Welcome
back to this fourth article in the Kilburn local history series. If you missed
Part 3, you will find it here.
Railway lines began crossing Kilburn’s
land in 1837, with the coming of the London and Birmingham Railway. Kilburn (now
High Road) station opened in 1851. In the 1860s Edgware Road
(later Brondesbury) station came on the Hampstead Junction Railway, and Kilburn
and Brondesbury (Kilburn today) station was opened on the Metropolitan Railway
in 1879.
1. Metropolitan Railway Station and
Bridge, Kilburn High Road, c.1910. ( www.images-of-london.co.uk )
The earlier railways, however, did not
stimulate a large growth in Kilburn. The main developments were still along the
Edgware Road, which was served by horse buses and later trams. In 1856 22
omnibuses a day ran to London Bridge and by 1896 south Kilburn was served by
over 45 buses an hour. The start of the 20th century brought a
motorbus service to Oxford Circus, and in 1915 Kilburn Park station on the
Electric Railway line was the first underground railway in Kilburn.
2. Kilburn Park Underground Station,
October 2020. (Photo by Irina Porter)
In Charles Dicken’s Dictionary of London, published
in 1879, Kilburn was described as ‘a newly built district at the far end of the
Edgware Road’. Its development, beyond a few large houses, had begun in the
south, after Lady Salusbury sold her properties to the
Church Commissioners in 1856. The following year the Commissioners made a
series of agreements with James Bailey, a builder from Maida Vale, who later
moved to Brondesbury Lodge.
In 1859 Bailey had built Brondesbury Terrace and
started work in Canterbury Road. By 1867, he had put up about 550 houses, including
Cambridge and Oxford Roads, using architectural pattern books, and marketing
his development as Kilburn Park. A number of houses he built, along with the
Duke of Cambridge and The Brondesbury public houses (both now converted for residential
use), are now locally listed buildings within the South Kilburn Conservation
Area.
3. Cambridge Road, c.1910. (Image
from the internet: www.images-of-london.co.uk )
4. Cambridge Gardens, October 2020. (Photo
by Irina Porter)
Other speculative builders followed Bailey to the
area. Speculative building – when houses were built
before a buyer or a tenant was found – put developers at risk if they over
extended themselves, so many went bust. Through the rest of the 19th
century, local house building expanded northwards. You can see the extent of
development in 1875 (when Willesden Local Board was established, with a
population of 18,559), and again by 1895 (when it had become Willesden Urban
District, with 79,260 people) on this map.
5. Development in the east of
Willesden parish as at 1875 and 1895. (From “The Willesden Survey, 1949”)
By the 1880s, businesses like the United
Land Company would purchase plots of land, subdivide them into smaller plots
and sell those at auctions, resulting in smaller developers doing the actual building.
The names of the roads would often come from old estates in the area
(Mapesbury, Brondesbury), or places connected with former landowners. The Salusbury name
lives on today, in a road and the school situated on it, as well as a pub, wine
store and other local amenities. In another example,
the Powell Cottons owned the land on the Shoot Up Hill estate, and the names of
the roads there reflected their Kent connections (Fordwych, Minster, and
Westbere Roads, etc).
One famous resident of Kilburn was the artist
Louis Wain (1860 – 1939), who lived at 41 Brondesbury Road. Louis
Wain was famous for the drawings of anthropomorphized (with human features) cats. Born in Clerkenwell, Wain studied at the West London
School of Art, where he was also assistant master. In 1882 he joined the staff
of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and four years later that of the
Illustrated London News.
When
Wain was 20, his father died, and Louis became the main supporter of his mother
and five sisters. At 23 he married the family governess, Emily Richardson, who
died of cancer within 3 years of their marriage. During her illness the family
took in a stray kitten, named Peter, who cheered her up during her illness and
gave Louis a direction for his art, which became his passion. From the 1880s
onwards Wain’s cats walked upright in human clothing of the highest fashion,
came with all sorts of facial expressions, enjoyed smoking, played musical
instruments, hosted tea parties, played games, went fishing and to the theatre.
These parodies of human behaviour became immensely popular.
6. Louis Wain, and two of his cat paintings. (Images
from the internet – photo by Lascelles & Co.)
Despite his popularity and huge
output (he could produce up to 600 drawings a year), Wain was not good with
money and during the First World War he sank into poverty. He lived with his
sisters in Brondesbury Road. Having developed a mental illness, he died at
Napsbury Hospital, near St Albans. He is buried in his
father's grave at St. Mary's Roman
Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.
At the start of Kilburn’s development,
land owners or builders were responsible for the infrastructure of their own
developments, including roads and sewers. Gas street lighting was first introduced
in Kilburn near the bridge in 1849, and extended in 1861. Kilburn used the Metropolitan
Board of Work’s sewers, although Willesden fell outside its area.
