Have a go at this Wembley Christmas Picture Quiz!

 Guest post by Philip Grant

It began during lockdown in 2020, and since then Wembley History Society’s Christmas Picture Quiz has become a bit of tradition, which has been shared with “Wembley Matters” readers. If you fancy testing yourself with this year’s quiz, the “question paper” is attached below.

 

There are ten photographs again this year, each with two questions. All of the pictures come from the area covered by the former Borough of Wembley (which from 1934 included the previous Urban District of Kingsbury), which the Society was set up to promote the history of in 1952. That is the part of the London Borough of Brent north and west of the River Brent.

 

The Borough of Wembley coat of arms.

 

See how many questions you know the answers to. Please feel free to share the quiz with friends and family living locally, if you think they’ll enjoy it too.

 

The quiz is just for fun (no prizes!), and you’ll get the answers on this blog site in a few days’ time. And as before, the more questions you don’t know the answers to, the more you’ll discover then about Wembley. Good luck!

 

Philip Grant

 

 

How well do you know Wembley? Try this Christmas Picture Quiz!

 Readers may remember a “Who’s Who” Picture Quiz last December. As Wembley History Society is still not able to meet again in person, Philip Grant has prepared another picture quiz for Christmas 2021. You are invited to have a go as well!

 

 

There are ten old photographs from around the Wembley area, and two questions with each of them. See how many you know the answers to, either just for fun or to see how you score when the answers are published next Sunday.

 

There are no prizes, but the bonus is that the fewer you know, the more about Wembley you’ll find out next weekend!

Uncovering Kilburn’s History – Part 5

 At the end of Part 4 (“click” if you missed it) I said that we would continue to look at some more churches, but there is much more to uncover this week!

1. St Mary's Church, in the age of horse drawn vehicles. (From the internet: www.images-of-london.co.uk )

 

We’ve already mentioned St. Paul’s, Kilburn Square (founded in 1829, demolished in 1934). St. Mary’s Church started in 1856, when the developer of the Abbey Farm estate, George Duncan, presented a site for it (on the Hampstead side). It holds the only known relic of the Kilburn Priory – a small brass plate of the prioress Emma de Sancto Omero (you can see a picture of this in Part 1).

 

Quex Road, also to the east of Kilburn High Road, boasted no less than three places of worship, a Wesleyan chapel, a Unitarian Hall and the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This was designed by Edward Welby Pugin and opened in 1878, with a school for Catholic priests nearby. It served the large Irish community, which expanded rapidly in the 20^th century. 

 

2. St Augustine's Church, Kilburn, in 1909 and 2020. (From: www.images-of-london.co.uk and by Irina Porter)

 

However, the true gem of Kilburn is St. Augustine’s Church in Kilburn Park Road, known as "the Cathedral of North London". Founded in 1870, St. Augustine’s was consecrated in 1880 as an Anglo-Catholic Church of England and is listed as a Grade I building by Historic England. The spire finally crowned the magnificent Gothic Revival building in 1898. It was designed by John Loughborough Pearson, an architect who specialised in ecclesiastical architecture and worked around the world. Some internal work was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral and the red telephone box fame). The worship followed ‘high’ Anglican tradition, which was closer to Roman Catholicism.

 

At one point the church had four valuable paintings, a Titian among them, given to the church by Viscount Rothermere. One of them was stolen and the church decided to sell the rest because of security issues. The writer Thomas Hardy visited from time to time, when he was in London, to hear the music and admire the magnificent building. The composer Leonard Bernstein conducted an English Bach Festival concert at the church in 1977. The ornate interior of St Augustine's was used in the filming of Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).

 

3. Brondesbury Synagogue, c. 1930. (Image from the internet)

 

Although Christianity was still the main religion in England in late Victorian times, that was beginning to change. One of the first Jews to settle in Willesden was Polish-born Solomon Barnett, a builder and property developer who lived in Brondesbury Road. He invited other local Jewish residents to his home in 1900, and they agreed to build a synagogue. He sold them a site in Chevening Road, at less than cost, and the Brondesbury Synagogue opened in 1905. It had an unusual Moorish design, which was unique in the area at the time, and served the Jewish community in the whole of the Willesden for several decades. It closed after a fire in 1965, and the building was sold to the Iman Al-Khoei Foundation in 1974.

