After a very long absence, we have decided it's time to take the Preston Library quiz back to The Preston. The pub have very kindly offered to let us use their own quizmaster, so the format will be slightly different, but all of the proceeds will go to the library and I'm sure the quiz will be the same hugely enjoyable evening as before. The library quiz will now be at 8pm on the first Monday of every month, starting this coming Monday, 2nd May. If you wish, you can book a table on the pub's website (see link below). Tickets are £5 [with £3 concessions], pay on the night.
Guest blog by Chris Coates of Preston Community Library. Plenty of material here, especially the video, for local teachers who are teaching the Second World War to Year 6 next academic year.
Part 2 of The Preston Story ended in the early years of
the 20th century with Preston still a rural hamlet. Its small
population were employed on farms or as servants in the large houses starting
to appear along Preston Road – their middle-class residents now able to commute
into London from the ‘request stop’ Halt on the Metropolitan Railway. At
weekends, the population was swelled by visitors to the two golf clubs, the
shooting grounds and the various sports grounds owned by London-based
companies.
1.A 1930s postcard of Preston Hill, with bridge over the Wealdstone Brook in
the distance. (From the Wembley History Society Collection –
Brent Archives online image 8979)
The
years following the First World War brought fast moving change to Preston.
Local farms had specialised in producing hay for the 1000s of horses in London
- Uxendon and Forty Farms were 100% meadow land in 1900. As motor traffic
increased the demand fell, so some farms closed while others down-sized. In
1907, there were 66 farms in Wembley and by 1937 there were only nine.
2.The rib-making workshop for aeroplane wings at Hooper & Co, North
Wembley, 1917.
At the
same time, new industrial areas near Preston attracted workers away from
agriculture and, during the war,
women were encouraged to leave domestic service for better paid, though
often dangerous, work in factories. In Kingsbury, there were 4 aeroplane
companies including The Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which by 1918 was
employing 4,400 people, more than half of them women. Another company, Hooper
& Co, moved to East Lane, North Wembley in 1917 to build the Sopwith Camel
and produce spare parts for other planes. The site – later the GEC estate –
covered 40 acres including a flying ground and railway sidings. British Oxygen also moved to East Lane
in 1918, as did the Wrigley [chewing gum] Company in 1926.
From 1921, Christ
Church College, Oxford, Harrow School and other landowners sold their Preston
estates for building development. Developers were attracted by the good
transport links both into London and to the North. Local roads, including Forty
Lane, had been widened and improved to ease visitor access to the 1924-5
British Empire Exhibition and the train network had been extended and
modernised. The Metropolitan Line was electrified through to Harrow by 1908 and
the Bakerloo Line, running on L. & N.W.R
tracks, electrified out to Watford Junction by 1922. A large triangle of land
was created between the lines where commuters might find the Metroland dream of a modern home in beautiful
countryside plus a fast rail service into London.
3.The cover of the 1921 edition of the Metro-Land guide. (Image from the internet)
The term "Metro-land" was coined by
the Metropolitan Railway Company’s marketing department in 1915 to promote
sales of housing on its land in the North-west London suburbs. The Company did
not build housing in Preston, but other developers were clearly influenced by
the Metroland ideal of Tudor Revival design. Sadly, John Betjeman gives only a
passing [literally!] reference to Preston in his many Metroland poems:
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road, They saw the last green fields and misty sky….Baker St Station Buffet [1954]
Housing
and shops spread along Preston Road in the 1920s. Several builders were
involved in the development, notably Clifford Sabey who built the Preston Hotel
(now The Preston) c.1927 and Preston Park Primary School in 1932. The lovely
Harrow Golf Clubhouse, that we saw in Part 2, overlooking peaceful fields and the meandering
Crouch Brook, was demolished in 1928 and the Preston Park Estate began to cover
the whole golf course and fields beyond up to the Bakerloo Line boundary,
taking some 12 years to be completed.
5.An aerial view looking west from Preston Road, 1932.
(From “Britain
from Above”, image EPW037564)
This aerial photograph, taken in 1932, looks west across the growing Preston
Park Estate. Logan Road, Carlton Avenue East, College Road and Preston Road
down to St Augustine’s Avenue can clearly be seen, with the Crouch Brook
crossing Glendale Gardens, the school grounds and the fields beyond. Sudbury
Court Estate in the distance is nearing completion.
6.Exterior and interior views of The Windermere, built 1938. (Images
from the internet)
Some developers
included outstanding designs. The Lawns Court estate on The Avenue, was built
in the Moderne style on the old Forty Farm estate around 1931. The Windermere, a Grade 2 listed pub in Windermere Avenue, was
built in 1938 in the Dutch style, with Art Deco interiors. To enhance
the attraction of the area for commuters, the old Halt was replaced with a
proper Preston Road station, built to the west of the road bridge in 1931-2,
and a new station, South Kenton, on the Bakerloo Line, was opened in 1933.
7.A newspaper article about South Kenton Station, from the Nottingham
Evening Post, 1 February 1934
By now it was clear that the new heart of Preston would be to the south of the
old hamlet. More shops appeared around the station in the 1930s and by 1936
Preston was being described as ‘a high class and rapidly growing residential
area with a population of between 6,000 and 7,000 people’. Under Wembley's Town
Planning Scheme 1931-2, the remaining country lanes in the area were improved
and Clay Lane re-named Preston Hill - both it and Preston Road became
straightened and widened suburban streets by 1937. Preston Manor Secondary
School was built in 1938 for the families moving into the area.
