Uncovering Kilburn’s History – Part 5

 At the end of Part 4 (“click” if you missed it) I said that we would continue to look at some more churches, but there is much more to uncover this week!

1. St Mary's Church, in the age of horse drawn vehicles. (From the internet: www.images-of-london.co.uk )

 

We’ve already mentioned St. Paul’s, Kilburn Square (founded in 1829, demolished in 1934). St. Mary’s Church started in 1856, when the developer of the Abbey Farm estate, George Duncan, presented a site for it (on the Hampstead side). It holds the only known relic of the Kilburn Priory – a small brass plate of the prioress Emma de Sancto Omero (you can see a picture of this in Part 1).

 

Quex Road, also to the east of Kilburn High Road, boasted no less than three places of worship, a Wesleyan chapel, a Unitarian Hall and the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This was designed by Edward Welby Pugin and opened in 1878, with a school for Catholic priests nearby. It served the large Irish community, which expanded rapidly in the 20^th century. 

 

2. St Augustine's Church, Kilburn, in 1909 and 2020. (From: www.images-of-london.co.uk and by Irina Porter)

 

However, the true gem of Kilburn is St. Augustine’s Church in Kilburn Park Road, known as "the Cathedral of North London". Founded in 1870, St. Augustine’s was consecrated in 1880 as an Anglo-Catholic Church of England and is listed as a Grade I building by Historic England. The spire finally crowned the magnificent Gothic Revival building in 1898. It was designed by John Loughborough Pearson, an architect who specialised in ecclesiastical architecture and worked around the world. Some internal work was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral and the red telephone box fame). The worship followed ‘high’ Anglican tradition, which was closer to Roman Catholicism.

 

At one point the church had four valuable paintings, a Titian among them, given to the church by Viscount Rothermere. One of them was stolen and the church decided to sell the rest because of security issues. The writer Thomas Hardy visited from time to time, when he was in London, to hear the music and admire the magnificent building. The composer Leonard Bernstein conducted an English Bach Festival concert at the church in 1977. The ornate interior of St Augustine's was used in the filming of Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).

 

3. Brondesbury Synagogue, c. 1930. (Image from the internet)

 

Although Christianity was still the main religion in England in late Victorian times, that was beginning to change. One of the first Jews to settle in Willesden was Polish-born Solomon Barnett, a builder and property developer who lived in Brondesbury Road. He invited other local Jewish residents to his home in 1900, and they agreed to build a synagogue. He sold them a site in Chevening Road, at less than cost, and the Brondesbury Synagogue opened in 1905. It had an unusual Moorish design, which was unique in the area at the time, and served the Jewish community in the whole of the Willesden for several decades. It closed after a fire in 1965, and the building was sold to the Iman Al-Khoei Foundation in 1974.

 

The first elementary schools in Kilburn were run by churches. St. Paul’s, Kilburn was the earliest in 1847, and was a “National School” part-funded by National Society for Promoting Religious Education. St. Augustine’s Church also had a school. In 1870 the Education Act was passed, providing for elementary schools, known as Board Schools. Local churches feared that religion would not be taught in these, and by 1882 had set up an association to establish new Church of England schools in poor districts.  Christ Church School in Willesden Lane (built by Solomon Barnett) was one of these, first opening (for infants) in 1889. 

 

4. The modern St Augustine's School building, seen from Cambridge Gardens. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

Small fees were charged in some elementary schools until 1891, when primary education became free. Fees for secondary education were only finally abolished in 1944.

Kilburn Grammar School was founded in 1897 as a boys’ choir school by Dr. George Bonavia Hunt, vicar of St Paul's, Kilburn. This was the time when there was no state provision for secondary education. From one in Willesden Lane it moved a few times to increasingly larger premises, until it founds its permanent purpose-built home at Salusbury Road in 1900.
Dr. Hunt, who taught musical history at the University of London, remained there until 1904.

 

5. Kilburn Grammar School, in the 1920s and a 1900 advertisement. (Brent Archives images 3404 and 6675)

 

In 1907 the school was purchased by the local authority, and became the first state secondary school in Willesden. With the formation of Brent in 1965, the borough policy of closing grammar schools led to the school becoming a comprehensive in 1967, renamed Kilburn Senior High School. In 1973 it merged with the girl’s school on the opposite side of the road to form Brondesbury and Kilburn High School, and in 1989 it moved to a different place and became part of Queen's Park Community School. The Edwardian buildings in Salusbury Road are now Islamia Schools.

