The Welsh Harp Reservoir Story – Part 3

Thank you for joining me again, on this third stage of our journey through the history of “the Welsh Harp” (our local reservoir – not the musical instrument!). In Part 2, we saw how the enterprise of W.P. Warner had made the name of his tavern synonymous with the reservoir beside it. This time we’ll explore changes, on and around the reservoir, into the 20^th century.

1. The Kingsbury dam and its overflow, c.1900. (Brent Archives online image 1341)

At first, not much changed. The area of water was mainly surrounded by the meadows of local farms, and attracted visitors to the countryside just beyond the expanding urban sprawl of London. Water flowing over the dam to feed the River Brent was a popular sight, across the fields of Gravel Pit Farm at Neasden. West Hendon had developed slightly, but there was still lots of open space nearby.

2. Cool Oak Lane, with its causeway and bridge across the reservoir's northern arm, c.1900.
   (Barnet Local Studies Centre image 3284)

The Metropolitan Railway’s Neasden Works expanded, with a new power station to supply its electric trains, which were introduced from 1905. The Canal Company, which still owned the reservoir, refused to let the Metropolitan use water from its Feeder for cooling purposes, so they had to sink two wells for that purpose. It was the First World War that finally brought more industry to the area.

The airfield at Hendon already had a small aircraft factory, run by the Grahame-White company, when the war broke out in 1914. Other companies making planes for the rapidly developing aerial warfare were soon active in the area, such as the Aircraft Manufacturing Company (“Airco”) in Colindale and Kingsbury, Handley Page in Cricklewood and later Hooper & Co in North Wembley. In 1917, Handley Page designed a prototype seaplane, hoping to sell it to the Royal Navy, and their R200 was test-flown from the Welsh Harp. They did not receive an order, so the seaplane never went into production.

3. Scale drawings of the Handley Page R200 seaplane. (Courtesy of the R.A.F. Museum, Hendon)

By 1917, the slopes of Dollis Hill down to the reservoir were also the home of the Mechanical Warfare Department. Its role was to design and test tanks, for use to try and break the trench warfare stalemate on the war’s western front. By 1918, one of the designs it was working on was a modified version of the Mark IX tank, and on a misty morning in November 1918 the world’s first amphibious tank was tested on the Welsh Harp reservoir. 

4. A Mark IX amphibious tank entering the Welsh Harp, November 1918. (Image from the Tank Museum)

Earlier this year, a friend interested in military history sent me a link to a short film that includes (at the end) footage of this test. It had been used as part of a French article on First World War tanks, and was described as a ‘Duck Tank being tested on the pond of Dolly Hill’! This “top secret” Department remained at Dollis Hill until 1921, before being moved to Hampshire. Its main buildings, surrounded by a high wall, were in the Humber Road area. It is remembered in the street name, Tankridge Road, and a section of the wall remains at Walton Close.

5. Remaining section of Mechanical Warfare Department wall, Walton Close,     Dollis Hill, c.2010.

 6. Aerial view of the reservoir in 1919, with West Hendon beneath the plane’s wing, and Dollis Hill beyond.

The local aircraft industry was badly hit when the Government scrapped its contracts for planes once the war had ended. One company at Hendon made use of the unwanted aircraft to offer pleasure flights to paying customers. The photograph above appeared with an article on the subject in “Flight” magazine, in June 1919, and shows a view across the reservoir to Dollis Hill.

 7. The railway viaduct, seen from the Edgware Road bridge, 1921. (Barnet Local Studies Centre image 871)

The 19^th century had seen first canals, then railways, develop as important methods of transport. This scene from 1921, of the Midland Railway viaduct crossing the eastern arm of the reservoir, was soon to change dramatically as the rise of motor vehicles meant a need for better roads. The North Circular Road was constructed during the 1920s to help heavy commercial traffic avoid having to drive through Central London. Its proposed route would take it just south of the Welsh Harp, and by 1926 this section of the reservoir was filled in, and the River Brent put into a culvert, so that the road could pass under the brick arches of the viaduct.

