Proposed Stopping-up Order near Olympic Steps – the outcome of Brent’s application to the Court on 16 April

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Willesden Magistrates’ Court. (Image from the Courts Service website)

 

At the end of my previous guest post about Brent’s application to stop-up two areas of highway, just to the south of Engineers Way near the Olympic Steps, I said that I would see the Council in Court on Thursday 16 April – and I did! Brent was represented by a barrister from Landmark Chambers, supported by the Council’s top Transport Officer and a Senior Engineer, and by Quintain’s Head of Planning (it was Quintain who had asked Brent to apply for the Section 116 Highways Act 1980 Order). I was represented by – me!

 

I arrived early for the 2pm hearing, and had an amiable discussion with the Brent team and their barrister, who had sent me, late that morning, a four page “Applicant’s submission” document and a fifteen-page copy of a decided Highways Act court case (R. v Leeds City Council, ex parte Spice) which they would be quoting from in support of the application. I don’t know whether they thought this would intimidate me, but I assured them that I had plenty of experience in dealing with Statute and Case Law from my working life.

Heading from the front page of the “Spice” High Court Judgment document.

 

The Magistrate hearing the cases listed for Court 4 did not appear until around 2.30pm, but it was not because he was having a long lunch. It turned out that he had also only received the latest documents from Brent Council that morning! When we got to “our” Case 6, around 3pm, he asked me whether, in the circumstances, I would like an adjournment, so that I could consider these extra documents, and a one centimetre thick “Application Statement” (“AS”) which Brent had submitted to the Court on 7 April. I was only passed a copy of this by the barrister at the start of the hearing. I thanked him for the offer, but said that I was happy to proceed, as it was in everyone’s interests for the matter to be resolved without further delay.

 

Brent Council’s “Application Statement” document.

 

The barrister presented Brent’s application, setting out that the Council had complied with all of the procedural requirements for giving notice, and stating that the Section 116 Order was needed so that responsibility for maintaining the old areas of unnecessary highway could pass to Quintain, who had since developed the land. She referred to photographs in the AS showing the locations of the highway, including those for the eastern hatched area pictured here:

 

The “eastern area” photos from Brent’s Application Statement.

 

The barrister’s presentation went on for around twenty minutes, and then the Magistrate asked several questions. One was about the assurance which Quintain had entered into with Brent, which was claimed to reinforce the Section 106 planning condition which allowed public access to the land which was the subject of the application. He was particularly concerned with the wording in the final sentence of Quintain’s letter of 30 March 2023, a copy of which was at tab 11 in Brent’s AS. That sentence said:

 

‘Although the land will be stopped up, Quintain can confirm that it will remain open to the public and remain free for people to pass and repass over but for the avoidance of doubt there is no intention by Quintain to re-dedicate the land as highway and public access would be on a permissive basis only.’

 

Quintain’s 30 March 2023 letter (with personal names deleted for privacy).

 

The Magistrate felt that ‘on a permissive basis only’ suggested that the public would only have a “licence” to cross the land, not a firm legal right. Quintain’s Head of Planning said that was not what they intended – the company simply wished to ensure that parts of the public space could be closed off for maintenance on the occasional day when this might be necessary. There was a short break while a revised final sentence was drafted, which satisfied the Magistrate’s concerns.

 

I was then invited to present my case objecting to the application. I asked whether the Magistrate had a copy of the photographs evidence document, which I had sent to the Council in January, and had emailed a copy to the Court Office the previous week. He looked in his online case file and said that he had a copy, which he felt would be very useful. I then set out my arguments, that the application was wrong in law. 

 

Extract from the application Plan, showing the hatched areas.

