Love Chalkhill Festival returns on Saturday July 14th 2pm-7pm

Always a great community event in Chalkhill Park (behind Wembley Asda).

Heart of Wembley Festival Saturday July 7th 1pm-6pm

From  Wembley Futures

On Saturday, 7 July 2018 Wembley Futures will be hosting the third annual Heart of Wembley Festival. This vibrant community event will take place from 1pm-6pm on St Johns Road, off Wembley High Road by Primark. St Johns Road will be closed to traffic for the day, allowing the community to reclaim a street in the town centre for the festivities. The theme of this year’s festival is ‘Celebrating Family’, and the festival will truly have something for everyone in families both big and small.

The Festival is one of the activities by Wembley Futures, one of 150 recipient groups across the UK to be awarded funding by The Big Local. A long-term innovative programme that aims to achieve lasting change, The Big Local provides a mixture of funding, finance and support.

The Heart of Wembley Festival will celebrate the diversity and community in Wembley Central through a mix of both local and professional music, talented dance performances, fragrant food, bright colours and vivid fabrics of the performers’ costumes.

The atmosphere will be charged with much vitality and vivaciousness!  Stage will feature music spanning the genres including vintage music hailing from the 1940s and beyond, the sounds of acoustic guitar, and Afro-Brazilian harmonies that recall the band members’ far flung homelands.
Drumming workshops will run all day, their rhythmic beats inviting all festival goers to come and have a try on African drums and the Dhol drums, while dancers will conjure a voyage to countries from Ireland to Nepal and from India to Cuba with intricate, traditional dance performances. For a contrast, contemporary dancers specialising in street dance will also be showing their skills to the festival crowd.

Come and taste the flavours of cooking from around the world, with vendors offering authentic Nigerian, Caribbean, and Hungarian street food as well as a range of both sweet and savoury treats from Portugal, artisan brownies, and delicious cakes. Don’t forget a refreshing drink of fresh coconut as well.

Family activities will abound, with creative craft tables, an artwork display by Elsley School, and fantastic performances from children from Brent Music, Ark Elvin School, Elsely School, and the 360 Theatre group. Become a character, an animal or simply enjoy a gorgeous design with a visit to the Festival face-painters.  With a story area, including books and a storyteller, there will be plenty to carry away the imaginations of all members of the family. Let street theatre artists and magician woo you!

Be sure to cycle up a smoothie and repair your bike, courtesy of Brent Cycling; have a chat with the always-welcoming community stalls, try some aloe products from Forever Living, and stop by the Wembley Futures stall for more details about current activities and upcoming plans for the year ahead. Wembley Central Safer Neighbourhood Police will be on hand to hear any concerns you may have.

Francis Henry, Chair of Wembley Futures, said:

I hope to see both new and familiar faces at the Festival in July. We are building on the success of the previous two years’ Festivals and look forward to a great day out with friends, family and neighbours. Heart of Wembley Festival 2018 promises to be a fun-packed day.

Alperton Summer Festival Saturday July 7th

Alperton Summer Festival 2018
Saturday on 7th July 2018
12–6pm
Heather Park 
(Entry free)

There will be live music, a petting zoo, cricket simulator, face painting and more! (All free of charge, and of course we will be showing the England game live!) We will also be announcing the winners of the My Alperton Postcard Competition and raising money for local Charity and food bank Sufra NW.

Sufra adds:
 
Sufra NW London will be all over the Alperton Summer Festival this Saturday 7 July at Heather Park. As well as our information stall, we will be flipping delicious sweet and savoury pancakes on our new stall - Oh Crepe!

Consultation on more blocks behind Chesterfield House 'Twin Towers' closes on July 16th

Consultation is taking place on the building of two blocks, one of 16 storeys and another 18 storeys, behind the 'Twin Towers' (26 and 21 storey) replacement for Chesterfield House at the junction of Park Lane and Wembley High Road.

