Another visit to the former Wembley Town Hall (now the Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill), and its wartime history.

Guest post by local istorian Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

The new Wembley Town Hall (Photograph from “The Architect’s Journal”, 26 January 1940)

 

Last September, I wrote about a visit to the former Brent Town Hall during Open House weekend, as part of the 10^th anniversary of the Lycée International’s opening in Wembley. In December, they kindly invited me back for a tour of parts of the building which weren’t included during the public open day, particularly the basement. You may think this would not be of much interest, but please read on, as I uncover some of Wembley Town Hall’s wartime secrets!

 

The start of work on the new Town Hall, for the combined Urban Districts of Wembley and Kingsbury, was reported in the “Wembley News” on 23 July 1937: ‘The first sod of the site in Forty Lane, where Wembley’s new Town Hall is to be built, was cut on Tuesday morning by Councillor H. Gauntlett, Chairman of the Town Hall Committee.’ This photograph shows a surveyor setting out the site for where the basement of the building would be, a few weeks later:

 

A surveyor at work on the Town Hall site, 31 August 1937.

 

Although the outbreak of the Second World War was still two years away, the potential threat from German rearmament, and Hitler’s territorial ambitions, was already realised. The original plans for the Town Hall, prepared by the architect Clifford Strange, were amended to include a reinforced concrete roof for the basement areas, which could be used as shelters in the event of air raids.

The basement had a “secret tunnel”, linking it to the gardens alongside Forty Lane. It is shown on the original plans as a ‘fresh air intake duct’, and that may well have been its purpose, allowing air into the underground area which included the Town Hall’s boiler room. But it was also big enough to allow people to walk along, in single file, if the building had been bombed and staff sheltering there could not escape through the normal exit. I was able to walk along it a short way, before it dipped down and was flooded!

 

                The doorway to the “secret tunnel”, and inside the tunnel itself.

 

War was declared on 3 September 1939, after Germany’s invasion of Poland, and by the end of the year staff had moved into the new Town Hall, and an Air Raid Precautions control room had been set up in the basement. A telephone exchange, linked to Wembley’s eighty A.R.P. warden posts and other wartime emergency services, was manned 24-hours a day throughout the war, with a staff room beside it where the Council volunteers operating it could rest when not on the switchboard. These were still marked on a post-war basement plan.

 

Extract from a Town Hall basement plan, with exchange arrowed.

 

But did the basement exchange have a wider wartime use than just for local A.R.P. services? In her commentary on the building in a book about the Lycée in 2015, Mireille Rebaté, the Head of School, wrote that it ‘played a major role as a secret communication hub during the Second World War.’ I’m not sure what her source of information was for that statement, but I do know from research on the Borough of Wembley’s Distinguished Visitors Book that a range of senior military figures came to the Town Hall during the war, and that their visits were not reported publicly in the local newspaper! Here is a small selection of their signatures in the book:

 

Some of the military “top brass” who visited Wembley Town Hall in WW2.

 

One of the reasons I looked through the Distinguished Visitors Book was to see whether Winston Churchill had ever visited the Town Hall, as the Lycée was named after him. His signature was not in the book, but in May 1943 an “All Star Ball” was held in the Grand Hall to raise money for a wartime charity fronted by his wife. Mrs Churchill’s Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund benefitted when around three hundred residents paid to join stars of film and stage at the ball. The stars signed lots of autographs, in return for a one shilling donation towards the fund for each, and hosted an auction of celebrity items. However, as the “Wembley News” reported, ‘The cigar box, autographed and presented by Mr Winston Churchill, was withdrawn, owing to its reserve price not being reached.’

 

Newspaper advert for the “All Star Ball”, and Clementine Churchill addressing the crowd at a Wembley Stadium wartime charity football match for her “Aid to Russia” Fund.

