My Aunt Muriel was a farm labourer at different farms around Kingsbury and Edgware so I am pleased to publish this Guest Blog by local historian Philip Grant about a dig at Blackbird Hill Farm just around the corner from where she used to live.
We still need to save Brent's remaining farm building at Old Oxgate Farm in recognition of Brent's agricultural past.
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| Blackbird Farm House c1880 (Brent Archives) |
Planners are often criticised for the developments they
allow to be built, but sometimes they deserve some praise. For two weeks from
Monday 9 September, behind the blue hoardings opposite the Lidl supermarket on
Blackbird Hill, archaeologists from UCL will be working to uncover clues from
the past of a historic site. A block of flats will be built soon where the
“Blarney Stone” (formerly “The Blackbirds”) public house stood, but for
hundreds of years before the pub was built in the 1950’s, there was a farm
here.
When the controversial planning application to redevelop the
pub was submitted in 2010, Brent’s planning officers identified that this was a
site with archaeological potential. A desk-based assessment of this potential
was required as part of the application documents, and after representations
were made on behalf of both Brent Museum and Wembley History Society, officers
recommended that a proper excavation should be carried out on the part of the
site before the new development could go ahead.
Blackbird Farm was only an old farm, so why is this
excavation so important? In 1952, an old “mansion” opposite Kingsbury Green was
demolished to make way for blocks of Wembley Council flats (Mead Court). After
the bulldozers had cleared the site, bits of old pottery, some medieval and two
large fragments of Roman amphorae, were found in the heaps of earth. Had they
been buried for up to 1,900 years, or were they items collected only a century
or two before by a previous occupant of the property? It was too late to find
out, and a key opportunity to learn more about our distant past was lost.
There were farm buildings on the “Blackbirds” site from at
least the sixteenth century, and there may be even older material buried here
which could tell us about the lives of Kingsbury’s earliest inhabitants.
Blackbird Hill was part of a track which was known as “Eldestrete” (the old
road) in Saxon times. When the nearby St Andrew’s Old Church was built around AD1100, rubble from the Roman period
was used in its walls, so there may have been a building in this area nearly
two thousand years ago.
An extract from the 1597 Hovenden Map, showing the farm, then called Findens and the surrounding area (note that north is on the right hand side, not at the top).(Source and copyright: The Codrington Library, All Souls’ College, Oxford)
Although part of the farmyard site was destroyed when the
pub was built, there is an area close to Old Church Lane which is relatively
undisturbed, and that is where the archaeologists will be excavating. There is
no guarantee that they will discover anything of significance, but this is the
last chance to find whatever is there before an underground car park is
constructed for the flats.
Whatever is found, properly identified and
interpreted, will help to fill gaps in our knowledge of local history.
Wembley History Society and Brent Archives had hoped to
arrange with the archaeologists for an open afternoon, when local people could
come and see the “dig” for themselves. Unfortunately this has not proved
possible, as this is an active construction site, with other contractors at
work, so the developer will not allow public access for safety reasons. We will
make sure, however, that any information about what is found is made publicly
available, so that the efforts of local planning officers and heritage
enthusiasts to bring about this excavation are not wasted.
You can discover more about the history of the Blackbird
Farm site in an illustrated article from the Brent Archives online local
history resources collection HERE