8. New housing at Dollis Hill, and over the reservoir at Kingsbury, late 1920s. (Brent Archives image 570)

The construction of the North Circular Road opened up the northern slopes of Dollis Hill for development, and by the late 1920s new streets were appearing between Brook Road and Links Road. These can be seen in the photograph above, together with what must be the start of the Post Office Research Centre at the top of the hill. Across the reservoir, new suburban homes were also being built in the Church Lane and Wood Lane areas of Kingsbury. In 1928, Willesden Urban District Council bought 40 acres of land on the Kingsbury side of the Welsh Harp, planning to use it as a cemetery, which would lead to disputes that lasted until 1965!

The rapidly growing population at Neasden and Dollis Hill prompted Willesden Council to open a recreation ground on their side of the Welsh Harp. They also built a Neasden branch library, overlooking it, at the corner of Aboyne Road and the North Circular, which opened in 1931. In keeping with a growing fashion for open air activity, this had a reading terrace at first floor level.

 9. The reading terrace at Neasden Library, 1931. (Brent Archives online image 2926)

One of the open air activities which had grown in popularity at the Welsh Harp during the 1920s was “sunbathing”, although it was not popular with everyone. By 1930, there was growing opposition among local residents to the visitors who came to the reservoir’s banks to bathe in the nude. One man complained to the Council that, while walking home to the Edgware Road from Old Kingsbury Church on a Sunday evening, they had come across ‘a bunch of stark naked men…. Hardly a pleasant sight for a man to have to pass with his wife!’

Matters came to a head one weekend in June 1930, when 40 men and women of the Sun-Ray Club (‘some wore no clothes, others wore slips or bathing drawers’) were confronted by a crowd of around 200 local people. Despite the presence of four policemen, who told them that the sunbathers were on private land, with permission from the owner, and that they had no right to interfere, the crowd attacked the bathers and drove them away. Kingsbury Council dealt with the issue in a more dignified way, when they received a deputation (not a new idea) from the National Sun and Air Association in May 1931, although they also decided against sunbathing!

10. Extract from the minutes of a Kingsbury Urban District Council meeting on 6 May 1931. (Brent Archives)

On the reservoir itself, the Brent Sailing Club was formed at the Old Welsh Harp Inn in 1930. A less tranquil use of the water also began the same year, when the London Motor Boat Club held its first speedboat racing event at the Welsh Harp. Larger speedboats were also used to give thrill rides for paying customers, as shown in this newsreel film from 1932.

 11. A motor boat race on the Welsh Harp reservoir in 1937. (From the collection of the late Geoffrey Hewlett)

The 1931 speedboat racing season had celebrity guests at its opening, the aviator Amy Johnson and actress Anna Neagle. Amy had lived at Roe Green for nine months, before the solo flight to Australia that made her famous, and then had a flat at Vernon Court in Hendon Way. By coincidence, it was Anna Neagle who starred as Amy Johnson in a film about her life, after her tragic death in 1941, while flying as a wartime pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary.

12. Anna Neagle and Amy Johnson at the Welsh Harp, April 1931. (From: ‘Amy Johnson – Queen of the Air’)

The south-east corner of the reservoir saw rapid industrial development along its main roads, and on the reclaimed land, in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. One of the factories by the junction of the North Circular and Edgware Roads made mattresses. The company was Staples, and the busy corner was soon known by that name. The traffic lights here became well-known for the jams that built up, as seen below in 1937.

13. Staples Corner in 1937, with the mattress factory bottom left. (Barnet Local Studies Centre image 4920)

When war came again in 1939, Dollis Hill again had a part to play. Secret underground bunkers were built for the Admiralty at its Citadel office building, on the corner of the Edgware Road and Oxgate Lane, and for the Cabinet at “Paddock”, beneath the Post Office Research Station in Brook Road. It was rumoured that a flying boat was moored on the Welsh Harp, ready to fly Churchill and other key leaders to safety from their reserve War Room if necessary, but I have no proof for that story. It was the research station that developed the first electronic computers, used at Bletchley Park for code-breaking during the war, and Tommy Flowers, who led the team that made them, is remembered by the modern street name, Flowers Close.