The consultation closes on July 16th. The buildings will be behind the shops on the High Road and bordered by the Chiltern railway line.  The designers make great play of a green 'Wemba Forest' corridor  around the blocks, name after Wemba who cleared a space (lea) in the forest in the area. Forest is perhaps a rather grand name for what is planned behind the shops but the artist's impression is extremely imaginative to say the least. Across the railway line there is a wooded embankment and the 2 storey houses of Park Court that will now be overlooked by four tower blocks.

I have published the design brochure below and the consultation  survey can be found HERE
Click lower right corner for full size version

New buildings proposed at White Horse Bridge, Wembley Stadium Station

The proposed 6-18 storey buildings

The proposed new build

Ariel view of the site

Brent Planning Committee will this evening consider plans for new buildings on either side of the White Horse Bridge and the Chiltern Wembley Stadium Station.

The proposed blocks range from 6 to 18 storeys and claim a mix of  156 'affordable' and shared ownership properties. 'Affordable' as usual is not defined.

At ground floor level a mix of retail, commercial and community uses is proposed but the overall aim is to have retail connecting the retail and restaurants of Wembley High Road with Wembley Park Boulevard.  One of the buildings will host offices for Chiltern Railways staff.

Along with the new two tower development on the site of the former  Mahatma Gandhi House the development will face the 2 -3 storey buildings on the other side of Wembley Hill Road. Some mitigation is proposed where the SW07 building overlooks properties on Juniper Close.

Full Officers' Report HERE

Postscript from local historian Philip Grant

They say that history repeats itself - there was ground floor retail development near the station (then Wembley Hill, on the Great Central Railway) soon after it opened in 1906, but the scale then was on a more human level - see postcard picture below.

 

Wembley Hill Station 1908

 

 

Parents win stay of execution for Swaminarayan School

The Kilburn Times LINK is reporting that following a 3,000 signature petition  organised by parents asking Trustees and Governors to keep theSwaminarayan schools open it has been decided to keep both the primary and secondary schools open until at least 2020.

The signatures were achieved despite a text message circulated around Swaminarayan Temple volunteers asking people not to sign the petition or pass it on to other groups because it would affect the reputation of the Swaminarayan organisation.

A governor, Tarun Patel, told the Kilburn Times:

We had a review after meeting the parents and came to the conclusion that we will keep both schools open until July 2020.

This will be welcome news for parents in years 4, 5 and 6 as it will allow students to complete their prep-school education.

If it’s feasible and circumstances allow, we will look to keep the prep school open for a further year until 2021.

Parents have put together a business plan that they claim would keep the school open for  another 7 years and are due to discuss their proposals with Trustees and Governors tomorrow.

Wembley’s hospitals and the NHS 70th Birthday

Guest blog by Philip Grant

July 5^th 2018 sees the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service, and there will be a community tea party in Wembley’s Yellow Pavilion the following day (Friday 6^th July, from 1pm to 4pm) to celebrate the event:-

But what medical facilities did the ordinary folk of Wembley have before the NHS was set up, and who provided these? I was invited to provide some “local history” information for this NHS70 event, and I would like to share some of it with “Wembley Matters” readers here.

Ever since Tudor times (after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries who had often provided some health care to the areas around them) the Church of England parishes were expected to provide care to poor people within their district. Every year each parish appointed two or three local men to serve as Overseers of the Poor, raising money to meet the costs of providing “relief” and (if they were lucky) some basic medical care.

Most of Wembley was in the Harrow parish, but in the 1840’s two spinster sisters, Anne and Francis Copland, who had inherited their father’s estate at what is now Barham Park, campaigned for Wembley and Sudbury to be made a separate parish, and paid to have St John’s Church built in Harrow Road, not far from their home. They were great philanthropists, providing money for a school, and a workmen’s hall (including a small library).

Anne Copland, c.1860

In 1871 (the year before she died) Anne Copland gave money to build and endow a Village Hospital. The site is now Wilkinsons, in Wembley High Road, near the junction with Park Lane.

Charles Goddard, 

Unfortunately, Anne had said that only the interest (at 4%) from the investments she had given the hospital could be used to fund its running costs, and the hospital had to stop taking inpatients in 1883. After that, the building became a doctor’s house, at which the sick could be seen, and given medicines from a dispensary.

