Showing posts with label Kilburn High Road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kilburn High Road. Show all posts

Saturday 7 November 2020

Uncovering Kilburn’s History – Part 7

Thank you for joining me again for the final part of this Kilburn local history series.

 

 

1. New flats in Cambridge Road, opposite Granville Road Baths, c.1970. (Brent Archives online image 10127)

 

In Part 6 we saw the major rebuilding that took place, particularly in South Kilburn, between the late 1940s and the 1970s. Many of the workers on the building sites were Irish. The new wave of Irish immigration to Northwest London, which reached its peak in the 1950s, was quickly transforming the area. As well as abundant work, Kilburn offered plenty of cheap accommodation, and a bustling High Road with cultural and eating establishments, many of them catering for the Irish population, who soon represented a majority in the area. ‘County Kilburn’ was dubbed Ireland’s 33rd county

  


2. Kilburn's Irish culture – an Irish Festival poster and Kilburn Gaels hurling team. (From the internet)

 

The Irish community, close-knit and mutually supportive, hit the headlines in the negative way in the 1970s, when Kilburn became a focal point for “the Troubles” in London. On 8 June 1974, an estimated 3,000 came out onto the streets of Kilburn for the funeral procession of Provisional IRA member Michael Gaughan. An Irishman, who had lived in Kilburn, Gaughan was imprisoned for an armed bank robbery in 1971 and in 1974 died as the result a hunger strike. Gaughan’s coffin, accompanied by an IRA guard of honour, was taken from the Crown at Cricklewood through Kilburn to the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart in Quex Road, before being flown to Dublin for another ceremony and funeral.

 


3. Michael Gaughan's funeral procession in Quex Road, June 1974. (Image from the internet)

 

The maximum publicity stirred by the IRA only confirmed the general belief that Kilburn was becoming a focal point for the Irish republicans, and their meeting place was Biddy Mulligan’s pub at 205 High Road. Dating from about 1862, the pub on the corner of Kilburn High Road and Willesden Lane was originally called the Victoria Tavern. It became Biddy Mulligan’s in the 1970s, named after the character of a female Dublin street seller performed by 1930s Irish comedian Jimmy O’Dea.

 

 

4. Sinn Fein's Kilburn Branch, marching through Cricklewood in the 1970s. (Brent Archives image 317)


As claimed by Ulster loyalists later, Biddy’s attracted ‘militant Irish extremists, far left activists, revolutionaries and their sympathisers’. Leaders of Sinn Fein in London said they collected about £17,000 a year in Kilburn – a lot of it came from the pub collections and went across the Irish sea to fund IRA activities. On 21 December 1975 the pub was shaken by an explosion from a holdall left at its doorstep by members of the Ulster Defence Association, who said they wanted to stop the spread of IRA in England. It was the first time the UDA struck outside Northern Ireland. Out of 90 people who were in the bar at the time, a small number were hurt, but no one was killed. The perpetrators were quickly arrested and put in prison.

 


5. The former Biddy Mulligan's pub in 2009. (From the internet – picture by Ewan Murray, on Flickr)

 

The pub remained ‘Biddy’s’ for a few years, then it traded as an Aussie sports bar called the ‘Southern K’. It closed about 2009 and today the building is a Ladbrokes betting shop. 

 

The look and feel of Kilburn is changing fast – Woolworths, at 100-104 Kilburn High Road, which was a big feature of the area since 1920s, closed in 2008 and is now Iceland. The elegant 1930s Art Deco building at 54-56 Kilburn High Road is Primark – part of the usual mix of shops found on any major high street in the country. 

 


6. The Lord Palmerston in a c.1900 postcard, and as Nando's, 2017. (www.images-of-london.co.uk / Anne Hill)

 

The Lord Palmerston, 308 Kilburn High Road, is another example of how Kilburn has changed over time. It originally operated as the Palmerston Hotel when it opened in 1869, and served as a terminus for several horse bus services. In 1977 the pub re-opened as the Roman Way, in deference to the road’s historic roots. Now it is a branch of Nando’s. The Cock Tavern, The Old Bell, the Sir Colin Campbell, North London Tavern, Earl of Derby and others continue the area’s tradition of historic pubs, which we saw in Part 2, but now alongside Italian, Japanese, Thai, Afghani, Persian, Turkish, Indian, Moroccan, Burmese eateries on the High Road. 