14. The aftermath of the West Hendon bombing, February 1941. (Barnet Local Studies Centre image 5105)

It was not those key targets that were hit during the Welsh Harp’s worst bombing raids of the Second World War. Early in 1941, Germany was testing new designs of high-explosive bombs, and dropping a single bomb in a raid, so that its effects could be seen afterwards. One of these exploded above the Ravenstone Road area of West Hendon on the evening of 13 February 1941, flattening 40 homes, killing more than 80 people and making around 1,500 homeless. At the opposite end of the reservoir, a V2 rocket hit one end of Wykeham School in March 1945. Luckily no children were there at the time, but seven people were killed in nearby homes.

Just as it had during the First World War, the reservoir played its part between 1939 and 1945. A Hendon Sea Training Corps was formed in 1941, and its young volunteers learned some boating skills on the Welsh Harp, as well as on land at a school in Algernon Road. Production at many factories was changed, to produce equipment for the war effort. Hickman’s works on the North Circular Road had been shopfitters, but by 1943 their carpenters were building wooden landing craft, which were tested on the reservoir before being handed over to the Royal Navy. LCAs were “Landing Craft, Assault”, which carried a platoon of up to 36 soldiers, from ships around ten miles offshore, onto the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

15. The Hickman's workers aboard a completed landing craft, 1943/44. (Image shared by the son of a worker)

Next weekend we’ll visit the Welsh Harp in more peaceful times. I hope you will join me then, for the final part of this series.

Philip Grant

The Welsh Harp Reservoir Story – Part 1

A new local history series from Philip Grant. 

If you were standing in Kingsbury around 20,000 years ago, you probably would have had cold feet! The area was just at the southern edge of the ice sheets that covered much of Britain during the last Ice Age. The glaciers had left a covering of gravel over the underlying clay, and as they receded, the melt-water formed rivers that flowed south into the Thames. Over the centuries, they cut valleys into the landscape. Two small rivers, the Dollis Brook and Silk Stream, combined to form the River Brent, and that is where our story begins.

1. Looking across the reservoir towards West Hendon, c.2010.

Although some of this series is based on my own research, I could not have written it without the knowledge I gained from my friend and fellow local historian, Geoffrey Hewlett, who sadly died last year. I assisted him, mainly on the illustrations side, with his 2011 book “Welsh Harp Reservoir Through Time”. I learned so much of interest from him about this beautiful area, at the heart of our borough, that I want to share with you during this difficult Covid-19 period. 

We don’t know when people first lived in this part of Brent, but they were definitely here by the late Bronze Age (around 1,000 to 600BC). There are old records of pottery funeral urns, dated by archaeologists to the Deveral Rimbury period, being uncovered during work near the edge of the reservoir. Unfortunately, these have disappeared, and the exact location of the find was not recorded. Geoffrey worked at Brent Council, and when he was asked to suggest a “historical” name for a new road near the reservoir, off of Birchen Grove, he wrote down Rimbury. A typist misread his joined-up writing, so Runbury Circle commemorates the find!

2. C.3rd/4th Oxfordshire red-slipped ware pieces, from Blackbird Farm, 2013. (Archaeology South East)

Moving on into the Iron Age, farmers from Celtic tribes (originally from Central Europe) came to the area, and the Brent is thought to have got its name from their goddess, Brigantia. The Celts were pushed further west by later immigrants, and the next hard evidence we have of people living here is of farms during the Roman period, on the more easily cultivated gravel soils at the top of Dollis Hill and Blackbird Hill. Finds of 3^rd/4^th century Roman pottery have been dug up at both sites, as well as a Roman coin of Constantius II (337-361) in the reservoir.

3. The River Brent valley between Kingsbury and Dollis Hill on the 1745 Rocque map. (Brent Archives)

I covered much of the Kingsbury area’s agricultural history in The Fryent Country Park Story, so I will jump forward to the 18^th century, and developments which would lead to “the Welsh Harp” being created. Britain’s “Industrial Revolution” had begun, with the need for much greater quantities of raw materials and manufactured goods to be moved about. Roads were in a poor state, and a horse could pull much more weight in a boat than on a cart (as well as more safely for fragile items like Staffordshire pottery). It was time for canals.