 

Although I agreed with the Council that it was sensible to resolve the residual problem of who was responsible for maintaining the hatched areas of land, they did not need a Section 116 Order to do that. The proposed Order dealt with the land as it is now, and it was necessary for the public to continue to have ‘a right to pass and repass, either on foot or dependent on suitability in a vehicle’ over this land. The draft Order sought the Magistrate’s authorisation to stop-up this highway ‘for the purpose of all traffic and all public rights of way [to be] extinguished.’ But he could only sign the Order if the area of highway was unnecessary.

 

Two ‘key principles’ from Brent’s “Applicant’s Submission” to the Court.

 

I took the Magistrate through the photos I’d taken in January, one by one, and referring to the “Applicable Test” section of Brent’s submission, asked whether highway, such as Olympic Way East, was ‘unnecessary for the sort of purpose for which Justices would reasonably expect the public to use that particular way’?

 

One of my evidence photographs, showing a car crossing the hatched area into Olympic Way East.

 

I also made the point that if the Magistrate did sign the Order which Brent had prepared, it would create two completely contradictory situations for the hatched areas. Under the planning condition and the Quintain letter of assurance the public had the right to cross that land. Under the proposed Order the public’s legal right to cross those small areas of land would be extinguished. Although the public would see no practical change in their use of the land for now, it could create a legal nightmare in future. Public use of the hatched highway areas was necessary, and it was the Section 116 Order which was unnecessary.

 

The Magistrate asked me whether I was aware of Section 142 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. I admitted that I had not read or considered it. He said that it was possible for a road not to be a “highway”, and from looking at my photos it appeared to him that Olympic Way East was not a highway, but a ‘road to which the public has access’. Similarly, the footway areas, such as that in front of the Olympic Steps, were not highway, but public space to which people had access.

 

The Magistrate said that he would retire to consider his decision, but would come back and give it verbally when he had done so. We waited in Court 4 for at least half an hour until we rose as he returned at around 4.30pm. In summary, he agreed with Brent that the legal status of highway was not necessary for the two hatched areas, so he would sign a copy of the Plan. However, he commended me for my public spiritedness in standing up for the legal right of the public to cross and recross those areas, and said that he would not sign the Order authorising the stopping-up of those unnecessary areas until its wording had been changed, to remove the reference to extinguishing all public rights of way.

 

Both sides left the Court satisfied with the outcome, and Council Officers emailed me a revised draft of the Order the following morning, inviting my comments or agreement. I recommended tidying up the wording over ‘highway maintainable at the public expense’, and suggested that to avoid any confusion over the previous and present uses of the hatched areas they should be described as ‘disused’ and ‘now being part of .…’ I’m pleased to say that my suggestions were accepted, and you can see the difference between the original and final versions of the Magistrate’s Order here:

 

Opening paragraph of the Section 116 Order document.

Closing section of the Section 116 Order document.

 

If the Notice last December about Brent’s application for a Stopping-up Order had included the final wording, I would not have objected to it. So much time and effort, over the past few months, for myself and Council Officers, could have been avoided. I think this underlines the point I made in my March 2026 guest post, that if Brent had (as it used to) a General Purposes Committee consisting mainly of experienced back-bench councillors, who could take the time to question Officers and get things right, rather than Cabinet members rushing through an agenda at 9.30am ahead of a 10am Cabinet meeting, the Council could avoid making some of its bad decisions.

 

There have been too many bad decisions made by Brent Council over the past decade or more, some of them wasting millions of pounds. I hope that the elections on 7 May will see a change in the balance of power, and bring in a majority of councillors willing to work together, across party lines where necessary, to improve scrutiny and decision-making. Scrutiny at Brent Council has been ineffective for too long, mainly because too much power has been in the hands of the same Leader. 

 

 

I have done what I can, on a variety of issues, to try to hold Brent Council to account, including as an honorary member of Martin’s unofficial “Committee” for around a dozen years, but it is time for official and effective scrutiny to pass back to elected councillors, where it belongs. I hope that readers will consider that when they decide who to vote for in May’s local elections.

Philip Grant.

Some local and social history events for you to enjoy this Spring.