8.Carlton Avenue East from the corner of Longfield Avenue, c.1935. (Brent
Archives online image 10539) [Note the newly-planted lime trees, and the absence of traffic!]
Development moved north-east of Preston when the Metropolitan Railway extension from Wembley to
Stanmore (later the Bakerloo and today the Jubilee Line) was opened in 1932. The final remnants
of the old Uxendon Manor estate that we looked at in Parts 1and 2 were demolished to
make way for it. Forty Green began being
built over as early as 1923, but in the years that followed housing covered the
whole of Uxendon, except for Barn Hill Open Space, which had been purchased by
the Council from the owners of Preston Farm in 1927.
The demand for building workers far outstripped local availability. As in
previous times, migrant or incoming labour was vital. Government schemes
brought unemployed workers from ‘Distressed Areas’ in the North to meet the
inter-war development boom in the South East. My father came down from Durham
on such a Scheme and was put to navvying on building sites in Kingsbury. After
finding work more suited to his skills, he, like many generations of migrant
workers before him, settled in the area.
9.Bombs dropped on Preston, 1 October 1940 to 6
June 1941 (where multiple bombs fell, number shown).(Image from the bombsight.org website)
The
Second World War came to Preston in August 1940, when incendiary bombs were
dropped on Barn Hill. Later in the Blitz, the area was hit more severely. This
bombing map from the 1940s shows 43 High Explosive Bombs dropped from October
1940 to June 1941 in Preston, probably aiming for the rail networks or for North
Wembley’s industrial complex - especially the GEC Research Centre where radar
systems were being developed.
10.Wembley's A.R.P. Post 32, in The Avenue, c.1939. (From a Brent
Archives local history article)
The A.R.P.
[Air Raid Precautions] Post above was in The Avenue, Wembley Park. The wardens’
name-sign for their base shows a rattle, to warn residents of a possible gas
attack, and a bell to signal the ‘all clear’ afterwards. A.R.P. wardens also
enforced the ‘blackout’. Heavy curtains and shutters were required on all
private residences and commercial premises to prevent light escaping and
helping enemy bombers locate their targets.
At the
start of the war, Government evacuation schemes moved children out of the
cities. In 1940, the City of Benares, an evacuee ship on its way to
Canada, was torpedoed by a German submarine with heavy loss of
life, including 77 evacuated children. Many Wembley children were on the Benares
and 7 pupils from Preston Park Primary School were among those who died.
Further plans to relocate British children abroad were cancelled.
11.Excerpt from Preston Park Primary School diary, September 1940, listing 7
pupils lost on City of Benares.
British
Restaurants were set up for those made homeless, but later became open to all,
serving meals each day at 1 shilling for 3 courses. There were 8 British
Restaurants in Wembley, including Preston [1943] at 3-7 Lincoln Parade, Preston
Road - the building survives at the junction with Carlton Avenue East.
12.War Savings poster, 1942. (Image from the TUC Library Collection)
Everyone
on the Home Front was expected to contribute in some way – in war work, ARP,
the Home Guard or the War Savings Campaign. Elmstead Avenue’s War Savings Group
managed to collect £40,000 for the war effort through its activities. Children
were encouraged to help collect recycling. There is a short silent film of Kenton Boy
Scouts doing just that in Woodcock Hill!
Families
with space were expected to accept billeted essential workers, Land Army women
working on the remaining Preston farms, or refugees. Wembley’s Empire Pool
acted as the Middlesex Reception Centre for European refugees and many were
found temporary homes locally. The Church of the Ascension church hall [built
1937] in The Avenue set up a refugee club. The Church itself was not built
until 1957.
13.Metropolitan trains come and go
at Preston Road Station, while a steam train races past on the British Rail
tracks. (Photograph taken by a trainspotter
in October 1962 – Brent Archives online image 8654)
After
the war, a prefab estate was built for bombed-out families at Tenterden Close,
Woodcock Hill, and was there until the late 1960s. Housing development
continued to the north and east of Preston Road, and The Mall was extended to
the Wealdstone Brook, cutting across playing fields to make a more direct route
from Preston Hill to Kingsbury.In 1947
another place of worship, a Liberal synagogue, was built on Preston Road. By
1951 Preston's population had risen to 12,408. The company owned sports fields
on Woodcock Hill were bought by Middlesex County Council for Wembley in 1957
and renamed the John Billam Sports Ground after a previous Mayor.
15.Shops in Preston Road c.1960, from
the junction with Grasmere Avenue. (Brent
Archives online image 8628
By the
early 1960s, all of Preston's old buildings in the original hamlet had been
lost. Preston Farm, Hillside Farm and the Preston Tea Gardens demolished for
flats and John Lyon’s farm replaced by John Perrin Place – a council housing
estate. After hundreds of years with little change, within 50 years the tiny
village of Preston had become a radically different place – and very much part
of London.
If you have memories of Preston in the Second
World War or the years following, please share them in the Comments box below. Do return for Part 4 of the Preston Story when we
will look at our area today.
