Showing posts with label Second World War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second World War. Show all posts

Saturday 31 October 2020

Uncovering Kilburn’s History – Part 6

 Welcome back! If you missed Part 5, please click on the “link” to read it. We’ll begin this week with a look at some local homes.

 

1. Albert Road, South Kilburn, late 1940s. (From “The Willesden Survey, 1949”)

 

By 1900, there was a growing divide in Kilburn between the more prosperous north and the poor south. The conditions in some areas of South Kilburn were dire – in 1881 a report was made to a meeting at Kilburn Town Hall on the living conditions in Victoria Place, behind the Cock Tavern. 161 people, including 84 children, lived in 26 small dwellings, which were accessed from the High Road along a narrow passage, which went by the pub’s urinal, the walls of which were covered in bad language. 

 

In 1898 the Vestry reported on ‘houses let in lodgings’ in Palmerston Road and Kelson and Netherwood Streets off Kilburn High Road. Although they did not see any cases of ‘actual want or destitution’, many of the residents kept hens as a source of food in winter when men were out of work. Houses were in need of cleansing and the repair of plaster. ‘The total number of souls in the 160 houses was 2264, of which 668 were children under 10 years of age, an average of a little more than 14 for each house, against 7 for the rest of the Parish.’

 

Kilburn Vale, on the Hampstead side, had been reported to be ‘in a most foul, unwholesome state, well before the turn of the century’, and remained slums until the 1930s.

 

 

 


2. The Animal's War Memorial Dispensary building in Cambridge Avenue, 2020. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

It wasn’t just people who needed better treatment. An interesting memorial commemorating World War I is located at 10 Cambridge Avenue. In 1931 the RSPCA bought this building for the Animals War Memorial Dispensary, as a practical tribute to countless horses, dogs, donkeys, pigeons and many other types of animals used by the army and who gave their lives for their human masters. The dispensary was where ‘the sick, injured or unwanted animals of poor people could receive, free of charge, the best possible veterinary attention, or a painless death.’ By the mid-1930s, more than 50,000 animals and birds were treated at the Kilburn Dispensary. It closed in 2016.

 

The years between the First and Second World Wars also saw the emergence of large-scale municipal housing, in particular the Westcroft Housing Estate on the Hampstead side. In the 1930s some new developments, in particular on Shoot Up Hill, took the form of mansion blocks of flats. On the Willesden side of the High Road, however, there was little in the way of housing improvements for people in Kilburn during the inter-war years.

 

3. Warwick Lodge, Shoot Up Hill, a 1930s mansion block of private flats. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

The overcrowding and living conditions in South Kilburn meant that many people lacked basic amenities for washing, and the opening of Granville Road Baths in July 1937 was a welcome addition to local facilities. Willesden Council bought a terrace with cottages and stables at the rear, and the baths were specially designed for the confined site – nevertheless, providing not only a 100ft x 33ft swimming pool with diving boards of a competition standard, but also private slipper baths (where people could have a bath for a small fee), lockers, cubicles and a public laundry with a washing machine. A superintendent lived in a flat on the premises.

 

4. Granville Road Baths, and a Leon Kossoff painting of the swimming pool. (Images from the internet)

 

The baths became a subject of paintings by artist Leon Kossoff in 1960s, who had his studio in Willesden. They continued to be a popular local facility until demolished in 1990s, and now the space is occupied by Len Williams Court. 

 

Whatever Kilburn lacked in home comforts, there was no shortage of places of entertainment, and we’ll take a tour of some of the grander venues over the years. The Kilburn Theatre Royal, which occupied the former Kilburn Town Hall building in Belsize Road, operated as a cinema from 1909 to 1941, known as the Kilburn Picture Palace and Theatre of Varieties. In later years the building housed Shannon’s Night Club, a warehouse and a Decca Recording Studios in 1990s. It is currently used as offices. 