          Guest post by local historian Philip Grant 

 

Extract from a letter written on 27 September 1940.

 

I’m writing to let “Wembley Matters” readers know about some forthcoming events in local libraries, when I will sharing some local and social history which I hope may be of interest. They are all free to attend, although for the first one, at Preston Community Library on Sunday 19 April from 3 to 4pm, we hope that you will make a donation to the volunteer-run library funds if you enjoy the presentation.

 

Poster for the event at Preston Community Library on Sunday 19 April.

 

“Wartime letters from Preston Park” tells the story of the Second World War in Wembley, as experienced by two local housewives, and told in letters sent between 1940 and 1945 to their friend, and former neighbour, Muriel Hall. Extracts from those letters will be read by two of the Preston Library ladies, as “Nancie” and “Doris”, and I will be providing the accompanying slide show. 

 

The letters were saved by Muriel, and donated to Wembley History Society by her daughter in 2020, as a valuable first-hand account of civilian life in the Preston Park area during this important period in our history. We are excited to be able to share their words with people living in the area now. The event will be suitable for all ages from around 10 years upwards (Nancie and Doris both had children at Peston Park Primary School), and you can find further details on the Preston Community Library website.

 

Title slide for “Memoir from Mugsborough”.

 

2026 is the “National Year of Reading” (although reading books and articles is something we can all enjoy every year!), and my first Brent Libraries “coffee morning” talk of the year comes under that banner. Rather than local Wembley history, it takes me back to my home town of Mugsborough (not its real name), and a novel written in and about it in the first decade of the 20^th century. Because of its political content, this illustrated talk had to be scheduled for after the local Council elections (!), and will take place at Kingsbury Library on Tuesday 12 May from 11am to 12noon (but arrive around 10.45am for free tea/coffee and a biscuit).

 

“Tressell” in 1908

 

“Memoir from Mugsborough” not only shares stories from the book “The Ragged Trousered Philantropists” (using images from printed pages, the original manuscript and a modern graphic novel version), but also looks at the fascinating story of the author Robert Tressell (not his real surname), and how the book he had put so much effort into writing, despite poor health and hardship, came to be published after his death. You can get more details and reserve your free place on the Brent Libraries Eventbrite website.

 

Title slide for “Arthur Elvin” talk at Wembley Library.

 

My second “coffee morning” talk this year, “Arthur Elvin – Mister Wembley”, will be at Wembley Library on Tuesday 9 June from 11am to 12noon. The story of the man who used to be called “Mister Wembley” is not as well-known now as it deserves to be. Without him, Wembley Stadium would not have become famous around the world, and Wembley Arena (originally called the Empire Pool) would not have existed at all. 

 

Arthur Elvin looking down the newly completed Olympic Way in 1948.

 

His early life, before he first came to Wembley as a young unemployed ex-serviceman, to work in a cigarette kiosk in 1924, is equally fascinating - so come along and discover more about this important local character if you are free on the morning of 9 June. You can find further details and reserve your free seat at this illustrated talk here.

 

Philip Grant.

Northwick Park Golf: Brent Council's historical responsibility to ensure it continues as open space available for public use

 Philip Grant posted a copy of his objection to Brent Cuncil's disposal of the  Northwick Park Gold open space as a comment on the recent article about the Northwick Community Garden's appeal. I asked that he allow me to share more prominently.  Here it is as a Guest Blog Post. Philip writes in a personal capacity.

 

 

From 'Middlesex' by C.W. Radcliffe (Published1939) 

     

'Dear Brent Property and Asset Management,

Further to your Notice dated 17 March 2026 in the "Brent & Kilburn Times", I am writing to object to the proposed disposal of open space land known as Northwick Park Golf at 280 Watford Road.