 

The first elementary schools in Kilburn were run by churches. St. Paul’s, Kilburn was the earliest in 1847, and was a “National School” part-funded by National Society for Promoting Religious Education. St. Augustine’s Church also had a school. In 1870 the Education Act was passed, providing for elementary schools, known as Board Schools. Local churches feared that religion would not be taught in these, and by 1882 had set up an association to establish new Church of England schools in poor districts.  Christ Church School in Willesden Lane (built by Solomon Barnett) was one of these, first opening (for infants) in 1889. 

 

4. The modern St Augustine's School building, seen from Cambridge Gardens. (Photo by Irina Porter)

 

Small fees were charged in some elementary schools until 1891, when primary education became free. Fees for secondary education were only finally abolished in 1944.

Kilburn Grammar School was founded in 1897 as a boys’ choir school by Dr. George Bonavia Hunt, vicar of St Paul's, Kilburn. This was the time when there was no state provision for secondary education. From one in Willesden Lane it moved a few times to increasingly larger premises, until it founds its permanent purpose-built home at Salusbury Road in 1900.
Dr. Hunt, who taught musical history at the University of London, remained there until 1904.

 

5. Kilburn Grammar School, in the 1920s and a 1900 advertisement. (Brent Archives images 3404 and 6675)

 

In 1907 the school was purchased by the local authority, and became the first state secondary school in Willesden. With the formation of Brent in 1965, the borough policy of closing grammar schools led to the school becoming a comprehensive in 1967, renamed Kilburn Senior High School. In 1973 it merged with the girl’s school on the opposite side of the road to form Brondesbury and Kilburn High School, and in 1989 it moved to a different place and became part of Queen's Park Community School. The Edwardian buildings in Salusbury Road are now Islamia Schools.

 

The original Kilburn Grammar paved the way for university and lead to successful careers in business, academia, civil service, law and arts. Amongst its alumni were Richard Baker, BBC newsreader and broadcaster, Kenneth Howard, an artist who painted for the British Army from the 1970s, the linguist Professor Simeon Potter, who also wrote a history of Willesden, and another distinguished local historian and Brent councillor, Len Snow. Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls produced Lesley Hornby (better known as Twiggy, a famous 60s fashion icon) and Margery Hurst, who founded the Brook Street Bureau employment agency.

 

6. Brondesbury & Kilburn High School for Girls, early 20th century.

 

Kilburn had a large number of private schools. At the time when board schools were regarded as being for the lower classes, those who could afford it preferred to pay for education. Many were on the Hampstead side, such as the Haberdashers’ in Westbere Road.

 

In the 1870s Henley House School at the corner of Kilburn Priory was headed by John Vine Milne, whose son Alan Alexander, author of Winnie the Pooh stories, was born there in 1882. The first science teacher at Henley House, appointed in 1888 was H.G. Wells, the pioneer writer of science fiction.

 

7. A.A. Milne (left) in 1922, and H.G. Wells (photographed by Beresford). (Images from the internet)

 

Kilburn High Road, in the meantime, continued to bustle with trade and entertainment. Kilburn’s position on the old Watling Street ensured a good number of drinking establishments from early times. The public houses were much more than a place for a pint – they were hotels, functions rooms, auction sites, coroners’ inquests premises, even makeshift mortuaries. By 1872 there were 8 pubs in Kilburn High Road, and 13 more in the neighbourhood. There was a brewery and several beer retailers.

 

 

8. Kilburn High Road, with brewery on the left, c.1900. (Image from the internet)

 

The building on the left which looks like a church hall is Kilburn Brewery, built in 1832 by the Verey brothers. They were so successful that by 1853 they had their own wharf on the canal at Lower Place in Harlesden to bring in supplies. The brewery complex consisted of the main building with a fine frontage, a malt house and stabling for horses. In 1866 it was taken over by Michell and Phillips, which later became Michell and Aldous. It closed in 1920, and the building was later used by the Gas, Light and Coke Company. Today the site is occupied by several shops, with the original façade still being seen from numbers 293 to 313 High Road. 