 

The original Kilburn Grammar paved the way for university and lead to successful careers in business, academia, civil service, law and arts. Amongst its alumni were Richard Baker, BBC newsreader and broadcaster, Kenneth Howard, an artist who painted for the British Army from the 1970s, the linguist Professor Simeon Potter, who also wrote a history of Willesden, and another distinguished local historian and Brent councillor, Len Snow. Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls produced Lesley Hornby (better known as Twiggy, a famous 60s fashion icon) and Margery Hurst, who founded the Brook Street Bureau employment agency.

 

6. Brondesbury & Kilburn High School for Girls, early 20th century.

 

Kilburn had a large number of private schools. At the time when board schools were regarded as being for the lower classes, those who could afford it preferred to pay for education. Many were on the Hampstead side, such as the Haberdashers’ in Westbere Road.

 

In the 1870s Henley House School at the corner of Kilburn Priory was headed by John Vine Milne, whose son Alan Alexander, author of Winnie the Pooh stories, was born there in 1882. The first science teacher at Henley House, appointed in 1888 was H.G. Wells, the pioneer writer of science fiction.

 

7. A.A. Milne (left) in 1922, and H.G. Wells (photographed by Beresford). (Images from the internet)

 

Kilburn High Road, in the meantime, continued to bustle with trade and entertainment. Kilburn’s position on the old Watling Street ensured a good number of drinking establishments from early times. The public houses were much more than a place for a pint – they were hotels, functions rooms, auction sites, coroners’ inquests premises, even makeshift mortuaries. By 1872 there were 8 pubs in Kilburn High Road, and 13 more in the neighbourhood. There was a brewery and several beer retailers.

 

 

8. Kilburn High Road, with brewery on the left, c.1900. (Image from the internet)

 

The building on the left which looks like a church hall is Kilburn Brewery, built in 1832 by the Verey brothers. They were so successful that by 1853 they had their own wharf on the canal at Lower Place in Harlesden to bring in supplies. The brewery complex consisted of the main building with a fine frontage, a malt house and stabling for horses. In 1866 it was taken over by Michell and Phillips, which later became Michell and Aldous. It closed in 1920, and the building was later used by the Gas, Light and Coke Company. Today the site is occupied by several shops, with the original façade still being seen from numbers 293 to 313 High Road. 

 

 

9. The B.B. Evans store after the 1910 fire, and in a 1920s advert. ( www.images-of-london.co.uk / internet)

 

The High Road was also a main shopping centre for much of the surrounding area. Drapery and furnishing businesses had competing shops - Kilburn Bon Marche, dating from 1880s, the Grange Furnishing Stores at 127-9 High Road, catering for high class customers, and the most famous store in Kilburn, B.B. Evans at 142-162 High Road. It was started as a drapers’ in 1897, by Benjamin Beardmore Evans, who used to work for Willesden Urban District Council. It expanded in 1905, but in 1910 was destroyed by fire and then re-built. When it closed in 1971, it was the only department store in Kilburn. Since then the buildings went through a succession of occupants, and are now Sports Direct, T.K. Maxx and Aldi.

 

 

Speculative builders continued to provide employment opportunities around both sides of Kilburn High Road. John Allen and Sons ran a successful building company – they built many houses on the Hampstead side of Kilburn. At the end of the 19th century the firm took over The Elms, the old mansion house, converted it into offices and built a factory in the grounds called Palmerston Works. In 1901 they built new stands at Ascot Race Course.

 

 

During the First World War Kilburn suffered some bomb damage in a couple of Zeppelin raids near Belsize Road, Oxford Road and Canterbury Road. One of the area’s main contributions to the war effort was the housing of Belgian refugees, of whom 250,000 fled to England after the Germany army invaded their neutral country on its way to attack France. By September 1914, churches and local refugee committees where organising homes and support for refugee families, and Rabbi Lazarus from Brondesbury Synagogue had set up a hostel in Willesden Lane for Jewish refugees from Antwerp.

