinely affordable homes for local residents in housing need. [I think I have demonstrated that in my efforts to get Cabinet members and Council Officers to rethink their plans to allow a developer to sell 152 of the 250 homes they will build at Cecil Avenue in Wembley for profit, with only 37 of the 250 for affordable rent to Council tenants.]

 

People need decent homes, but they also need decent green spaces close to their homes. As well as being necessary for their health and wellbeing, these also provide places where children can play together. Those caring for them can sit and start conversations with others, discovering how much they have in common, despite differences in appearance, so helping to build community cohesion.

 

We do have some great large natural areas and parks in Brent, like Fryent Country Park, but we also need to value the smaller, local green spaces. This should be an important consideration in the forthcoming local elections, because if the balance of power at the Civic Centre stays the same, we are likely to lose a number of those local green spaces within the next four years.

 

Philip Grant

 

 

The Fryent Country Park Story - Part 4

The fourth in a series of guest posts by local historian Philip Grant

 

Welcome back, to our wander through the history of one of Brent’s best open spaces. If you missed the previous instalment, please “click” on Part 3 (which has “links” to Parts 1 and 2).

 

1. A view across the fields at haymaking time, with Kingsbury and Stanmore Common beyond.

The story so far has brought us up to the early 20^th century. The hay trade, which had been the main source of income for Kingsbury’s farmers, was declining by this time. In part, this was due to the import of cheaper foreign hay, but the introduction of motor vehicles was also having an increasing impact. New uses had to be found for many of the local pastures. Some, like Fryent Farm, had switched to keeping dairy cattle. 

George Withers, at Little Bush Farm, had become a breeder of, and dealer in, polo ponies. You might not imagine our area as a centre for playing polo, but in the early 1900s there were at least two local polo grounds. The Kingsbury Polo Club occupied land that is now the site of Roe Green Village, and part of Roe Green Park. There was also a polo ground, with stables and fields for the ponies, centred where Greenhill Way now stands (which is why the road across this hill is called The Paddocks!). The First World War put an end to the polo clubs, after their ponies were requisitioned by the army in 1915.

 

2. Little Bush Farm, in a postcard from c.1920.  

(Courtesy of the late Geoffrey Hewlett)

After the war, the spread of suburban housing would bring about greater changes. When Wembley Park was chosen, in 1921, as the site for the British Empire Exhibition, Blackbird Hill, Church Lane and Forty Lane were all converted from narrow country byways to wide modern roads, to make the exhibition easier to reach. This better access to the area also attracted property developers. In 1923, Wembley Golf Course was purchased by Haymills Ltd, who were soon building streets of detached homes on the southern slopes of Barn Hill.

 

3. The cover of the 1922 "Metro-Land" booklet.  

(Wembley History Society Collection at Brent Archives)

Around 27 million visitors came to the British Empire Exhibition in 1924/25. Many were attracted by the pleasant countryside, close to London. The Metropolitan Railway was already promoting the districts along its line as “Metro-Land”, a healthy place to live, from which the man of the house could commute “to town”. Wembley Council could see the danger of overdevelopment, and in 1927 purchased 50 acres at the top of the hill from Haymills, to be Barn Hill Open Space.

In 1929, the Metropolitan Railway announced that it would build a branch line from Wembley Park. Construction began on this Stanmore Line in January 1931 [“click” on the link for full details]. The route curved around Barn Hill and through Uxendon Farm, which had already been demolished to make way for it, on its way to Kingsbury.

 

4. Uxendon Farm, about to be demolished in 1929.

 (Brent Archives online image 0498)

Haymills had already purchased more land, to the north of the hill, from Preston Farm. These were the fields known as Upper and Lower Hydes, and Bugbeards – the latter may seem an odd title, but this field name was first recorded in the 15^th century, and a document from 1642 lists five men in Harrow Parish with the surname Bugbeard! In 1934, Haymills stopped building in the area, and sold their undeveloped land to George Wimpey & Co. 

On the Kingsbury side of our future country park, Masons Field in Old Kenton Lane had been sold to the London General Omnibus Company in 1927, for a sports ground. Just along the lane, another field beside the Junior Mixed and Infants’ School (now Kingsbury Green) was acquired by Kingsbury Council as a recreation ground. Little Bush Farm had closed by 1930, while Hill Farm had become a horse-riding establishment, the Premier School of Equitation.

5. Hill Farm and its pond, in Salmon Street, c.1920.  

(Brent Archives online image 0480)

Having established the Barn Hill Open Space, Wembley’s Parks Committee had to make sure it was looked after. In March 1935, a report from the Council’s Surveyor referred to an annual loss of “decayed and rotting trees”, and suggested a regular programme of tree planting. One of his proposed schemes for Barn Hill was to ‘plant approximately 4 dozen Lombardy Poplars in the form of an avenue leading from the top of the hill to the gate on the east side adjoining Town Planning Road No.17 (Kingsbury).’ Some of those poplars are still a skyline feature.

 

6. Part of the Kingsbury U.D.C. 1926 Town Planning Scheme map. 

 (With thanks to Gareth Davies)

Proposed future main roads were something that local Councils had to include in the town planning schemes the government asked them to prepare in the 1920s. Kingsbury had been a separate Council area, until it became part of Wembley Urban District in 1934. Its T.P. Road No.17 was built in 1934/35, and named Fryent Way. Another of the new roads included in the 1926 scheme would have run from Slough Lane, by Bush Farm, to Fryent Way, and the kerb stones for that junction are still in place, just south of Valley Drive! All of the land between the Stanmore Line and Salmon Street was zoned for future housing development.

 

7. Bush Farm in a postcard from c.1930. (Brent Archives online image 0479)      

By the end of 1935, Wimpeys already had a planning application approved to build two new streets, with 362 houses, between Uxendon Hill and Fryent Way. As the map extract below shows, housing development was also spreading northwards on the other side of Barn Hill. Salmon Estates Ltd had put in an outline application to build homes at 8 per acre, on all the land beyond Salmon Street zoned for housing. Then, in January 1936, they submitted detailed plans for houses on both sides of Fryent Way, north from the junction with The Paddocks.

8. Extract from the 1935 O.S. map, showing Salmon Street and the Hill Farm land due for development.

The rapid spread of suburban housing around London had given rise to the idea of a “Green Belt”. In 1934, Parliament gave Middlesex County Council powers to acquire land for this purpose, and during the following year it worked out, with local councils, how such purchases could be financed. The area which is now our country park was identified as land suitable for such a scheme.

In early 1936, the County Council put a compulsory purchase order on the Wimpey’s land north of Barn Hill. There was a court battle over how much compensation the developer should receive. When this was settled in 1938, Wembley Council contributed 25% of the cost, and the fields were added to its Barn Hill Open Space, with some used as sports grounds.

In March 1936, Wembley’s Planning Committee “disapproved” the Salmon Estates planning applications, on the grounds that the land was now reserved for open space purposes. Again, it was 1938 before the purchase of the fields in Kingsbury Parish from All Souls College was finalised, and they became Middlesex C.C.’s Fryent Way Regional Open Space. As part of the Council’s policy, the existing farm tenancies on the land were allowed to continue.

You may think that this is the end of the story, and that things have stayed the same on our open space since the late 1930s. However, there will be more to discover next weekend, if you wish to!

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