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.

 

The “blasted oak”, and other history around Barn Hill

Many thanks to Philip Grant for this fascinating guest blog.
 

Martin’s recent report on the sad loss of the “Blasted Oak” on Barn Hill LINK  said that the tree ‘had been there for well over 100 years’. I think that it may have been part of the local landscape for well over 200 years, and it gives me the excuse to share a little more local history with you.

The area around Barn Hill today looks a lot different from what it was 100 years ago. This extract from the Ordnance Survey map (reproduced from the 1920 edition of the 6 inch to one mile map of Middlesex, Sheet XI) was surveyed just before the First World War. I have added an arrow to indicate roughly where the “Blasted Oak” would have stood at the time, and you can see that it was part of a belt of trees across the lower slope of Barn Hill, before the open fields of the surrounding farmland began, with the footpath (F.P.) running beside it.

click on image to enlarge

That belt of trees, which then ran south along the boundary between the Urban Districts of Wembley and Kingsbury as far as Wembley Park Station (and had been the boundary between Harrow and Kingsbury parishes since Saxon times), was part of the design by landscape gardener, Humphry Repton, for the Page family’s Wembley Park estate, which was planted out in 1793. Some of the oak trees on and around Barn Hill from that time still survive, and their high branches provide a popular perching place for the hill’s resident parakeets.
 

As you will see from the map, Barn Hill 100 years ago was the site of a golf course, but there were some other interesting sporting facilities close by. For a time up until the First World War, there was a polo ground where today you will find the houses of Greenhill and Greenhill Way. It is no coincidence that the road built around 1930, across the former fields where the polo ponies were kept, is called The Paddocks.

The fields to the west of Barn Hill are marked as a shooting ground. Uxendon Shooting Club was the venue for the “Clay Bird” (clay pigeon) shooting events at the 1908 London Olympic Games, as this grainy photograph (from a microfilm copy of the “Evening Standard” for 11 July 1908) shows, with another belt of trees on Barn Hill in the distance:

As Uxendon Farm had very poor road access in 1908, the Metropolitan Railway built Preston Road Station so that competitors and spectators could get to the event. The temporary wooden platforms for this “halt” (the trains stopped “by request” only) were used until the current station was built, on the opposite side of Preston Road, as part of a 1930’s suburban development. West Hill, Uxendon Hill and the roads between them were built around the same time on the site of the shooting ground, after the farm was demolished to make way for a railway extension to Stanmore, which opened in 1932 and is now the Jubilee Line.

Uxendon Farm’s history has provided the names for two local primary schools. At the time of our first Queen Elizabeth, it was the main house and farm of Uxendon Manor, the home of the Bellamy family. They were Roman Catholics, and often provided shelter for visiting priests. One who was arrested there around 1590 was Robert Southwell, who at a time of religious intolerance was tortured, charged with treason and horribly executed for the “crime” of being a Jesuit. He was one of forty “English Martyrs” chosen by the Catholic Church in the 20^th century, to represent many more who had been killed for their faith in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Half a mile to the east, Hill (or Hillhouse) Farm in Salmon Street was the main manor farm of Kingsbury Parish, from the 1300’s up until 1950. Old St Andrew’s Church has a remarkable record of the Shepard family, the farmers there in Tudor times. A memorial brass to John Shepard, who died in 1520, shows him with his two wives, Anne and Maude. He must have remarried when his first wife died, after bearing him seven sons and three daughters, while his second wife gave him a further five sons and three daughters, all depicted in brass (in their “Sunday best” clothes) on his tombstone.

The trees and fields of Fryent Country Park, and its adjoining areas now built on, have so many stories to tell. I hope you have enjoyed discovering a few of them, as the result of the loss of just one such tree. Happy New Year!

Philip Grant

An eyesore at one of Brent's hidden gems

 

Old St Andrew's Church in Kingsbury dates from the 12th century but a church is believed to have been on the site since Saxon times.  It is Brent's only Grade 1 listed building and has recently bee brought back into use as a place of worship by Brent's Romanian Community. A new tarmac path to the church from Old Church Lane was completed a couple of days ago.

The church yard around the old church is overgrown but kept in check by regular visits from Community Payback. It is quite a nature reserve noted in the Spring for its snowdrops, violets and bluebells. It still has the air of a country church yard in the middle of suburbia.

A long established footpath leads from the church, behind St Andrew's nursery, to St Andrew's Road.

It is as the path wends towards St Andrew's Road that the beguiled visitor is jolted by the sight of a regular fly tip, adjacent to the public right of way, behind the nursery.  Brent Council has been informed about this frequently but the fly tipping continues. It appears to be in 'no man's land' with nobody owning up to responsibility for clearing it up.

A pity, because it spoils one of Brent's hidden gems.

How many kinds of litter are strewn, in an English country churchyard?

Old St Andrews Church in Kingsbury is Brent's older building. The present building is probably 12th century but it is believed a church has existed here since Saxon times. In addition Roman remains have been found in the church's fabric indicating an even earlier settlement.

The grave's in the churchyard go back centuries and vegetation is kept in check by Community Payback workers. In Spring there are snowdrops, violets, bluebells and wild strawberries amongst the graves.

The old Church was redundant but has recently been rented out to a Romanian congregation who each Sunday overflow out into the churchyard, bringing life back into the ancient building.

Sad then it is to see that alfresco drinkers have strewn the churchyard with beer cans and other litter with carrier bags of litter dumped along the alley way/footpath leading to the church. When I last enquired about this being regularly cleared, Brent Council told me it was unadopted and therefore the street sweepers could only sweep it if they had some spare time. After the cuts they clearly don't have time, even more so in the season of leaf fall,  so it is currently an eye sore.

 

The footpath

Behind St Andrew's Nursery

 

Iron age pottery found on Blackbird Farm dig

It seems a long step from the Lidl supermarket on one side of Blackbird Hill in Kingsbury and a possible iron age settlement on the other, but that is the possibility revealed by the archaeological dig taking place on the site of the demolished Blarney Stone pub, previously the Blackbird.

This was the site of Blackbird Farm or Blackbird Hill Farm, perhaps also known as Black Pot Farm, which occupied the site on Blackburd Hill for centuries:

Just how long a farm stood there may be answered by the dig which is in its last fortnight. We know it was there in 1597 but not how long before that.  The archaeologists have got back to a packed clay floor which still has to be dated and a 16th century drain.

16th century drain

Most of the rest of the building appears to be 18th century and some post medieval red pottery has been found.

The excavation site

18th century grain store footings (corner of Old Church Lane and Blackbird Hill)

The site is beside the Saxon Eldestrete track which is thought to have run from Westminster, through Willesden and Neasden, to what is now Fryent Country Park and on to Hertfordshire. There are still remains of the track in the country park. It is conjectured that there may well have been settlements off the track. Furthermore, the finding of some Roman remains at the nearby Old St Andrew's Church has even raised hopes of some evidence of a Roman villa but that is really an outside chance. So far in London villas have only been found in the City of London itself or on the outskirts of Greater London.

More will be revealed (perhaps) when the layer so far uncovered is removed to see what lies beneath.

The remains will be recorded and stored in archives before the site is  built on to provide 34 flats, two houses and an underground car park.

I am grateful to UCL and the Wembley History Society for inviting me to visit the site.