Many shorter canals had been built since the 1760s, but it was the Grand Junction Canal, from the Midlands to the Thames at Brentford, that provided the main link to London. Even while this was being built (1793-1800), an Act of Parliament in 1795, allowed the construction of a branch from it direct to Paddington, on the outskirts of London itself. A new brickworks at Alperton, using suitable clay from a local field, provided bricks for some of the bridges required, and the branch canal opened to the Paddington Basin in 1801.

 4. The opening of the canal branch to Paddington Basin, 1801. (Image from the London Metropolitan Archive)

Canals need to be topped up with water, and this was especially the case after the canal company started supplying piped water (pumped straight from the Basin!) to homes in the rapidly developing Paddington suburb. The River Brent was soon identified as a likely source, and although a reservoir was considered, the cheaper option of a “feeder” was constructed in 1810/11. This ran from a bend in the river at Kingsbury, through the parish of Willesden, to the canal at Lower Place. You can see its course on a map from that time, and it is still there today. 

5. The Feeder, in light blue, on an 1816 map of Willesden, and by Johnson Road, Stonebridge, c.2010.

Water supply again became a problem when the Regent’s Canal was opened in 1820, joining the Grand Junction branch at what is now known as Little Venice. A drought in 1833 gave the final push to plans for a 61-acre reservoir at Kingsbury, and by late 1834 the canal company had accepted a tender from William Hoof, to build the dam and associated works for the sum of £2,747 (and six shillings!). 

 6. Hoof's letter to the Regent's Canal Co. of October 1834, agreeing terms for constructing the reservoir.

Work on the reservoir’s construction must have been carried out quickly, because a plaque inside Old St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, records the deaths of four Sidebottom brothers ‘who were drowned in the reservoir near this church on the 14^th of August 1835’. The inquest found that Alexander, William and Edward accidentally drowned while bathing, and that Charles died ‘while attempting to save the lives of his three brothers’ - a tragic start to the reservoir’s story.

7. The Sidebottom brothers’ memorial in Old St. Andrew's Church, Kingsbury.

Even before the original work was finished, the canal company was buying more land, so that the dam could be raised and the reservoir extended. Their haste was to have severe consequences. The winter of 1840/41 was so cold that the ground was frozen to a depth of 20-30cm. The six days from 10 to 15 January saw heavy snow and rain, and water was seen overflowing the reservoir’s dam via a “waste weir”. On 16 January there was a rapid thaw, and at around midnight a fracture occurred in the dam wall.

There was already some flooding at Brentford, where the Grand Junction Canal and River Brent met the Thames, but just before 4am on Sunday 17 January 1841 ‘a great body of water’ hit the town, lifting boats out of the canal, which then caused damage to other boats and property as they were flung about by the flood. Three men died, and around twenty barges and their cargos were destroyed or seriously damaged.

 8. A February 1841 newspaper illustration, depicting the flood at Brentford (with some artistic licence!).

Records of the inquest on William Spruce, a 19-year old “barge boy”, show the lengths the coroner went to in order to establish the cause of the flood, and reason for his death. A surveyor representing the Regent’s Canal Company said that the Kingsbury dam ‘was of a proper strength’, and claimed that the water which escaped because of the fracture would not have reached Brentford before 5am, so could not have been responsible. The jurors decided that it was flood water from the reservoir that caused Spruce’s death. The canal company’s directors ordered urgent strengthening of the dam, but continued to resist any claims for compensation!

9. A season ticket for fishing on the reservoir in 1846.

The rebuilding of the dam was completed by early 1843, and a cottage was built near the Kingsbury end of it for a keeper. He would control the flow of any excess water from the reservoir, using sluice gates above the new waste weir, reached along a wooden walkway above the dam. After this, the Brent or Kingsbury Reservoir (both names appear to have been used) settled down to a few quiet years, when fishing and birdwatching were enjoyed there.

10. An 1850 watercolour: 'Reservoir of the Brent, Kingsbury, Middlesex.’ (Brent Archives online image 1710)

Water supply for both the Regent’s Canal from the docks at Limehouse, and the branch through Alperton and Willesden, soon became a problem again. In 1851, Parliament passed an Act allowing them to increase the height of the dam and create a much larger reservoir. More land was purchased, including a public house just north of the Brent Bridge on the Edgware Road. Its tenant was removed, and an embankment had to be built, to protect the pub from flooding.