 

 

9. The B.B. Evans store after the 1910 fire, and in a 1920s advert. ( www.images-of-london.co.uk / internet)

 

The High Road was also a main shopping centre for much of the surrounding area. Drapery and furnishing businesses had competing shops - Kilburn Bon Marche, dating from 1880s, the Grange Furnishing Stores at 127-9 High Road, catering for high class customers, and the most famous store in Kilburn, B.B. Evans at 142-162 High Road. It was started as a drapers’ in 1897, by Benjamin Beardmore Evans, who used to work for Willesden Urban District Council. It expanded in 1905, but in 1910 was destroyed by fire and then re-built. When it closed in 1971, it was the only department store in Kilburn. Since then the buildings went through a succession of occupants, and are now Sports Direct, T.K. Maxx and Aldi.

 

 

Speculative builders continued to provide employment opportunities around both sides of Kilburn High Road. John Allen and Sons ran a successful building company – they built many houses on the Hampstead side of Kilburn. At the end of the 19th century the firm took over The Elms, the old mansion house, converted it into offices and built a factory in the grounds called Palmerston Works. In 1901 they built new stands at Ascot Race Course.

 

 

During the First World War Kilburn suffered some bomb damage in a couple of Zeppelin raids near Belsize Road, Oxford Road and Canterbury Road. One of the area’s main contributions to the war effort was the housing of Belgian refugees, of whom 250,000 fled to England after the Germany army invaded their neutral country on its way to attack France. By September 1914, churches and local refugee committees where organising homes and support for refugee families, and Rabbi Lazarus from Brondesbury Synagogue had set up a hostel in Willesden Lane for Jewish refugees from Antwerp.

 

 

10. King Albert Belgian School, Kilburn, by Arthur Dunn, c.1917. (Brent Archives images 2322, 2343, 2345)

 

In 1915, Kilburn Grammar School had eight Belgian boys, who it accepted with reduced fees, but there was a much larger number of refugee children who did not speak any English. In April 1916, the King Albert Belgian School was set up in the Sunday School buildings at Brondesbury Park Congregational Church, jointly funded by Willesden Council and the Belgian Government. It had around 60 pupils, and taught lessons in English, French and Flemish. The School closed in March 1919, by which time most of the families had returned to Belgium.

 

 

In 1916 the grounds of The Elms became home to the Central Aircraft Company (179 Kilburn High Road), the subsidiary of a woodworking business. They built wooden components for aircraft manufacturers, but by the end of the war they had designed their own aeroplane. Their ‘Centaur’ aircraft first flew from a nearby field in Willesden Lane called ‘Kilburn Aerodrome’ in 1919, and was later used at a flying school at Northolt aerodrome.

 

11. A 1919 advert for the flying school, and a Centaur II at Northolt. (Internet: from “Aeroplane” and “Flight”)

 

Their Centaur II was designed to carry six passengers, and could have been one of the world’s first airliners; but only two were ever built, and they were used for pleasure flights over beauty spots in London, Kent, Wales and even the Belgian battlefields. However, the idea that people would be owning planes as they did cars did not take off, and by 1926 the company stopped making aeroplanes and concentrated on furniture. 

 

We will look at the homes where people lived, and the places of entertainment they enjoyed, as we move further into 20^th century Kilburn next time.

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 .

Olympic Way Story - Illustrated talk March 23rd

Wembley History Society presents:-

Visitors Welcome (£3 charge, students £1)

At: English Martyrs’ Hall,
Chalkhill Road (top of Blackbird Hill), Wembley, HA9 9EW.

Car park at rear, and buses 83, 182, 245, 297 & 302 stop nearby.

For further information, please contact:
            Philgrant69@aol.com

'Chapel End', "Queen's Town' ? Hidden history of Willesden talk Feb 7th

Do you want to find out more about Wembley Park's fascinating history? - Tomorrow Wembley Library

From Brent Culture

Join us for this free session that will explore the history of Wembley Park through maps pictures and objects from Brent’s Museum and Archives - items we will look at include some amazing aerial photographs of the stadium from the 1930s.

We’ll be looking at the exciting transformation of Wembley Park, from the stately home to stadium, along the way we will be taking in the pleasure gardens of the 1890s and the British Empire Exhibition of 1924.

Come to History of Wembley Park and discover more about this unique corner of London.

 

Wednesday 5 April, 6.30-7.30pm.  Wembley Library, Brent Civic Centre

Your chance to share in Sudbury’s history

Guest blog by Philip Grant

Next Saturday, 10^th October, everyone in the Sudbury area of Brent will have the chance to discover what an interesting place they live in. For months, local people from the Sudbury Court and Sudbury Town Residents’ Associations, Friends of Barham Library and two local primary schools have been working with Wembley History Society. Adopting old photographs and postcards (some from as early as the 1890’s), taking matching colour views of the same locations today and researching some of the stories behind the pictures, they have put together an exhibition for everyone in Sudbury to enjoy. It will be open at Sudbury Methodist Church Hall from 2pm to 5.30pm, and is free of charge.

