Honeypot Lane (Centre) 1923
Honeypot Lane beginning to be built up (1935)
When he was 18, my maternal Uncle Ronald (Jefferies) lived with the family in Church Drive, Kingsbury, having only recently moved from Peckham. They all enjoyed what remained of the countryside around Kingsbury, my mother often reminded us when we said we were bored that she used to jump over the ditches of the Welsh Harp and urge us to get off out from under her feet. My Aunt Muriel worked at Bush Farm in Kingsbury during World War 2 and she and my mother kept a pair of goats in the garage of their Crundale Avenue home!
When a child my mother looked up to her big brother Ron who tried to educate her about Shakespeare, poetry and music and he clearly made a big impact. He later joined the Communist Party and as an ETU shop steward was indirectly involved in the 1961 controversy LINK.
Back in 1935 he was a romantic teenager and on Saturday 15th February wrote a poem about Honeypot Lane that was then undergoing development that seems to have involved the loss of woodland. It is a fairly typical teenage poem (I have some embarrassing examples of my own) but captures a moment of change in our area that I thought was worth sharing:
Ronald Wilfred Jefferies
Thanks to Philip Grant for this photograph of Honeypot Lane probably taken around the time of Ron's poem.
The Lane
I mourn the loss dearest friend,
No more happy ways I wend,
Amidst thy green and shaded grove,
Men will execute and move,
What God gave for their delight,
And put instead an ugly sight,
The wind thunders in my ears,
It confirms, trees all they fears.
'Tis the crack of doom for thee.
Gaunt fingers upraised you plea,
To a grey and windswept sky,
But all in void, for you must die,
As they shine through boughs and leaves,
Moonlight or sunlight magic weaves,
A fairy web along the lane,
Shadows I'll never see again.
Farewell! Around another bend,
Perhaps there lurks some new friend.
Ronald Jefferies
1976 - not currently available
The volume above contains some background on Honeypot Lane LINK
There is something incredibly
rural and homely about the name 'Honeypot Lane' and yet, in the late 20th
century, it is an unsuitable and incongruous title for a highway which includes
a dual carriageway for part of its length and many factory buildings along its
eastern flank.
One explanation for its unusual name was given in Volume 3 but a reader has
reminded us that there is at least one other probable reason for the 'Honeypot'
title. There was, and still is, an old country saying, "Stuck like
bees on a honeypot", when referring to the effects of a strong
adhesive. Villagers used this expression when describing Honeypot Lane
during wet weather, at which times the sticky nature of the moist clay made it
almost impassable. This theory is supported by the existence of another
lane of the same name in Alperton, where similar conditions prevailed.
The history of this old lane stretches back over aeons of time; it has been
trodden by the feet of armies, robbers and labourers - and even earlier by the
Druids and possibly Stone Age men. It was a brief stage on the long route
which connected Dover with Brockley Hill, before continuing on to Holyhead.
It is quite an awe-inspiring thought when one considers that this route, which
was once a path, then a track and later a lane, had altered very little in
concept for more than two thousand years - until suddenly, in the late 1930s,
the whole scene began to change radically. Put another way, it means that
the last forty years in which it has adopted the modern motor highway image
represents less than one fiftieth of its known existence.
An interesting aspect of this revelation is that many residents who are not
very much beyond the stage of middle age can clearly remember the old Honeypot
Lane, which was alternately grassy and muddy, depending upon the season - and
even with the advent of the 1930s - was still unmade. One resident
described it as a "one cart track. Two carts could not pass unless
the driver of one opened a gate and backed into a field".
The only signs of civilisation in its entire length were a few isolated
cottages (four of which, namely Marsh Cottages, still remain near the 'Green
Man'), a sewage farm and an isolation hospital, which later changed its
function to that of a maternity centre.
The public house near the junction with Whitchurch Lane was built in the late
1930s but the previous establishment was more commonly known to the local
residents as the 'Hog and Donkey'. Other long-standing public houses in
the Lane are The Queen of Hearts' and 'The Honeypot'.
Honeypot Lane 2021
John Betjeman, of course, wrote nostalgically about Middlesex LINK:
Dear Middlesex,
Dear vanished country friend.
Your neighbour, London,
Killed you in the end.
But I wonder if anyone has written poetry about the more recent changes in Wembley Park, Northwick Park or Alperton?
