Guest post by Philip Grant
A couple
of months ago I was walking along Empire Way, for the first time in a while,
when a new street name caught my eye:
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| Palace Arts Way street name sign |
Many people, new to the Wembley Park area, might wonder who or what “Palace
Arts” is or was, and why a road should be called that. As someone with an
interest in local history, I realised that the road is by the site of the
former 1924 British Empire Exhibition Palace of Arts building, so why
was the “OF” missing from its name?
I wrote a
joint email to Quintain’s Wembley Park company and to Brent Council’s street
names department, asking whether there was a mistake on the sign, and if not,
why the “OF” was missing from the name. Brent replied promptly, saying that
Quintain had submitted the naming application in 2015, and that all proposed
names are subject to consultation with the emergency services (they sent me a
copy of the London Fire Brigade guidelines on street names) before being
approved.
It was a
couple of months before I received a full response from Quintain, but when I
did it was clear that they had asked for the street to be called “Palace
of Arts Way”. Brent had declined to accept that name, and they thought this was
because “OF” was not permitted as a word in street names. Having checked the
L.F.B. guidelines, there is no mention of “OF”, although it does say that new
street names should not begin with “The”. It appears that the reason the name
was shortened may be because the guidelines suggest that names of more than
three syllables (before the suffix “Road”, “Street” or “Way” etc.) should be
avoided.
Guidelines
should be respected, but they are not strict rules. No doubt I am biased over
this particular name, but surely common sense and respect for the heritage of
Wembley Park should allow an extra, two-letter, syllable in this case? Just
speak the names out loud. “Palace of Arts Way” has a soft flow to it, and would
take no longer to say in a 999 call than “Palace Arts Way”, which has a hard
sound between the first two words that forces you to take a short break in
speaking them.
Why all
this fuss over a little word? What is special about the Palace of Arts which
means that it should be remembered in a street name? Let me share at bit more
Wembley history with you.
As with
much of Wembley Park’s story, it involves the British Empire Exhibition, which
was held in 1924 and 1925. Like its larger neighbours, the Palaces of Industry
and Engineering, the Palace of Arts (seen here in a postcard from the time) was
one of the big reinforced concrete buildings showing off the best that Britain
had to offer.
A full range of arts and crafts were on show in the building’s many galleries,
including paintings by leading British artists from the 18th century
onwards, and furniture in room settings from the same period up to the 1920’s.
There was a sculpture gallery, and rooms displaying works by artists from
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Burma. Other exhibits
showed the development of architecture, pottery, paper-making, printing and
bookbinding. One room sold works by current artists and craftspeople, with nothing
costing more than half a guinea (now 52.5 pence, but worth rather more then),
showing that art could be affordable to the general public.
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| Palace of Arts 1924 postcard |
One of the
main attractions was Queen Mary’s Dolls House, which visitors had to pay an
extra 6d (2.5 pence) to see - more than 1.6 million did so in 1924, with all
the money going to charities nominated by the Queen. The project to make this
was begun in 1921, with the 8ft 6in x 5ft x 5ft high mansion designed by Sir
Edwin Lutyens. Hundreds of companies donated 1/12th scale working
models of their products (including piano-makers Broadwoods, who had a works in
Kingsbury at the time). Leading artists created miniature paintings to decorate
the rooms, and top authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard
Kipling hand-wrote short stories and poems in tiny books for the dolls house’s
library.
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| Packing up Queen Mary's doll house 1920's |
After the
Exhibition, the Dolls House was moved to Windsor Castle (where it can be seen
today), with money from visitors to see it still going to charity. Although
some of the Exhibition’s buildings were demolished after it ended, the Palace
of Arts survived. It was used mainly as storage space for Wembley Stadium, and
especially for the Empire Pool / Wembley Arena after that was built across the
road in 1934 (you need somewhere to put the sections of the banked timber
track, that you use for your annual six-day cycle race, for the other 359
days!).
The
building got a new lease of life in 1948, when the facilities at Wembley were
used to host the Olympic Games. The BBC took over the building to provide the
broadcasting centre for radio presenters and journalists from around the world
who came to cover the Games. It continued to be used as the main base for the
BBC’s outside broadcast unit until the Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush
opened in the 1960’s. After that, the ageing structure began to fall into
disrepair and, although it was a “listed building”, permission was given to
demolish it in the early 2000’s.
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| Palace of Arts as BBC Broadcasting Centre for 1948 Olympics |
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| Palace of Arts awaiting demolition 2002 |
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| Basilica, Palace of Arts, November 2004 |
For a number of years the site remained derelict, and many local residents will
remember the last, forlorn surviving part of the “Palace” alongside Empire Way.
The Basilica had been a wing of the original building devoted to religious art.
Before this part of the building was finally demolished, several beautiful
mosaics were carefully removed, and one of these can now be seen in Brent
Museum.
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| Cedar House, Emerald Gardens, on site of Palace of Arts |
Quintain finally got round to developing this area of their Wembley Park estate
around 2013. The blocks of apartments on the site are now called Emerald
Gardens, fronting onto Engineers Way opposite the Arena. I admit that “Palace
of Engineering Way” would have been too much of a mouthful, but I still think
the little road along the back of Emerald Gardens should have been called
“Palace OF Arts Way”.