 

5. A Theatre Royal poster, and the Kilburn Empire, early 1900s. (Images from the internet)

 

The Kilburn Empire, opened in 1906 at 9-11 The Parade (the triangle of Kilburn High Road and Kilburn Vale), offering music hall, circus and films (the great escapologist Houdini performed there in 1909). It remained a cinema under various names until 1981, was then used as a religious building, and a paint-ball game centre, until demolished in 1994 to make way for the Regents Plaza Hotel. 

 

The Grange Cinema opened on the site of the The Grange mansion in 1914. It had over 2,000 seats, a stage, an organ and the Winter Garden café, and was the largest purpose-built cinema in the country at the time. Sixty years later the cinema closed, and the building became the National Club in 1976, and was a popular music venue for the large Irish community in the area. As well as Irish showbands, it featured many famous performers, including Johnny Cash, Simply Red and David Bowie, until it closed in 1999. Now the building is used by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and since 1991 it has been a Grade II listed building.

 

6. The Grange Cinema c.1930, and as a Christian centre in 2018. (Old image from internet, photo by John Hill)

 

7. Kilburn's Gaumont State Cinema, c. 1970. (Brent Archives online image 427)

 

The biggest jewel in Kilburn’s crown was the Gaumont State Cinema, which opened on 20 December 1937. Owned and commissioned by the Hyams brothers and designed by the famous cinema architect George Coles, it seated 4,000 people, had a separate dance hall and a restaurant. It was the largest cinema in Europe at the time, and remains the third largest ever built in the UK. The 120 feet (37 metres) high tower inspired by a 1930s New York skyscraper, housing its own radio studio, could be seen for miles and immediately became the local landmark. The opulent interior reflected the trends of the day and included a Wurlitzer organ on a rising and revolving platform, which remained one of the largest fully functioning Wurlitzer organs in Britain well into 21st century, and one of the few remaining in its original location. 


  

From the opening performance which starred Gracie Fields, George Formby, Larry Adler and Henry Hall and his band, the Gaumont State became a popular entertainment venue, hosting variety, pantomimes, circus, ballet and concert performances in addition to film screenings. Over the years it featured such acts as Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ella Fitzgerald, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Who and many others. 

 

8. Bill Haley (1957), John Lennon and Mick Jagger (1963) at the State. (Brent Archives 433, 9036 & 9034)

 

In 1980s the building became Mecca Bingo. In 2007 it closed and was under the
threat from developers. Eventually it was bought by Ruach City Church, 70 years to the day after the original opening of the Gaumont State. The building has a Grade II listed status.
(You can find more information on music venues in Willesden on Music Maps here -
https://www.notjustcamden.uk/maps/ )

 

During the Second World War Kilburn suffered some bomb damage, but not on a massive scale, which is lucky, considering the concentration of railway lines in the area. The first raid hit the area around Kilburn High Road on the Brent side in September 1940. 1944 was one of the worst years, with V1s arriving later that year to hit West End Lane, Ardwick Road, Burgess Hill and Fortune Green Road, as well as the Willesden side of Shoot Up Hill. The writer, George Orwell, had to rescue his books and other belongings from the flat in Mortimer Crescent, where he had written “Animal Farm”, after that was destroyed by a V1. In January and March 1945 two V2 rockets brought greater devastation damaging hundreds of houses on Hampstead and Willesden sides – the latter being in Dartmouth Road.

 

By the end of the war there was an urgent need for housing, and factory-built houses (popularly known as “prefabs”) which could be put up quickly on cleared sites were a temporary solution, although a few of them stayed until 1960s. On the Hampstead side there was a large prefab estate around Lichfield Road and Westcroft Close. Willesden had large sites of them elsewhere in the borough, but there were 28 prefabs around Christchurch Square, Close and Terrace and 33 more in Christchurch Avenue.