 

 

10. King Albert Belgian School, Kilburn, by Arthur Dunn, c.1917. (Brent Archives images 2322, 2343, 2345)

 

In 1915, Kilburn Grammar School had eight Belgian boys, who it accepted with reduced fees, but there was a much larger number of refugee children who did not speak any English. In April 1916, the King Albert Belgian School was set up in the Sunday School buildings at Brondesbury Park Congregational Church, jointly funded by Willesden Council and the Belgian Government. It had around 60 pupils, and taught lessons in English, French and Flemish. The School closed in March 1919, by which time most of the families had returned to Belgium.

 

 

In 1916 the grounds of The Elms became home to the Central Aircraft Company (179 Kilburn High Road), the subsidiary of a woodworking business. They built wooden components for aircraft manufacturers, but by the end of the war they had designed their own aeroplane. Their ‘Centaur’ aircraft first flew from a nearby field in Willesden Lane called ‘Kilburn Aerodrome’ in 1919, and was later used at a flying school at Northolt aerodrome.

 

11. A 1919 advert for the flying school, and a Centaur II at Northolt. (Internet: from “Aeroplane” and “Flight”)

 

Their Centaur II was designed to carry six passengers, and could have been one of the world’s first airliners; but only two were ever built, and they were used for pleasure flights over beauty spots in London, Kent, Wales and even the Belgian battlefields. However, the idea that people would be owning planes as they did cars did not take off, and by 1926 the company stopped making aeroplanes and concentrated on furniture. 

 

We will look at the homes where people lived, and the places of entertainment they enjoyed, as we move further into 20^th century Kilburn next time.

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 .

Uncovering Kilburn’s History

 By popular demand we are pleased to publish a new local history series about Kilburn by Irina Porter of Willesden Local History Society.

 

 1. A postcard of Kilburn, c. 1930s. (From the internet - www.images-of-London.co.uk)

Kilburn is an area in Brent, which grew around the intersection of the Roman road known as Watling Street (Edgware Road) and a local river of the same name. Kilburn lies south west of this stretch of the ancient thoroughfare, here called Kilburn High Road, between West End Lane and Queen’s Park. Kilburn has never been an administrative unit, and its boundaries are not defined. However, it has given us a rich and colourful history, which we will uncover here.

 

2. Kilburn, at the edge of a 1930s pictorial map of London and suburbs. (From the first AtoZ atlas and guide)

As with many a historic name, ‘Kilburn’ could have several origins. Some say it comes from a stream (Anglo-Saxon Kelebourne, which could have been ‘cold bourne’ (river), ‘cow’s bourne’ or ‘King’s bourne’). The stream used to run into the River Westbourne, which flows from Hampstead to the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Or it could be named after a Saxon called Cylla, used c. 1134 as Cuneburna). A variation of Kilnbourn could come from tile making industry in the area.

 

3. The course of the River Westbourne, marked on a modern street map. (Courtesy of John & Anne Hill)

The Kilburn Stream originated in Hampstead and went through what is now West Hampstead southwards. It ran parallel to the High Road along what is today’s Kingsgate Rd, then it passed under the Edgware Road at Kilburn Bridge. It joined the Westbourne near today’s Shirland Road, which flowed into the Serpentine and eventually into the Thames. In the 1860s the stream was culverted and became part of the sewage system.

 

4. The Kilburn area in 1790. (From an article by John & Anne Hill, in W.L.H.S. Journal No.49)

5. The bridge over the Kilbourne on West End Lane, as seen from the High Road, around 200 years ago.
    (From “Kilburn and West Hampstead Past” by Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms)

Here is an interesting fact, uncovered by Willesden Local History Society members John and Anne Hill, from an article they wrote in Volume 49 of our Journal: “Springfield Walk (near Belsize Road) has a set of very old steps that give access to Kilburn Priory.  We climbed the steps and, whilst we were taking photos of the house, we noticed the sound of rushing water.  In the middle of Kilburn Priory Road there is a drain cover – and beneath this drain cover flows the River Westbourne, Kilburn’s ‘lost river’ making its way to the River Thames.” 