 


7.  A collage of some of Kilburn's historic public houses. (Photos and collage by Irina Porter)

 

From the 1970s onwards the Irish population started to move out of the area, and immigrants from the Caribbean, Middle East and Asia started to come in. The area is now multicultural - in 2017 the vicar of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart in Quex Road said that he regularly welcomed 64 different nationalities to mass. The Maida Vale Picture House at 140 Maida Vale (1913) is now the Islamic Centre of England.

 

“The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety roller coaster. Higgledy-piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box. Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once – houses, churches, schools, cemeteries – an optimistic vision of Metroland. Little terraces, faux-Tudor piles. All the mod cons! Indoor toilet, hot water. Well-appointed country living for those tired of the city. Fast-forward. Disappointed city living for those tired of their countries.”

 


8. Three scenes from Kilburn High Road in 2020, still with a W.H.Smith connection! (Photos by Irina Porter)

 

The 1970s was not all doom and gloom, and music provided one of the bright spots. The band ‘Kilburn and the High Roads’ (local connection unknown!) and its singer Ian Dury were one of the inspirations for the later punk rock movement. In a comment on Part 3, Wembley Matters reader Trevor shared with us his recollections of growing up in Kilburn and taking part in the The Jam’s video for their song ‘When You’re Young’ in 1979. This was filmed in Kilburn Square shopping precinct and in Kilburn High Road (with Woolworths!). The bandstand is in Queen’s Park, and the 12-year old Trevor is wearing a red and blue jacket.

 

 

Another famous 1970s singer/songwriter who has lived locally was Cat Stevens. He became a Muslim in 1977, having found his spiritual home through reading the Qur’an, and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. His many charitable works in promoting education, peace and mutual respect between faiths since then have included setting up the Islamia Primary School in Salusbury Road in 1982, the first full-time Muslim primary school in England. For more about musicians and music businesses in Kilburn, visit North-West London Music Maps, by Dick Weindling. 

 

Kilburn had 10 cinemas in the last 110 years, but today only one remains, and that is part of the cultural focal point of modern Kilburn, at 269 Kilburn High Road. The building dates from 1928, when it was opened as the London headquarters of the Foresters’ Friendly Society, which provided financial help to members in need. In the 1930s it had a music and dance hall, on occasions hired by Oswald Mosley’s fascist ‘Blackshirts’, who used to meet in the area. During the World War II it served as an air raid shelter and a food distribution point.

 


9. The Foresters’ Hall and Tricycle Theatre, late 20th century. (Images from the internet)

 

The Foresters’ stayed in the building until 1979, when they sold it, and moved into a small office nearby. The building was being used by local community organisations, when it was discovered by Shirley Barrie and Ken Chubb, who founded their theatre performance Wakefield Tricycle Company and were looking for permanent premises. In 1980 Tim Foster Architects re-designed the theatre, but in 1987 the building was destroyed by fire and the re-building took 2 years. In 1998 a new cinema was opened next to it, which also offered extra rehearsing space.

 

 

10. The opening plaque on what is now the Kiln Cinema, in Buckley Road. (Photos by Irina Porter, 2020)

 

The Tricycle Theatre was successful and acquired a reputation for political and outspoken, diverse and innovative plays. One of the best known was the Colour of Justice (1999), based on the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and directed by Nicholas Kent who became Artistic Director in 1984. In 2018, after another re-design project, the Tricycle re-opened as The Kiln, with a new café, rehearsal rooms, improved accessibility, better sightlines, comfortable seats and flexible stage. The Kiln has a 300-seat cinema and a slightly smaller theatre complex.

 


11. The 60s/70s South Kilburn today, with Crone Court and the OK Club (left) and Dickens House (right).
      (Photos by John Hill, and from Facebook on the internet)

 

Despite the hopes of planners, and like the Chalkhill and Stonebridge estates elsewhere in Brent, the South Kilburn estate of typical 1960s brutalist style high density housing, in low rise flats and 11 concrete tower blocks, did not deliver an ideal neighbourhood. In 1988, unemployment in South Kilburn was 20%. The estate was plagued by crime, shootings, gun and drug trade. There was ongoing rivalry with gangs from the nearby Mozart Estate, just across the borough boundary in Westminster. Several high-profile police raids in 2007 and 2011 and the shootings of innocent by-standers as the gangs wage their wars against each other continue to contribute to the adverse reputation of the area.