11. A Regent's Canal Company boundary post from 1854, near the reservoir. (Photo by the late Len Snow)

New boundary posts (bearing the Prince of Wales crest of the former Prince Regent, later King George IV) were put in place around the company’s land, and by 1854 the reservoir had been filled to cover around 400 acres. As the former meadows became flooded, and the habitat changed, the bird life around the reservoir was studied by two keen naturalists living in Kingsbury, Frederick Bond and James Harting. The latter’s 1866 book, “Birds of Middlesex” has a wonderful frontispiece showing the reservoir.

12. The frontispiece to Harting's 1866 book "Birds of Middlesex". (From an original copy at Brent Archives)

Around 1858, a new tenant took over the public house near Brent Bridge, and we will look at his part in the reservoir’s story next weekend. I hope you will join me then.

Philip Grant.

GLA say Woodfield Nursery development at Welsh Harp does not conform with the London Plan

The GLA have raised objections to the controversial plan LINK to build on the Woodfield Nursery site, Cool Oak Lane, Barnet, near the Welsh Harp Metropolitan Open Land. This means that if Barnet Council make a draft decision in favour of the planning application they have to give 14 days to allow the Deputy Mayor for Planning, Jules Pipe, to decide whether to allow the application to proceed unchanged, direct the Council to refuse the application, or to take over as planning authority himself.

The conclusions of a much longer report (available BELOW) are:
 

London Plan and the Mayor’s Intend to Publish London Plan policies on Metropolitan Open Land is the key strategic issue relevant to this planning application. The development constitutes inappropriate development on Metropolitan Open Land and very special circumstances have not been demonstrated in this case. The application therefore does not comply with the London Plan as set out below:

• Principle of development: The proposed residential development in an inaccessible location constitutes unsustainable development contrary to London Plan and intend to publish London Plan
  
• Metropolitan Open Land: The development would have a substantial impact on the openness of the MOL and would be inappropriate development; the development does not therefore meet the NPPF exceptions tests and no very special circumstances have been demonstrated. The proposals thus fail the requirements of Policy 7.17 of the London Plan, Policy G3 of the Intend to Publish London Plan and the NPPF.
  
• Housing and affordable housing: 41 units proposed. Notwithstanding the objection to the unsustainable location of the housing proposals, the principle of 35% affordable housing is supported, but this provision does not constitute ‘very special circumstances’ that would justify the development with substantial impact on MOL. The application currently does not fully comply with Policy H5 to be eligible for a Fast Track Route. The applicant should clarify the affordable housing offer by habitable room, and appropriate tenure split in favour of affordable rent. The on-site playspace provision should be appropriately demonstrated and secured by condition.
  
• Urban design: The development would significantly reduce the openness of MOL and is thus inappropriate in principle. Notwithstanding this, the applicant should provide information on equal distribution of affordable and market units within the site to avoid segregation. The application should re-consider the positioning of single aspect north facing units.
  
• Climate change: Further information has been requested on the energy strategy, urban greening and air quality.
  
• Transport: An entirely car dependent development in a PTAL 0 area is unsustainable and contrary to London Plan and Intend to Publish London Plan policy. 

Click on bottom right corner to enlarge document

Brent Council, councillors & Network Housing fail to deal with 'extraordinary' flytipping and litter problem in Neasden

A Brent resident who moved from south Brent across the North Circular to Press Road, Neasden has met a brick wall when trying to 'Love Where you Live' and getting something done about the 'extraordinary' amount of litter that he has found in the area.

He told Wembley Matters:

In the last 15 months or so and after I moved to Neasden, something quite extraordinary caught my attention and that was the staggering amount of rubbish, fly-tipping and plastic waste. It is particularly bad around Press Road, near Neasden tube station and Neasden Lane on both side of the North Circular.
 
I have done everything I could to improve the neighbourhood. To my disappointment, my endless efforts have had very little effect if any. 
 
I communicated the issue with Brent Council first over a year ago and many times after. The Neighbourhood Manager from Brent Council was assigned to deal with the matter. They agreed that the situation with litter is very bad. But unfortunately they didn’t do much to tackle the problem.