 

 6. The River Westbourne drain cover, and its Springfield Walk location. (Photos by John and Anne Hill)

The area of Kilburn grew around where the Kilburn Brook crossed the Watling Street (now Edgware Road), which was an important route to the north since the Roman Times. Even before them, this was an ancient trackway used by the Britons (although the route may have followed Willesden Lane, Neasden Lane and Honeypot Lane to avoid the marshy valley of the River Brent at what is now Staples Corner). Soon after the Romans landed in Kent in AD43, they paved and straightened this road as their major route to the north west, via St.Albans, which they called Verulamium. They needed a fast route to take their legions towards North Wales, where the local tribes were resisting Roman rule. Some flint blocks from the Roman road were found in Kilburn in 1923, at a depth of about six feet.

 

7. A map of Watling Street, overlaid on the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica map of Roman Britain.

As well as enabling quick movement of troops and resources within the Roman province of Britannia, Watling Street has also served as a boundary. In 878, King Alfred of Wessex signed a treaty with Danish invaders, under which Alfred kept the southern side, and the Danes established Danelaw to the north. In 1599 Watling Street is mentioned as London Way, and later the Edgware Road. Our stretch of it has become the traditional boundary between Willesden, now in Brent, and Hampstead, now in Camden.

 

8. The Priory, Kilburn, 1750, as shown in a book illustration from 1878. (Internet – British History Online)

A community of Augustinian canonesses, Kilburn Priory was set up where the Watling Road crossed the Kilburn brook in the 12^thcentury. Now Belsize Road meets Kilburn High Road here. Around 1130 a hermit called Godwyn set up a small cell (hermitage) near a holy well (medicinal spring) here. In 1134 he gave his place to Westminster Abbey. Three nuns – Emma, Gunhilda and Christina – established a Benedictine (later referred to as Augustinian) nunnery. They were probably former maids of honour to Queen Matilda of Scotland, the wife of Henry I of England, who became nuns after the Queen died.

Godwyn remained the warden until he died, and a Chaplain would be appointed to oversee the nuns. They worshipped in the church dedicated to St. John the Baptist and prayed for the soul of the brethren who once belonged to Westminster. The priory was endowed with lands in Kensington, Kent, Southwark, Tottenham and Hendon. It also owned ‘the manor of Wymbley’. 

 

9. The seal of Kilburn Priory in 1536, and Emma de Sancto Omero, Prioress of Kilburn c.1400.
    (Images from “Kilburn and West Hampstead Past” by Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms)

The Priory was a stopping place for pilgrims on their way to the shrines at St. Albans, and later Willesden also. According to the customs of the time, it provided food and shelter to travellers, both rich and poor. Pilgrims had to travel through woods, which afforded hiding places for robbers, particularly at the foot of the nearby Shoot-up Hill, and a safe resting place was very helpful for pilgrims to form groups, so they could travel together for protection. This hospitality proved a burden on the Priory, and by the middle of 14^th century it was found in financial trouble by the Bishop of London and in 1352 was exempt from taxes. By the end of the century its buildings were in decay.

The Priory continued to support travellers for 400 years, so it never became wealthy. In 1536, Henry VIII dissolved the Priory, whose seal at the time, showing John the Baptist wearing a camel-hair garment, is seen above. The inventory details the rooms and furniture for the church, house, brewhouse and bakehouse, as well as some wall hangings, candesticks, two silver chalices and goblets. There was also ‘one horse of the coller of blacke’, valued at 5s.

Henry VIII gave Kilburn Priory to the Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in exchange for a piece of land in Southwark. That Order was also dissolved, four years later, and the Kilburn estate reverted to the crown. It was given to the King’s courtier, the Earl of Warwick, then passed through the hands of various landowners. The Uptons, who owned the land in the 19^th century, built the Church of St. Mary on a site adjoining the ancient chapel. By then the main house and surrounding land was known as Abbey Farm, comprising about 45 acres. However, nothing remained of the original priory, except a ‘rising bank… and ruined walls’.

 10. The Remains of Kilburn Priory, from a book published in 1814. (Image from the internet)

Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms write in their book ‘Kilburn and West Hampstead Past’: “When the railway was cut through in the autumn of 1852, some pottery, a few coins and a bronze vessel, all medieval, were found at the Priory site and these were put on display at the Archaeological Institute.” A sad epitaph for a historic local building!

I hope you will join me next week, as we explore why Kilburn became a visitor attraction.

Irina Porter,
Willesden Local History Society.

 

Note: 

Special thank you to local historian Dick Weindling, author of 'Kilburn and West Hampstead Past' and History of Kilburn and West Hampstead blog (http://kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com/).