 

The Town Hall basement would not have been large enough to shelter all the Council’s staff, so a large space with a reinforced roof was created under the Grand Hall. According to Muriel Lander, who was a 17-year-old typist in the Borough’s legal department when they moved to Forty Lane from offices in St John’s Road at the end of 1939, it was ‘a vast, steel-doored bomb shelter.’ She told a “Wembley Observer” reporter in 1996 that they had to go down to the shelter when a whistle was blown to warn of a possible air raid. ‘A lot of the older Council staff were scared, but I took it in a light-hearted way because I was so young.’

 

Muriel Lander (right) and her typist colleagues at the Town Hall during WW2.
(Brent Archives – “Wembley Observer” newspaper microfilms)

 

Muriel also recalled that she and her colleagues had to take a turn at fire watching, because of the risk from German incendiary bombs. If you were on that duty, you slept fully-clothed on a Z-bed in your office, and when the sirens sounded an air raid warning, you ran up to the Town Hall roof and stood by with a hose, in case a fire bomb landed on the building.

 

The large shelter at the Town Hall was also available for local residents or passers-by to use, accessed by the service road from Kings Drive. The service road, at the back of the main office building, was used for deliveries, including coal or coke to fire the boilers, which would have been tipped through large manholes down into the basement fuel store beside the boiler room. The service road ended at a building, which was literally “the end of the road” for some Wembley residents, the Borough’s mortuary!

 

Plan of the Wembley Town Hall mortuary building.

 

The National Health Service was not set up until 1948, so that when the Town Hall was built it was Wembley Council’s Medical Officer of Health who had responsibility for carrying out post mortems, when deaths in the borough required them. My visit did not include the mortuary, as it is no longer there!

 

Something else no longer there is the entrance (or exit?) of the “secret tunnel”, at the Forty Lane end. It has been blocked off, and no one now knows where exactly it came out. You can’t go very far along the tunnel from the basement, because its lower section is flooded, but it still had to be checked (by a French Security Service frogman!) before the then French President, François Hollande, came to officially open the Lycée in September 2015.

 

François Hollande at the official opening of the Lycée in 2015.
(Courtesy of the Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill)

 

The photograph above is from the book about the building, “Un Espace d’Histoire & de Futur” (a blend of heritage and future). I found my visit to the former Town Hall’s basement, and its links to local World War Two history, very interesting, and I hope you have enjoyed reading about it too.

 

Philip Grant.

A Visit to Brent’s former Town Hall (now the Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill) in Forty Lane, Wembley.

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant, in a personal capacity.

 

Today 24th September is the 35th anniversary of the Town Hall being given Grade II listed status for its architectural and historic significance.

 

1. Brent Town Hall in 2009.

 

Last Monday, I was in the Council Chamber at Brent Civic Centre, presenting a petition to save a heritage building. Two days earlier, I had been in the Council Chamber at another local heritage building, the former Brent Town Hall in Forty Lane, Wembley. As part of its 10^th anniversary, the French Lycée was giving guided tours of this Grade II listed (since 24 September 1990) building, which I had last been in to attend a Planning Committee meeting in 2013, as part of Open House weekend.

 

2.The Council Chamber (still with that name) is regularly used for school meetings.

 

The building dates from the late 1930s, after Wembley and Kingsbury Urban District Councils had merged in 1934. A site of just over 2 hectares was bought, on a hillside between Kings Drive and The Paddocks, land which had previously been a polo club (with paddocks for its ponies), then used as a camp for a huge jamboree of Boy Scouts from across the British Empire, in conjunction with the Exhibition at Wembley in 1924. A promising young architect, Clifford Strange, was chosen for the town hall’s design in 1935, and work eventually got underway in 1937 (after a public enquiry over whether the Council should borrow £160,000 to fund the building – equivalent to around £14.5m now).

 

3.Ceremonial breaking of the first ground for the Town Hall in 1937.

 

The foundation stone was laid on 9 October 1937, and carries the name of the Urban District Council, even though it had received its charter, becoming the Borough of Wembley, a week earlier. Strange’s design, in Lincolnshire brick but with a steel frame, was different from many town halls of the same period because it was influenced by the work of the Dutch architect, Willem Dudok, and features from Scandinavian buildings. It has an asymmetrical plan, with the main entrance off-centre, and a “T” shape, with a frontage 350ft (106 metres) long and a large Assembly Hall stretching out at the back, behind the wide central staircase tower.