In addition we have a huge problem with litter around our building, Printworks Apartments, on Press Road. The council advised that it was our building management's responsibility to deal with litter. But again, to my disappointment the management, Network Homes, could not care less despite charging a generous amount of service charge for maintenance and cleaning.

I think I have exhausted every possible option. I spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to report the problem and work with both the council and our housing association to improve the situation, but the more I try the less improvement we see. Out of desperation, I contacted our  Welsh Harp ward councillors. But again they either didn't respond or didn't take any action. One of them mentioned that they are aware of the problem and they're looking into it. That was last summer.

Needless to say  the problem with litter and fly-tipping is not only very unpleasant, but also poses a serious health and environmental hazard.

 I hope Wembley Matters  can help to raise awareness and assist me to tackle this tragic situation in Neasden.  

It appears that the slogan should be 'Ignore those that want to Love Where they Live' ! Let's see some action on this.

10 years on a planning application for Welsh Harp site returns

Existing

Planned

Ten years ago both Barnet Council and Brent Council turned down applications to build housing on respectively the Woodfield Nursery site on Cool Oak Lane and the Greenhouse Garden Centre in Birchen Grove. Both sites have the same owner.

Now a planning application has been lodged by Taylor Wimpey to demolish the greenhouses at Woodfield Nursery and build 41 houses and flats plus a reprovided landscape contractor premises.

The new plans are for 27 houses at market rates (including 11 four bedrooms), 2 houses 2 bedrooms) and 8 flats at social rent, and 2 houses and 2 flats at intermediate rates.

Barnet Council turned down the last application on the following grounds:

 1. Inappropriate development on Metropolitan Open Land with no special circumstances cited for development.
2. Loss of existing employment on the site.
3. Non-compliant flood risk assessment.
4. Insufficient information on the impact of the proposed development on biodiversity and nature conservation.
5. Insufficient information on whether the development would provide future occupiers with adequate levels of amenity, particularly with regard to the proximity of the Hendon Rifle Club.
6. Insufficient information of the development's impact on the amenity value of trees, including those protected by Tree Preservation Orders.
7. No energy strategy or assessment of the energy demands and carbon dioxide emissions of the development submitted with the application.
8. No formal undertaking in the application to enter into a travel and traffic management plan.

Some of those issues remain although employment is retained in the new application for the existing landscape contractor business and there is a new Arboricultural Report which aims to preserve more trees and mitigate any loss LINK.  The Ecological Report overall suggests little ecological impact on the site itself LINK but merits close examination.  I can see no travel and traffic management plan on the document list - pleas email me a link if you can see one.

So far there are no comments on the Barnet Planning Portal for this application but areas of consideration include.

Woodfield Nursery is an an area of Metropolitan Open Land and development would be contrary to the Barnet Unitary Development Plan.

The site is in an area of an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest)

Development would disturb bird and wildlife on the site and in its proximity.

Development of 41 dwellings would contribute to traffic on what was originally a winding country lane which has single file traffic over Cool Oak Bridge to the new West Hendon development.

Increased traffic on the lane would increase the possibility of accidents to  pupils at the nearby Woodfield Special School who arrive by school buses and taxis.

There is  no public transport in the immediate area.

The Barnet-Brent Welsh Harp sited has already suffered from the West Hendon development on the opposite bank and further development would set a precedent for more applications to develop this rare and much valued open space, including perhaps the Birchen Grove Garden Centre site. (I have checked the Brent Planning Portal and no application has been lodged so far.)

A significant comment is made by Armstrong Rigg Planning on behalf of their client Taylor Wimpey:

Pre-application discussions with the Council have unfortunately proven unhelpful and inconclusivewith officer’s initial positive stance towards the development of the site having been replaced with one that is diametrically opposed. This has been extremely frustrating for the applicants and has placed them in a somewhat difficult position, and one we as their advisors have never experienced before. Having sought legal advice, they feel that they have no option but to proceed with the submission of a planning application, and an appeal thereafter, if necessary, in order to obtain a conclusive response.

Their document goes into detail on this conflict with planning officers. LINK 
 
You can comment on the application HERE

All the documents can be accessed HERE