This land was acquired jointly by Middlesex County Council and Wembley Urban District Council (from October 1937 the Borough of Wembley) around 1936/37, under policies designed to ensure sufficient public open space in the rapidly expanding London suburban areas. The money borrowed from the Treasury for such purchases in the 1930s had to be approved by the then Ministry of Health, and one of the conditions for their consent was that the land should always remain as public open space.

The book "Middlesex", published by Middlesex County Council in 1939 to celebrate the Council's Golden Jubilee, and written by C.W. Radcliffe, Clerk and Solicitor to the County Council, records that the County Council's resolution to acquire the open space at Watford Road in Wembley was approved in 1936. Such acquisitions were usually funded 75% by the County Council and 25% by the local Council, and the book states:

'In June 1935 it was definitely decided that, in all future cases in which the County Council agreed to make a contribution of 50 per cent or more of the cost involved, the freehold of the land should be conveyed to the County Council. In such cases the general practice is for the land to be leased to the borough or district council in whose area it is situated, on a 999 years' lease at a nominal rent. The procedure has the advantage of enabling the County Council to exercise greater control of the open spaces than would otherwise be the case and the County Council is in a stronger position in preventing any unauthorized dealing with the land.'

Such 'unauthorized dealing' would include the use of the land for any purpose other than open space available for the public to use for recreational purposes. Under the local government reorganisation in 1965, Middlesex County Council ceased to exist, and the freehold interest in the land, as well as the leasehold interest held by the Borough of Wembley, passed to the new London Borough of Brent.

But as well as the freehold passing, so did the responsibility for ensuring that the successor to Middlesex County Council retained the freehold in that land, to ensure that it could only be used, for the rest of the 999 years, as open space available for public use. That is why Brent Council should not dispose of the freehold.

New urban developments now are much denser than they were in the 1930s, so maintaining existing open space is even more important. That is particularly so on this site, because of the high density housing development currently taking place next door to it in the grounds of Northwick Park Hospital. I trust that my objection, and those of others which I am aware of, will be upheld, and that Brent Council will not dispose of the freehold of this open space land. 

Yours faithfully,

Philip Grant

Proposed Stopping-up Order near Olympic Steps – here we go again, and why this reflects what is wrong with Brent Council decision-making.

  Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity 

Legal Notice from the “Brent & Kilburn Times”, 19 March 2026.

 

My guest post on 1 January opened with an image like this one, giving notice of a Magistrates’ Court hearing on 22 January at which Brent Council would be applying to stop-up (that is, to extinguish the right of pedestrians and vehicles to pass across) two areas of highway near Engineers Way, and close to the Olympic Steps at Wembley Park. An update to a subsequent article, Does Brent Council really want to embarrass itself in Court?, reported that the Council had asked for that hearing to be adjourned. 

 

Hopes that common sense would prevail were dashed when a Council Officer informed me, a couple of weeks ago, of a new hearing date on 16 April. I waited until the formal notice (above) had appeared in our local newspaper, before responding to it:

 

‘I have seen the Notice in yesterday's "Brent & Kilburn Times" about the new hearing date of 16 April at 2pm for the Council's Section 116 application. As requested in the Notice, I am writing to formally advise you that I intend to appear at this Willesden Magistrates' Court hearing, to object to the application for a stopping-up Order.

 

The grounds for my objection are that the application under Section 116 is wrong in law, because the two areas of highway shown on the Plan are not "unnecessary".

 

I will use the illustrations in the document "Brent Council’s proposed Engineers Way S.116 Stopping-up Order areas in pictures", which I supplied you with a copy of on 12 January 2026, as evidence that it is necessary for pedestrians and vehicles to pass across the areas of highway which the Council seeks to stop-up. You should ensure that whoever will be representing Brent Council at the hearing has a copy of that document.

 

Even at this late stage, it would be possible for the Council to withdraw its application, as you must realise that it has little hope of success, on the basis of the facts and law. Please let me know, as soon as possible, if the application is withdrawn. Thank you.’