 

4.Aerial view of WembleyTown Hall, nearing completion in 1939.

 

One of the first things I learned on my visit to the building is that the Lycée, since purchasing the Town Hall from Brent Council and taking occupation at the beginning of 2014, has been very careful to preserve the fabric and features of the heritage building. This has meant long discussions at times with Historic England, and extra expense, but the results of their care are evident as you go around it. Even the framed school photographs, in the reception area as you pass through the entrance doors, are stuck (reversibly) to the marble wall, as no drilling is allowed. 

 

One original feature, just inside the doors, is the box office window, where tickets for Town Hall events were sold. The grand Assembly Hall, which would seat 1,200 people, was not just for show. It was a commercial entertainment venue, with a full programme of events organised by the Council’s own Entertainments Manager, and employing its own dance orchestra. Events were advertised weekly in the local newspapers – this example is from March 1952 (the same week that Wembley History Society was formed, when more than 100 residents answered an invitation from the Mayor to attend a founding meeting in the Council Chamber!).

 

5.A Wembley Borough Council entertainments advert.
(Source: Brent Archives local newspaper microfilms)

 

Going up the pale cream marble staircase, with matching marble walls and art deco style hand rails, on the left at the next level is the internal entrance to the Library. Wembley did not have its own library service, this was provided by Middlesex County Council, and the Town Hall Library until at least the 1950s was just a reference library, with the main public access via steps up from Kings Drive. I remember it as a normal Brent Public Library, where I would display posters advertising the History Society’s programme of talks, and where I organised two small local history exhibitions (including one celebrating the Society’s 60^th anniversary).

 

6.Part of the 2012 Wembley History Society exhibition in the Town Hall Library.

 

The Lycée still uses the library for its original purpose, but it is also more than that, including tables for playing chess, and a small display of “finds” from the grounds by its Archaeology Club. It is a bright and airy space, as you can see from this photograph.

 

7.The former Town Hall Library in September 2025.

 

Continuing up the stairs, you come to the large landing space in front of the Assembly Hall, which the signs the Lycée inherited tell you is still called the Paul Daisley Hall, named after the former Council Leader and Brent East M.P. who tragically died of cancer in 2003. This space is often used by students to congregate and chat during breaks, and the curved display cases on either side of the entrance to the Hall are currently hidden by protective sheeting. This photograph from 2012 will give you an idea of what they look like, and of the marble which they used to line the walls of the central staircase area in the 1930s.

 

8.One of the display cases beside the Hall entrance (used for the WHS exhibition in 2012)

 

At the edge of the photo above, you can just see a sign for the ladies’ toilets. Although those toilets have now been extensively modernised for use by the Lycée’s students, the original metal letters for the “Ladies Cloakroom”, fixed into the marble, have still been retained above the entrance. 

 

When you enter the Paul Daisley Hall itself, you can see what a large public hall it is, still with its original parquet flooring, which has been sanded and polished to show it at its best. However, as it is now used as an indoor sports hall, there are the markings for several courts, and the wood-lined lower walls of the lofty hall are protected by absorbent sheeting to protect them from damage. The stage area is also screened off, although this can be removed when the hall is used for performances.

 

 

9.The Paul Daisley Hall, now used by the Lycée as a sports hall.

 

As you go up the staircase to the next level, there is a great view across Wembley Park through the large window which fronts the central tower of the building. Originally, it looked across to the twin towers of Wembley Stadium, and when I was there more than ten years ago you could see the new stadium. Now you can barely see the Wembley Arch, for all the tower blocks built during the past decade (whatever happened to ‘protected views’ of the Stadium!).

 

 

10.Wembley Park, from the central staircase window.

 

11.The 60^th anniversary memorial on the glass screen fronting the Council Chamber.