The doctor living in the former cottage hospital, Charles Goddard, became Wembley’s first Medical Officer of Health, when it was made a separate District Council in 1895. He held that post for around forty years, and in 1924 he called a public meeting to propose that a new hospital be built. There was a lot of support from local people, and Titus Barham (who owned the Express Dairy Company, and lived at Sudbury Park, which had been the home of the Copland sisters) donated land at Chaplin Road, which was part of his own dairy farm, as a site for the new Wembley Hospital. Barham also donated £2,000 towards the cost of building it, and he and his wife Florence were active in organising fund-raising events for the project as well.

The foundation stone for the hospital was laid in October 1926, a Board of Management for the hospital was set up, and the new hospital was opened on 2 June 1928 by the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who became the Queen Mother when their daughter succeeded to the throne in 1952).

Wembley Hospital, around 1950.

When Titus Barham, who had been the hospital’s president, died in 1937, he left a further £20,000 to Wembley Hospital in his will. But as a charity (a bit like St Luke’s Hospice today), it needed to regularly raise money from other sources. One of the ways this was done was by holding an annual hospital carnival week, with a Carnival Queen, street parade and various fundraising events. Another important source of funds was a “hospital savings scheme”, where by paying contributions of sixpence a month (made by 20,000 of the 90,000 residents in Wembley and Kingsbury in the late 1930’s) local people were entitled to free treatment in the “public wards”.

The Anne Copland Ward at Wembley Hospital, around 1950.

When the NHS was set up in 1948, Wembley Hospital was absorbed into this new service, but although its management had changed, it still provided the same type of care to its patients. Like many other hospitals, as well as training local young women as nurses (under the supervision of the Matron), Wembley also benefitted from some who came from the Caribbean (another 70^th Anniversary! – LINK

 

 

Christmas time in the Children’s Ward, Wembley Hospital, 1950’s

Wembley Hospital’s role diminished over time, especially after the new District Hospital at Northwick Park was built in the late 1960’s, but its site in Chaplin Road is still providing a range of health services for local people (me included!) as the Wembley Centre for Health and Care. So, Happy 70^th birthday NHS, and thank you.

Philip Grant

Acknowledgement

All images are  from the Wembley History Society Collection at Brent Archives.

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Lorber invites Brent CEO to take a walk in the park & survey residents' views on the meadows issue

Paul Lorber in Barham Park

Paul Lorber, former Lib Dem councillor has taken up the issue of the state of Brent's parks and the council policy to allow meadows to develop to encourage biodiversity - and to save £450,000 in grass cutting costs. Wembley Matters alerted readers to the proposal and critiqued it nearly a year ago. LINK

Dear Ms Downs

On a sunny summer day Barham Park in Wembley is usually full of people relaxing on the grass, playing games and chasing around with their children.

None of these is happening anymore since Brent Council to stop cutting the grass.

What has been created are not ‘wild meadows’ as has been claimed as these need planning, preparation, proper planting and cultivation - but a mess full of uncut grass and weeds. As a result of Council action local people are being deprived of usable access to the Park - at the height of the summer.

There was of course no proper consultation about this and no proper consideration of the consequences. All the talk of encouraging local people to participate in recreation and exercise is of course a lot of Brent hot air.

As you know schools will break up soon and our Park will be needed by families and their children.

As I was advised that the next cut in a Barham Park will not now take place until October it would seem that Brent Council is happy to ignore the needs of families and their children over the 6 week summer holiday and keep our parks overgrown and neglected.

I cannot imagine that officers could be so irresponsible to recommend this course of action and Councillors so stupid as to accept this advice.

I strongly recommend that you undertake a tour of all the Parks Brent and ask local people what they think of the state of their parks and the current Council policy of effectively keeping them out.

Hopefully such a tour will persuade you that the current position is not acceptable and you will recommend immediate action to get the grass cut and the parks open spaces brought back to an acceptable standard so that local people can once again use and enjoy them.

I look forward to your prompt action on this scandal.

Yours faithfully

Paul Lorber
Local resident and taxpayer and user of Barham Park