 

I received two brief responses from Council Officers:

 

‘Thank you for letting me know of your intention to attend the stopping up order court hearing. I can confirm, as explained in our previous correspondences, the Council is intending to request the magistrate to approve this order under section 116 of the Highways Act 1980.’

 

‘I can confirm that we have a copy of your submission from 12th January "Brent Council’s proposed Engineers Way S.116 Stopping-up Order areas in pictures" and will ensure our barrister has sight of the document prior to the hearing.’

 

So not only are the Council going ahead with the application, they will be represented in Court by a barrister (I will be representing myself!). Hopefully, Quintain Ltd will be paying the barrister’s fee, as apparently, they were the ones who asked Brent to make the application in the first place. 

 

View from the Olympic Steps, showing that one of the areas Brent seeks to stop-up (in red)  would block the entrance to Olympic Way East, and impede pedestrians from using the Engineers Way crossing between Olympic Way and the Olympic Steps.

 

You only need to look at the areas the proposed stopping-up order would apply to, as shown by even one of the images (above) in the evidence document I supplied in January, to see that it is necessary for pedestrians and/or vehicles to pass across them. Yet Council Officers and an important Council committee are supposed to have considered the details before agreeing that an application for a Section 116 Order should be made to the Court.

 

The committee involved was Brent’s General Purposes Committee, at a meeting as long ago as 7 March 2022. This is one example, of many possibles, which illustrates how the decision-making processes at Brent Council have deteriorated over the past decade or so. This can lead to ill-considered decisions, which often end up wasting money (sometimes £millions) and to poor services. In this case, it was obvious to me as soon as I saw the plan showing the areas involved that they were not “unnecessary”, so why was it not obvious to the decision-makers?

 

I wrote in October 2016 about the way in which Brent’s General Purposes Committee, which used to be a strong group of senior “backbench” councillors, had been “hijacked”. The title of that article was: Does Councillor Butt have too much power?. Here is an extract from it:

 

‘[Brent’s] Constitution (in its own words) ‘…sets out how the Council operates, how decisions are made and the procedures which are followed to ensure that decision making is efficient, transparent and accountable to local people. Some of the procedures are required by law, while others are a matter for the Council.’

 

“Responsibility for Functions” is an important area, which should mean that there are “checks and balances” to ensure that power is shared across the Council, so that no single person or group within it has too much (to guard against that power being abused). The Constitution gives the Leader, or the Leader together with the Cabinet, considerable powers, but there are also ‘functions which cannot be exercised by the Cabinet’, ‘functions not to be the sole responsibility of the Cabinet’ and ‘functions that may only be exercised by Full Council’.

 

One area of particular concern is the General Purposes Committee, which ‘carries out a number of functions on which the Cabinet cannot take decisions, including public rights of way, setting the Council Tax base and approving staffing matters’.  The committee has eight members, and the Constitution used to say that at least one of these must be a member of the Executive (the previous title for the Cabinet). That proviso, which gave a very strong hint that most of the committee should be made up of back-bench councillors, has been removed, and for the past few years seven of the eight members have been Cabinet members, with the official Opposition Leader as the eighth.

 

Cllr. Butt is Chair of the General Purposes Committee, and of its Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee. This has given him considerable influence over the Council’s senior staffing structure, who is appointed to the Senior Officer posts, and the terms on which they are appointed.’

 

Whereas the General Purposes Committee used to hold “full length” meetings, when councillors would discus and decide matters publicly and transparently, they now start just half an hour before the Monday morning Cabinet meetings.  There were six substantive items on its agenda for the meeting on 22 March 2022. The minutes show that it began at 9.30am, and record that ‘the meeting closed at 9.49am’! 

 

 

I did follow-up my October 2016 guest post with an email to Brent’s then Chief Executive, who chaired the Council’s Constitutional Working Group (of which the Council Leader is also a member), suggesting that it:

 

‘should consider ways to ensure that the functions of the General Purposes Committee and its sub-committees are carried out independently of the Council Leader and the Cabinet. This is not just something which affects the present personnel, or situation on Brent Council, but a question of good governance.