 

9. The 1945 "Willesden Chronicle" article and a Uni-Seco prefab of the type built at Priory Park Road.
    (Cutting from the local newspaper microfilms at Brent Archives, photo from the internet)

 

A small prefab estate in Priory Park Road was the first one to be built on a cleared bomb site. On 26 October 1945, the Willesden Chronicle reported that work on the site began on 1 May, the houses were erected quickly, but had to wait a while for fittings. It was well worth the wait for the delighted occupants, who came from overcrowded homes in various parts of the borough and ‘could hardly find sufficient superlatives’ to describe the new dwellings of their own. 

 

The wider aim of providing better housing in Kilburn after the war was inspired by Patrick Abercromie’s 1944 Greater London Plan. Obsolete industry, overcrowded and dilapidated slums were to be replaced with housing and community facilities. Unfortunately, many Victorian buildings also had to go. The housing conditions were particularly bad in Carlton / South Kilburn. The Willesden Survey of 1949 stated that this was the area with the highest average density in the borough, in some cases with 15 people in two-storey houses. Many of the bigger houses, built in 1850s-60s for wealthy families were being let as single rooms to boarders. 

 


10. Willesden Council's original plans / perspective drawing for the South Kilburn Redevelopment.
      (From “The Willesden Survey, 1949”)

 

The South Kilburn redevelopment plan was drawn up in 1948, covering an area of 87 acres between the main line railway in the north, and Carlton Vale / Kilburn Lane in the south. Much of its new Council housing would be in three or four-storey blocks of flats, and the first of these were built on bomb-damaged sites at Canterbury Terrace and Chichester Road.

 

11. Newly built Willesden Council flats at Canterbury Terrace, 1949. (From “The Willesden Survey, 1949”)

 

Under Willesden’s original plans, there would have been plenty of green space, with a large area of school playing fields at the heart of the redevelopment serving three schools. At the western end of the playing fields would be a shopping area, providing all local needs, and a community centre (possibly including a branch library). 

 


12. Percy Road, South Kilburn, just before its development in the 1960s. (Photos courtesy of John Hill)

However, as the scheme moved into the 1950s, and was extended in 1963, taller blocks of flats began to form part of the plans. Percy Road, in the photos above, ran south from Granville Road, opposite the baths, across Carlton Vale and down towards Malvern Road. It was virtually wiped off the map during the redevelopment, with the Immaculate Heart of Mary R.C. Church (seen behind the playing children in the colour picture – entitled “Last Days of Percy Road”) one of the few buildings to survive, and now Dickens and Austen Houses would be behind you. The final phase of this part of South Kilburn’s redevelopment ended in the 1970s.

 

13. Two views of Cambridge Road, from the early and late 1960s. (Photos courtesy of John Hill)

 

The photos below show the western end of the South Kilburn redevelopment in progress, with William Saville House (and William Dunbar House behind it) already built in the first picture, while construction is underway on Craik Court, which hides them in the later colour view. 

 

14. Carlton Vale, in the mid and late 1960s. (Photos courtesy of John Hill)

 

Further north, in the early 1960s, Kilburn Square saw the replacement of its 3/4 storey Victorian terraced houses with a shopping centre and market, along with a 17-storey block of flats labelled the 'pocket skyscraper' (officially just numbers 11-90 Kilburn Square!).

 

15. Two views of the 'pocket skyscraper', from 1964 and c.1970. (Brent Archives image 236 / from the internet)

 

We will finish this series by looking at modern Kilburn, from the 1970s onwards, next week. I hope you can join me then.


Irina Porter,
Willesden Local History Society.


A special thank you to John Hill, for sharing his father’s 1960s photographs, and to local historian Dick Weindling, co-author of 'Kilburn and West Hampstead Past' and History of
Kilburn and West Hampstead blog .


 

Saturday 8 August 2020

The Preston Story – Part 3

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]

4.The Preston Hotel, c.1930. (Brent Archives online image 1680)

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 1 and 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.


                  14.Preston Road Station, c.1960. (Brent Archives online image 8636)

             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.

Chris Coates,
Preston Community Library