 

As you emerge from the stairs at the next level, the Council Chamber is in front of you, separated from the landing by a full height glass screen. This curved screen is another innovative feature of the late 1930s Town Hall, whose design includes elements of both modernism and Art Deco, and allows plenty of light into the Council Chamber. To the left on this floor are the three Committee Rooms, all wood panelled, with partitions which can be folded back to create one large room. The students in the group showing us round were reminded that this provided a good-sized exam room, but their “Professeur” said that it had also been used recently for a staff cèilidh (well, parts of France do have a Celtic connection!).

 

12.The Council Chamber from the public gallery.

 

I included a photo inside the Council Chamber early in this article, but we were also able to visit the public gallery on the top floor, to look down on it. The three arm chairs (apparently used by the Mayor and others during formal Council meetings – can any present or former councillors confirm that in a comment, please?) were left behind by Brent when the Town Hall was sold, as features of the heritage building. We were told by Laurent (pictured – the Lycée’s Chief Executive Officer, and proud guardian of the heritage building since 2014) that students are not allowed into the public gallery, as the railing at the front is too low for today’s safety standards, but can’t be changed because it is an original feature.

 

13.Inside and outside views of the former Town Hall’s roof garden room.

 

Another part of the former Town Hall, that I had never been in was what I will call the roof garden room. This is very much an Art Deco feature, which is set back from the three-storey right-hand office wing of the building. Although most of the windows in the building were replaced with modern-standard copies of the originals as part of its refurbishment before the Lycée opened in September 2015, the 1930s floor to ceiling windows in this room had to be retained. I don’t know what the room’s original purpose was, although at a guess I would think it was for official receptions of the Council’s guests.

 

14.A corner of the “Mayor’s Parlour”, with its original desk.

 

Nearby is the former Mayor’s Parlour, where the Mayors of Wembley, then Brent, would have their office and would also entertain guests. It has beautiful wood panelled walls, with curved corners, again an Art Deco feature. It is now the office of the Lycée’s Head of School, Mireille Rabaté, and includes the matching desk which was part of the original Town Hall, again left by Brent Council as part of the building’s heritage. And the photo on her desk is, of course, of Winston Churchill, after whom this bilingual international school is named. If you wish to read about the Lycée, you can find their website here.

 

Philip Grant.

 

Some Wembley local history to enjoy in the next few weeks!

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant in a personal capacity 

 

Sir Arthur Elvin in 1948.

 

I have to declare an interest, as I am involved with most of the events featured in this guest post, but I hope that by sharing the details on “Wembley Matters”, more people who might be interested in one or two of them will have the opportunity to enjoy them.

 

An aerial view of Wembley Town Hall, nearing completion in 1939.
(Image from “Wembley” by Geoffrey Hewlett, 2002)

 

 As part of Open House weekend, the Lycée International Winston Churchill in Forty Lane is opening its doors to the public for guided tours on Saturday 13 September, from 10am to 2.30pm. Although it has been a French Lycée since 2015, many people still know the building as the former Brent Town Hall. It started life as Wembley Town Hall, designed by Clifford Strange and built between 1937 and 1940. The former Town Hall is Grade 2 listed, and this is a rare opportunity for residents to go inside, so if you want more details please “click” on this link.

 

During his lifetime, Arthur Elvin became known as Mister Wembley, and played an important part in making Wembley the world-famous destination it is today. Yet many local people now don’t know much about him, or even why the name Elvin has been given to a garden square behind the Civic Centre or a school in the High Road. I felt that his story needed to be told, so I am giving an illustrated talk about him at the Wembley History Society meeting at St Andrew’s Church Hall, Kingsbury, on Friday 19 September at 7.30pm.

 

 

As the poster above says, visitors to the Society’s meetings are very welcome, and the 83 and 302 buses, which stop close to the venue, should be running along Church Lane again by the time of the meeting! So, please come along, arriving between 7.15 and 7.25pm if possible, if you would be interested in discovering more about “Mister Wembley” and his part in our local history.

 

Arthur Elvin played an important part in bringing the 1948 Olympic Games to Wembley, and that famous sporting event, and the part the local community played in making it a success, are the subject of a free “coffee morning” talk at Kingsbury Library on Tuesday 7 October, from 11am to 12noon (with tea/coffee and biscuits available from 10.45, so come early!). It is best to reserve your place for these Brent Libraries events, and you can do that by “clicking” here.