 

The Leader and Cabinet already have considerable powers in those roles, and yet there are more than fifty other elected councillors whose knowledge and experience could contribute to the functions carried out by General Purposes Committee, if the majority of seats on that committee, and its Chair, were to be reserved under the Constitution for members who are not in the Cabinet. I believe that this would also ensure a better balance of power within the Council as a whole.’

 

The reply I received to my detailed email was short:

 

'Dear Mr Grant

 

Thank you for your email. The Chief Executive notes your concerns about the constitution of the General Purposes Committee. The Chief Executive and I consider that the composition of the Committee is satisfactory from both a legal and operational perspective.

 

Best wishes,

 

Chief Legal Officer'

 

Both the Chief Executive and Chief Legal Officer at that time had been chosen by the Senior Staff Appointments Sub-Committee, chaired by ………. you’ve guessed who.

 

Would a properly (in my view) constituted General Purposes Committee, which could spend more time considering reports presented to them by Officers, and would have had time to look at the plan which was one of the appendices to the Stopping-up Order Report, have agreed the recommendation ‘to approve the submission of an application to the Magistrate Court’? I can’t be sure, but I believe it was an avoidable error, which has wasted a lot of Council Officer time.

 

Willesden Magistrates’ Court. (Image from the Courts Service website)

 

We will find out whether it really was a bad decision when I see Brent Council in Court, on the afternoon of Thursday 16 April!

 

Philip Grant.

Another visit to the former Wembley Town Hall (now the Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill), and its wartime history.

Guest post by local istorian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

The new Wembley Town Hall (Photograph from “The Architect’s Journal”, 26 January 1940)

 

Last September, I wrote about a visit to the former Brent Town Hall during Open House weekend, as part of the 10^th anniversary of the Lycée International’s opening in Wembley. In December, they kindly invited me back for a tour of parts of the building which weren’t included during the public open day, particularly the basement. You may think this would not be of much interest, but please read on, as I uncover some of Wembley Town Hall’s wartime secrets!

 

The start of work on the new Town Hall, for the combined Urban Districts of Wembley and Kingsbury, was reported in the “Wembley News” on 23 July 1937: ‘The first sod of the site in Forty Lane, where Wembley’s new Town Hall is to be built, was cut on Tuesday morning by Councillor H. Gauntlett, Chairman of the Town Hall Committee.’ This photograph shows a surveyor setting out the site for where the basement of the building would be, a few weeks later:

 

A surveyor at work on the Town Hall site, 31 August 1937.

 

Although the outbreak of the Second World War was still two years away, the potential threat from German rearmament, and Hitler’s territorial ambitions, was already realised. The original plans for the Town Hall, prepared by the architect Clifford Strange, were amended to include a reinforced concrete roof for the basement areas, which could be used as shelters in the event of air raids.

The basement had a “secret tunnel”, linking it to the gardens alongside Forty Lane. It is shown on the original plans as a ‘fresh air intake duct’, and that may well have been its purpose, allowing air into the underground area which included the Town Hall’s boiler room. But it was also big enough to allow people to walk along, in single file, if the building had been bombed and staff sheltering there could not escape through the normal exit. I was able to walk along it a short way, before it dipped down and was flooded!

 

                The doorway to the “secret tunnel”, and inside the tunnel itself.

 

War was declared on 3 September 1939, after Germany’s invasion of Poland, and by the end of the year staff had moved into the new Town Hall, and an Air Raid Precautions control room had been set up in the basement. A telephone exchange, linked to Wembley’s eighty A.R.P. warden posts and other wartime emergency services, was manned 24-hours a day throughout the war, with a staff room beside it where the Council volunteers operating it could rest when not on the switchboard. These were still marked on a post-war basement plan.