 


12. Network Housing's Kilburn Quarter, in a computer image and 2020 photograph. (Internet / Irina Porter)

 

In 2004 Brent Council started working on a 15-year plan of drastic demolition of much of the estate and creating a new living environment, at a cost of £660 million. The demolition of the old estate started in 2014 with two of the 18 storey housing blocks, to be replaced with 4 ‘smart’ blocks and amenities for the local community. Several different housing associations and architects are involved in the project, which so far has resulted in an overall loss of council housing, as many of the flats are for private sale. Despite the council’s efforts to improve the quality of the area, it continues to be plagued by problems connected to its history of gang violence and drug dealing, as well as issues with maintenance of the newly built homes and cladding for fire safety regulations.

 

One effort aimed at engaging with young people on the fringes was the Signal Project in 2004. The mural they sponsored under the bridges at Kilburn Station brought together graffiti artists and the local community. The subjects painted reflected Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, H.G. Wells’s ‘War of the Worlds’, the Gaumont State and Kilburn’s Irish heritage, and it won Time Out magazine’s best mural award in 2006.

 


13. Some views of the street art murals under the bridges at Kilburn Station. (Irina Porterx3/ John Hill)

 

In recent years Kilburn has been regarded as on the way up – as have been many London locations which are within easy transport links to Central London. The long-suffering South Kilburn estate is not without its crime problems, and occasionally developers cause an uproar too, as in the case of the Carlton Tavern, a pub in Carlton Vale on the border of Kilburn and Westminster. This dated from 1921 and was the only building on this part of the street to survive the Blitz during the Second World War. In 2015 it was bought by an Israeli property developer and demolished overnight, without permission, while being considered for Grade II listing.  Westminster Council ordered the developer to rebuild the public house, recreating the exact facsimile, which has been done, but as of October 2020 it still has not re-opened. 

 


14. The Carlton Tavern, after its 2015 demolition, and in 2020 after being rebuilt. (Internet / Irina Porter)

 

Brent was chosen to be London’s Borough of Culture for 2020, and one of its highlights was to be a summer festival on Kilburn High Road, with a mile-long street party. Unfortunately this was cancelled due to the Covid-19 situation. Kilburn does, however, have two Brent Biennial artworks by British-Filipino artist Pio Abad, just off the High Road in Willesden Lane and Burton Road. There is also the premiere of Zadie Smith’s debut play, ‘The Wife of Willesden’ at The Kiln theatre to look forward to as part of the delayed LBOC 2020 celebrations.

 


15. Pio Abad's two Brent2020 Kilburn artworks, and a Borough of Cultures sign. (Internet / Irina Porter x2)

 

Whatever Kilburn’s future will bring us, I hope you have enjoyed discovering its rich and colourful past, which this series will remain as a record of.


Irina Porter,
Willesden Local History Society

 

A special thank you to local historian Dick Weindling, co-author of 'Kilburn and West Hampstead Past' and History of Kilburn and West Hampstead blog


 

Thank you, Irina, for what has been a fascinating series on Kilburn. Where will our local history journey take us next? If we head west along Kilburn Lane to Kensal Green, then up the Harrow Road for a few miles, we’ll come to …. Find out next week, when another writer joins our “local history in lockdown” team, with a one-off article for you.


Saturday 31 October 2020

Uncovering Kilburn’s History – Part 6

 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. 

 

The Grange Cinema opened on the site of the The Grange mansion in 1914. It had over 2,000 seats, a stage, an organ and the Winter Garden café, and was the largest purpose-built cinema in the country at the time. Sixty years later the cinema closed, and the building became the National Club in 1976, and was a popular music venue for the large Irish community in the area. As well as Irish showbands, it featured many famous performers, including Johnny Cash, Simply Red and David Bowie, until it closed in 1999. Now the building is used by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and since 1991 it has been a Grade II listed building.

 

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 .