 

Title slide for the “coffee morning” talk on Tuesday 7 October.

 

The pre-arranged 1948 Olympic Games talk has been included in the programme for “Our Freedom – Then and Now”, a nationwide project, with Brent Libraries as one of its participating cultural organisations, building on the legacy of the VE Day and VJ Day 80^th anniversary commemorations. When I heard about this project, and that Brent’s aim was ‘an opportunity for local people to creatively explore and share Brent’s hidden wartime stories, connecting the past with their own experiences of community, resilience, and freedom today,’ I knew that I had a resource which would fit perfectly into that theme.

 

Title slide for the “coffee morning” event at Wembley Library on Wednesday 22 October

 

The result will be seen and heard at a Wembley Library “coffee morning” on Wednesday 22 October, from 11am to 12noon, when the first-hand Second World War experiences of two local housewives will be shared, through extracts from letters they wrote to a friend. Those letters were saved by their former neighbour, and eventually donated to Wembley History Society by her daughter in 2020, and they provide a fascinating insight into every-day life at that time. The extracts will be read by two ladies from Brent Libraries, while I will be providing the pictures which link their stories. You can reserve your seat for this event by “clicking” here.

 

Philip Grant.

Wembley Celebrates the Coronation – in 1953

Guest post by local historian Philip Grant

 

Queen Elizabeth II in the Coronation Coach, 2 June 1953. (Image from the internet)

 

When King Charles III is crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 May, it will be almost 70 years since his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had her Coronation. So much has changed during that time, in Wembley and elsewhere.

 

According to Brent Council, only eleven roads in the whole borough have applied to be closed for street parties on this occasion. Quintain have apparently not applied to close Olympic Way (which they are temporarily renaming King’s Way – a corruption of the 1924 British Empire Exhibition’s Kingsway) for the Coronation street party they are organising. (Do they think they own it, although it was adopted as a highway by Brent Council in the early 1980s?)

 

This article is not about the 2023 Coronation, but how it was celebrated in 1953. It felt like the dawn of a new age. The end was in sight for post-war rationing (sweets had come off rationing in February 1953, although sugar and some meats were still rationed). The country had a new, young Queen, and there was a feeling of optimism for the future.

 

Sitting down for a Coronation street party in Deanscroft Avenue, Kingsbury, in 1953.
(Courtesy of Susan Larter)

 

Kingsbury got its celebrations underway on Saturday 30 May 1953, with a Coronation Carnival. A quarter-mile long procession of decorated floats formed up in Valley Drive, before travelling along Kingsbury Road, up Honeypot Lane and along Princes Avenue, to a fête on the playing fields of the County grammar school (now Kingsbury High). The float carrying the Coronation “Carnival Queen” had a guard of honour from the local Sea Cadets, while all the other local youth organisations marched behind.

 

Kingsbury Swimming Pool, seen in the 1960s. (Brent Archives – Wembley History Society Colln.)

 

Kingsbury Swimming Pool, in Roe Green Park, also played a part in the celebrations, staging a Coronation swimming gala in which Kingsbury S.C. took on teams from Wembley, Willesden and other local swimming clubs in front of a large crowd. 

 

The weather over that weekend was perfect for several local street parties that were held, but Coronation Day itself, the following Tuesday, was cold and wet. The residents of Berkeley Road in Kingsbury had decided to hold their street party for seventy-five children on the big day itself, with food, singing and a fancy dress competition. It looked like being a washout, but the owners of Kingsbury Arcade, on the corner with Kingsbury Road, came to the rescue and let the party be held there free of charge.

 

The Deanscroft Avenue children in their home-made hats. (Courtesy of Susan Larter)

 

I don’t know whether the Deanscroft Avenue street party was held on the weekend before or after the Coronation, but the weather was fine for it. One feature of the party was that all of the children had to come in home-made hats or bonnets, and there was probably a prize for the best one.