The “Sudbury – Then and Now” display will comprise thirty-five pairs of images, taking you on a winding route through the area, from Watford Road and the Sudbury Court Estate in the north to Barham Park and Wembley Fire Station in the south. Four of these have been contributed by Sudbury and Barham Primary Schools, whose Year 5 classes used some of the old photos for their own local history projects in the summer term. As one of their teachers said: ‘The children were stunned to know how close they were to local living history, and were left wanting to know more.’

If you live in Sudbury, and would like to know more about the special history that is all around you, although perhaps without realising it is there, please come along to the exhibition next Saturday. As the poster below says: everyone is welcome!

'My Kilburn' Then and Now photo competition

Planners recommend approval for relocation of Harlesden's Jubilee Clock

Brent planning officers in a report to the April 17th Planning Committee have recommended approval for the proposed relocation of the landmark Jubilee Clock as part of the new road layout. The new site will be outside numbers 53-55 Harlesden High Street and about 5 metres from its current site.

THE JUBILEE CLOCK THROUGH THE AGES

The report LINK states:

Although the clock is statutorily listed feature it is not in its original location which by definition makes the specific location less important as a criteria for listing. At the time of the clocks origin (1887) there was far less traffic than there would be a few decades later. At least two trams derailed and collided with the clock in the first half of the twentieth century, one of them tearing off one of its four decorative arms. In 1938 the Clock Tower was relocated to a location 3m from its original position. It was hoped that in relocating the Clock Tower, motorist would find it easier to navigate the area. As explained above, the relocation of the Clock is required to bring about a better traffic management scheme here also.

The proposals do not call for any alteration or changes to the clock itself which therefore means it will retain the architectural quality and character that instigated its listing. The Clock is to be moved (5m) from its present location which by definition would mean that the setting of the Clock would not change significantly.

The clock will not be quite as prominent in the streetscape given that it is currently located in a traffic island in the centre of a road junction as before but will however still be visible along the High Street. The new location will make the clock less susceptible to damage from passing vehicles, thereby protecting the listed feature.

 

The Planning Service is not committed to this new location ahead of any others and whilst there may a range of locations that might be acceptable, particularly given that the current location is not original as mentioned above, no objection is raised in principle to the new location in listed building terms. 

AND IT WILL TELL THE TIME!

As part of the proposals the clock will be repaired and will tell the time, which is a welcomed addition to its listed status.

Mary Seacole win was based on People Power - let's use it on forced academies

Readers may have missed another concession by Michael Gove this week.I wrote a piece a few weeks ago  LINK supporting Operation Black Vote's campaign to retain the study of Mary Seacole in the National Curriculum. The campaign succeeded to the extent that Mary Seacole is now in the main curriculum rather than just an option. This is a victory for the thousands who supported the campaign but we now need to turn our attention to other fundamentally problematic issues in Michael Gove's history proposals

Operation Black Vote wrote:

We’ve won ! - Mary Seacole, Olaudah Equiano

Thanks to nearly 36,000 signatories, letters to the Secretary of State for education, politicians, unions, writers and activist, today we celebrate the fact that our children and the next generation of children will be taught about the great exploits of both Mary Seacole and Olaudah Equiano. Furthermore, the importance of diversity within our education system, particularly in history will now be greatly valued.

Back in December a leaked document suggested that Equiano and Seacole be scrapped from the Curriculum.

Simon Woolley stated:

This is a great day for education, but also a great day for the Black community and many others who demanded greater racial justice within our education system. There are too many people to thank personally but, The Voice, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and Change.org all threw their considerable weight behind this campaign. Seacole and Equiano would both be saying our spirits fantastically live on with today's activist.  

Michael Gove wrote personally to OBV in response to the campaign:

We are lucky to be heirs to a very rich mix of exceptional thinkers, bold reformers and courageous political activists. I agree that is important that our children learn about difference that these figures have made, and it is right that we do more, not less to make subjects relevant to the lives of our children.

