Clement Close was the subject of a recent blog,
about residents’ opposition to Brent’s
proposed in-fill scheme for this Council housing estate. But how did this estate come to be here,
surrounded by suburban homes in Brondesbury Park? The answer lies in another
time of acute housing shortage.
Some prefab homes in Clement Way, 1950s. (Photo
courtesy of Brent Archives)
Even though they were in the middle of a major
conflict in 1942, some members of the Churchill’s National Government were
thinking ahead to how they would rebuild the country after the war. Housing
people whose homes had been destroyed would be a major problem. One solution
they came up with was the idea of temporary factory-made houses, and by 1944
local Councils were instructed to consider how many they would need, and where
to put them.
One of the sites identified in the Borough
Engineer’s report to Willesden Council on 15 January 1945 was the playing
fields at Okehampton Road, where he thought there would be space for 135
“prefabs”, as they came to be known. The Council ‘noted’ the objections
received by residents adjoining the playing fields, to the erection of
emergency housing there, at its meeting on 19 February 1945. Despite this, at
the end of May 1945 the Council applied for a loan of £31k from the Ministry of
Health, for a period of ten years, and accepted tenders from two local
companies to prepare a number of sites, including the Okehampton Road playing
fields.
News of German P-o-Ws clearing a site for prefabs
near Roundwood Park.
(From “Willesden Chronicle”, 22 June 1945 – Brent Archives local newspaper
microfilms)
Because of the shortage of workers, German
prisoners of war were used as additional labourers for preparing the sites, and
work was underway at Okehampton Road by mid-June 1945. They would have been
brought to work by lorry, probably from a large P-o-W camp near Watford. The
concrete bases for prefab homes were laid out along a new street, called
Clement Road (possibly after the new Labour Prime Minister!), linking
Okehampton Road and Milverton Road, and a shorter road called Clement Way which
came off of it.
The Clement Road prefab estate, from a 1959 O.S.
map. (Source: Brent Archives maps collection)
There were several varieties of prefabs, and
Willesden Council had expressed a preference for the Arcon design. But they had
to take what was available, and what the Ministry of Works supplied for Clement
Road was a “flat-pack” bungalow, made of timber and chipboard, supplied by
America under the wartime Lend Lease agreement. While they had “all mod cons”,
they’d been designed as married quarters accommodation for large U.S. Forces
bases in the south of that country, so were not ideal for the British climate.
An American wooden prefab at 70 Clement Road in the
1960s. (Photo courtesy of Irene Ottaway)
Despite this, the prefabs on the Clement Road
estate provided popular homes for around 130 local families, for far more than
the ten years they were originally expected to last. As they were made of
timber, it’s surprising that only two (as far as I know) were destroyed in
house fires – but when a fire took, hold the effects could be devastating.
These photos from Clement Road in the 1960s were taken by a schoolboy who lived
there. What he did not know at the time was that a baby had died inside this
burning prefab.
Families on the estate were gradually being
rehoused into permanent Council homes, but as late as 1962, some were being
relet to other families in housing need. Eventually, the prefabs at the
northern end of the site were cleared, and the permanent Council homes of what
was to be called Clement Close were built in the 1960s.
Mrs Maisey, in the back garden of her Clement Road
prefab in the late 1960s,
with Clement Close homes in the background. (Courtesy of Irene Ottaway)
The Clement Road and Clement Way prefabs were
finally removed by the early 1970s. Most of the Okehampton Road playing fields,
which Willesden Council had requisitioned for post-war emergency housing in
1945, returned to their original use, but this time as additional grounds for
the adjacent secondary school (now Queens Park Community College). The northern
end, accessed from Milverton Road, was kept for Council housing, as Clement
Close.
Philip Grant.
(With thanks to the former residents of the Clement
Road prefab estate, who shared their stories and photographs with the Brent
Archives “Prefabs Project” in 2011.)
Editor's Note:
If you are interested in the extent of the bombing locally during the London Blitz (7th October 1940 to 6th June 1941) that led to the destruction of many homes go to this interactive site. The information goes to street level.
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.
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 .
Local historian
(and Wembley Matters correspondent) Philip Grant will be giving a free talk, at
11am on Tuesday 25th June, as part of Kingsbury Library’s regular
monthly “Coffee Morning” events. His subject this time is the “prefab”
bungalows that were built just after the Second World War, to provide urgently
needed temporary homes for families.
Nothing is left of
them today (the last ones locally were gone by the early 1970’s), but they had
been a feature of Roe Green Park, Silver Jubilee Park and a corner of what is
now Fryent Country Park (an estate called Pilgrims Way!).
Much of the talk
will include memories and photographs from people who lived in the Kingsbury
prefabs. It is the social history of everyday local people, although some went
on to be more widely known (including a future Leader of Brent Council, and a world
famous musician).
The event is free,
with refreshments (although Brent Libraries would like everyone who comes to
borrow at least one library book as part of their visit). If you are not doing
anything else that morning, and think that the talk might be interesting, why
not come along?