 

A “Wembley News” report, with photograph of the Pilgrims Way Coronation tea party.
(Brent Archives – local newspaper microfilms)

 

An invitation to the Pilgrims Way Coronation tea party on 6 June 1953. (Courtesy of Paul Kennedy)

 

I do know which day the Pilgrims Way pre-fab estate had its Coronation celebrations, because I’ve got a copy of one of the invitations, sent to each of the 200 children living there. I heard about it from several of those who took part, during a Brent Archives “Pre-fabs Project” in 2011. Fancy dress was “optional” but many children, and adults, took up that option, especially as there was a competition with prizes for the best children in fancy dress.

 

One of the Pilgrims Way children, and two mums, in fancy dress, 6 June 1953.
(Photos courtesy of Paul Kennedy and Wally Robson)

 

Thanks to Sir Arthur Elvin (who I believe a member of the Tenants’ Association worked for at Wembley Stadium and Arena), there were special guests to judge the fancy dress competition. There were no photographs in the local newspapers then of the famous Harlem Globetrotters basketball players, who were in Wembley for their annual sporting entertainment show. But Sir Arthur had sent a photographer along, to capture their visit to Pilgrims Way, and this photograph appeared in the programme for the Globetrotters’ 1954 week at the “Empire Pool”.

 

Harlem Globetrotters players at the Pilgrims Way Coronation party, 1953.
(Brent Archives – Wembley event programmes)

 

The “Wembley News” did report the results of the fancy dress competition:

 

‘Probably the biggest street party held in Kingsbury on Saturday was the one organised for 200 children of the Pilgrims-way pre-fab estate. Six members of the Harlem Globe-trotters team arrived at mid-day to open the party and give an exhibition of their basket ball wizardry. They also judged the fancy dress parade. Their choice was: Up to five years old, Patricia Craig (Elizabeth the 1^st); 5-10 years, Pamela Bignell (Gypsy Girl); and 10-15 years, John Gibbons (Long John Silver).’

 

It wasn’t just Wembley that was celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation. There were street parties all across the country. I was 3½ in 1953, growing up on a post-war Council housing estate in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. Our Coronation tea party, where nearly everyone came in fancy dress, is one of my earliest memories, and although it is not “Wembley” local history, I will finish off by sharing a couple of pictures from the event with you. 

 

The Blackman Avenue Coronation tea party, June 1953.

 

I was dressed up as a “Chinaman” (echos of Empire?) for the occasion. Judging from the look on my face, not wanting to be photographed, I was not too happy about it! But in the background, you can see the wide grassy open space which ran down the middle of our street, where the tea party was held, and which provided a great place for me and the many other (post-war baby boom) children who lived there to play throughout our childhood.

 

Philip Grant, in fancy dress, June 1953.

 

Will there be as much genuine excitement over the Coronation of King Charles III as there was for that of his mother? I doubt it, but perhaps, 70 years on, I’m getting old and cynical. Some other historian can write about it in future, if they are interested in doing so, as a piece of social history (“The dawn of another new age”, or “The last hurrah of the monarchy”?).

 

If you would like to watch a film produced for Wembley Borough Council to commemorate the way that the Coronation was celebrated in 1953, Brent Archives has a 28-minute silent film, mainly in colour, which is now available to view on the London Screen Archives website LINK.

It begins by showing Civic dignitaries attending services at St John’s Church and Wembley Town Hall, but goes on to cover a whole range of events, including the Kingsbury carnival procession and swimming gala, mentioned in the article. A selection of shops and houses decorated for the Coronation are also shown, and there are a number of sporting events (my favourite is the Tour de Wembley cycle race, from the Town Hall, with a “summit finish” on Fryent Way).

 

Philip Grant.

 

Editor's note for readers who may be puzzled by coverage of events in Kingsbury under a Wembley headline.

In 1953 the Municipal Borough of Wembley included the former Kingsbury Urban District. The Borough of Wembley was abolished in 1965 when it merged with the Borough of Willesden to become the London Borough of Brent.