So many houses had been built in Kilburn that many
could not be sold or let as family homes. It was common to find rooms let out
to several families. The poorer areas of Kilburn became overcrowded, in 1894
with 11 persons per house, compared with 6 in the rest of the parish. The death
rate for children under 5 in Willesden in 1875 was 45 per 1,000, with Kilburn the
worst area, where diarrhoea, tuberculosis and respiratory diseases were
prevalent. Healthcare, if you could afford it, was provided by local clinics,
but for hospital residents went to St. Mary’s Paddington or New End in
Hampstead.
7. Paddington Old Cemetery,
Willesden Lane, and its war graves, 2018. (Photos by John & Anne Hill)
The large estates’ lands still had some
farms, which mainly produced hay for London horses, as well as providing
grazing for cattle, and there were also several nurseries. But each successive
decade saw less farmland. In 1855 Paddington Burial Board bought 22 acres of
a farm off Willesden Lane and set up a civic cemetery. Today it is run by Brent
and is Grade II listed. The cemetery includes 213 graves for casualties of the First and Second World Wars.
8. Willesden Town Hall, Dyne Road,
in the 1920s. (Brent Archives online image 657)
Local government only developed
gradually. The local authority for Kilburn was originally the Willesden Parish vestry
(and Hampstead vestry, respectively east of the High Road). This organised a vote in 1875, that set up the Willesden
Local Board, which in turn was succeed by Willesden Urban District Council in
1894. Willesden Town Hall was built in Dyne Road, on the site of Waterloo Farm,
and opened in 1891. (The building was demolished in 1970, after the newly
formed Brent Council had chosen Wembley’s more modern Town Hall as its
headquarters.)
9. Willesden Volunteer Fire Brigade,
1874. (Brent Archives online image 732)
A volunteer fire service was formed
after the fire at Mapesbury Mill on Shoot Up Hill in 1863, with headquarters in
Bridge Street, near the tollgate. A new station, under the control of the
Metropolitan Fire Brigade was opened in Salusbury Road in 1884, which covered the Kilburn
area until the Second World War. The fire station was next to Kilburn Library,
the first public library to be opened in Willesden in January 1894, which was enlarged
in 1908.
10. Kilburn Library (right) and Fire
Station (centre), c.1910. (Brent Archives online image 10773)
11. Salusbury Road and the Police
Station, c.1900. (From the internet: www.images-of-london.co.uk )
The police station, as shown on
the photo above, is on the corner of Salusbury Road and Harvist Road, - still a
police station today, although the building has been
completely re-built in the 1970s.
12. High Road, Kilburn, in 1886, by
local photographer A. Mackie. (Brent Archives online image 226)
Kilburn became a thriving commercial
centre, with the Edgware Road through it, featuring a continuous line of shops
by the 1860s. It gained the name Kilburn High Road in the 1880s. Foyle's
bookshop started in Kilburn, moving to Charing Cross Road in 1926. By 1909
there were 300 shops here, many owned by foreigners, some of them Jewish
immigrants.
13. Kilburn High Road, 1905. (From
the internet: www.images-of-london.co.uk )
Industry was here, too. There was tile
making in Kilburn as early as the 16th century. In 1862 a railway signal
factory was built in Kilburn Lane (later called Canterbury Road). The Saxby
& Farmer works became the largest employer in Kilburn, although it moved to
a larger site in Chippenham, Wiltshire, around 1906, after taking over a
similar business there.
14. Kelly & Craven's works in
Willesden Lane, 1884, and Kelly's tombstone. (Images from John Hill)
By 1890 there were coachbuilders,
bicycle manufacturers, and monumental masons (for Paddington Cemetery). Kelly
& Craven’s Cemetery Stone Works in Willesden Lane did plenty of business,
as most people were buried (cremation did not become common until the 20th
century). Unfortunately for Mr Kelly, the stone dust from his work was a health
hazard, and he was just 51 years old when he was laid to rest. Light engineering and printing were also
established by 1914.
With the rapid increase in population
came a rise in the number of churches. We’ve already seen St Paul’s Church in
Part 3, and non-conformist ministries were quick to follow the housing
developments such as those by James Bailey. St James’s Episcopalian Church was
built in Cambridge Avenue in 1863, using a prefabricated corrugated iron
system. Commonly known as ‘the tin tabernacle’, it is surprisingly still there
today, and although no longer a church, and officially called Cambridge Hall,
it is a Grade II listed building. In 1865 the Reverend Thomas Hall had West
Kilburn Baptist Church built, to designs by his brother, who was an architect.
After more than 150 years, that is still in use, and a locally listed building.
15. Cambridge Hall (Kilburn's
"tin tabernacle") and West Kilburn Baptist Church. (Images from the
internet)
Next week we will continue to look at
local churches, schools and much more, as Kilburn’s story continues into the 20th
century.
Irina Porter,
Willesden Local History Society.
A special thank you to
local historian Dick Weindling, co-author of 'Kilburn and West Hampstead Past'
and History of Kilburn and West Hampstead blog .