 

Extract from a Town Hall basement plan, with exchange arrowed.

 

But did the basement exchange have a wider wartime use than just for local A.R.P. services? In her commentary on the building in a book about the Lycée in 2015, Mireille Rebaté, the Head of School, wrote that it ‘played a major role as a secret communication hub during the Second World War.’ I’m not sure what her source of information was for that statement, but I do know from research on the Borough of Wembley’s Distinguished Visitors Book that a range of senior military figures came to the Town Hall during the war, and that their visits were not reported publicly in the local newspaper! Here is a small selection of their signatures in the book:

 

Some of the military “top brass” who visited Wembley Town Hall in WW2.

 

One of the reasons I looked through the Distinguished Visitors Book was to see whether Winston Churchill had ever visited the Town Hall, as the Lycée was named after him. His signature was not in the book, but in May 1943 an “All Star Ball” was held in the Grand Hall to raise money for a wartime charity fronted by his wife. Mrs Churchill’s Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund benefitted when around three hundred residents paid to join stars of film and stage at the ball. The stars signed lots of autographs, in return for a one shilling donation towards the fund for each, and hosted an auction of celebrity items. However, as the “Wembley News” reported, ‘The cigar box, autographed and presented by Mr Winston Churchill, was withdrawn, owing to its reserve price not being reached.’

 

Newspaper advert for the “All Star Ball”, and Clementine Churchill addressing the crowd at a Wembley Stadium wartime charity football match for her “Aid to Russia” Fund.

 

The Town Hall basement would not have been large enough to shelter all the Council’s staff, so a large space with a reinforced roof was created under the Grand Hall. According to Muriel Lander, who was a 17-year-old typist in the Borough’s legal department when they moved to Forty Lane from offices in St John’s Road at the end of 1939, it was ‘a vast, steel-doored bomb shelter.’ She told a “Wembley Observer” reporter in 1996 that they had to go down to the shelter when a whistle was blown to warn of a possible air raid. ‘A lot of the older Council staff were scared, but I took it in a light-hearted way because I was so young.’

 

Muriel Lander (right) and her typist colleagues at the Town Hall during WW2.
(Brent Archives – “Wembley Observer” newspaper microfilms)

 

Muriel also recalled that she and her colleagues had to take a turn at fire watching, because of the risk from German incendiary bombs. If you were on that duty, you slept fully-clothed on a Z-bed in your office, and when the sirens sounded an air raid warning, you ran up to the Town Hall roof and stood by with a hose, in case a fire bomb landed on the building.

 

The large shelter at the Town Hall was also available for local residents or passers-by to use, accessed by the service road from Kings Drive. The service road, at the back of the main office building, was used for deliveries, including coal or coke to fire the boilers, which would have been tipped through large manholes down into the basement fuel store beside the boiler room. The service road ended at a building, which was literally “the end of the road” for some Wembley residents, the Borough’s mortuary!

 

Plan of the Wembley Town Hall mortuary building.

 

The National Health Service was not set up until 1948, so that when the Town Hall was built it was Wembley Council’s Medical Officer of Health who had responsibility for carrying out post mortems, when deaths in the borough required them. My visit did not include the mortuary, as it is no longer there!

 

Something else no longer there is the entrance (or exit?) of the “secret tunnel”, at the Forty Lane end. It has been blocked off, and no one now knows where exactly it came out. You can’t go very far along the tunnel from the basement, because its lower section is flooded, but it still had to be checked (by a French Security Service frogman!) before the then French President, François Hollande, came to officially open the Lycée in September 2015.

 

François Hollande at the official opening of the Lycée in 2015.
(Courtesy of the Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill)

 

The photograph above is from the book about the building, “Un Espace d’Histoire & de Futur” (a blend of heritage and future). I found my visit to the former Town Hall’s basement, and its links to local World War Two history, very interesting, and I hope you have enjoyed reading about it too.

 

Philip Grant.