 Professor Elizabeth Anionwu, Emeritus Professor of Nursing, said:

Thanks to all 36,000 people who signed the Operation Black Vote Petition. Mary Seacole AND Olaudah Equiano & Florence Nightingale are all cited in Key Stage 3 of the proposed national curriculum. Brilliant, just brilliant!

Zita Holbourne of BARAC stated: 

This campaign just goes to show that if we stand our ground, stick together and assert our collective 'People Power' we succeed.

Let's now use People Power to defeat Michael Gove over forced academies. Yesterday's demonstration outside Gladstone Park Primary School was a great start.

Taking the Michael reaches new heights

By some means not yet revealed,  Michael Rosen's satirical letter to Michael Gove has appeared on a semi-official website which specialises in government contracts LINK

In case it disappears I reproduce Michael's advice below:

For the start of the year, I’m sending you some helpful ideas, from how to keep student numbers down to keeping teachers in check.

I thought I would try to be positive and lay out a set of modest proposals for you to consider in 2013.

1 Universities
It’s imperative to keep down the number of students. “Graduate” is really another name for people who think they’re entitled to be paid well. We are in an era when we must all pull together to ensure that workers work more and earn less (or as employers call it, “keeping labour costs down”) and large numbers of graduates swimming around the economy are an impediment to this. What’s more, three years of independent living and discussion have the potential to turn many of these young people into dissenters and trouble-makers. There is an argument for saying that it is the job of government to enable a population to increase its cultural capital, raising the level of education of as many people as possible. You must portray this sentiment as a utopian fantasy of a long-lost past.

So, let’s put into practice a set of clear policies:
a) You and your colleagues (and Eric Pickles) need to put a lot of effort into mocking and rubbishing university courses. Don’t worry about consistency here: pick on both vocational courses and seemingly obscure academic ones: “A degree in leisure management, ha ha ha”; ‘A degree in medieval German literature, ha ha ha”.
b) Suggest at every opportunity that academics and students are spongers and skivers. Contrast their use of public money, long holidays and low hours of work with MPs’ honesty, diligence and industriousness.
c) Make a big deal out of things like the “knowledge economy”, “what Britain does best”, “centres of excellence” and “world-class universities”. Rely on journalists to put this inflated waffle (which you don’t believe in anyway) on their front pages while relegating the cuts to a one-inch column on page 11.
d) It is absolutely vital to boast about making it possible for the “disadvantaged” to go to university while making it harder for them to do so. Fees of £9,000 a year are already much too low and some students from poorer families are slipping through the net and going to university. We must discourage them from doing so. I suggest fees in the region of £20,000 a year. One scholarship a year per university would serve the purpose of looking as if you’re being “fair”.
I am so glad that your colleague David Willetts has highlighted the problems of white working-class boys going to university. Given your party’s electoral precariousness at the moment, it is vital that you and your colleagues present a narrative which suggests that Britain today is a place where white people can’t get on and black people are given incredible advantages.

2 Ebacc
There is a real danger that you’re about to be stabbed in the back by your predecessor Kenneth Baker. He has come up with a plan to abolish exams at 16, create higher schools and training places for 14- to 18-year-olds. With utmost urgency, you must dig up anything you can on Baker to suggest that he is either an out-of-touch old backwoodsman fart and/or he is in thrall to Trotskyists.
For you to be able to push through what is fast becoming an exam that will be a major impediment for most young people to develop as learners, you must:
a) ignore all evidence on adolescents and learning;
b) make misleading comparisons with the old O-levels;
c) keep talking about “rigour” without explaining what you mean by that word;
d) rubbish teachers by saying that, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.

3 Primary school exams
The phonics screening check and the spelling, punctuation and grammar – Spag – test.
You must resist all demands to provide evidence that these tests will improve reading and writing, as there is none. Avoid public debate about this. Potential problems coming up are:
a) that many more children failed the phonics test than learn how to read using the old mixed methods;
b) many good readers failed the phonics test;
c) some children are being told they have “failed” and so can’t proceed to “real” books.

Rely on ill-informed newspaper editors to keep these stories off the front pages. When it comes to the grammar test, I predict that there will be real problems, with teachers not knowing how to teach for it and hardly any children understanding what is being tested. Therefore you must keep up the campaign of rubbishing teachers, showing how, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.
In a key speech, make the suggestion that most British children are ignorant, illiterate, stupid and badly behaved.

4 Academies programme
Stop trying to be nice. Step in now, and make every state school in England an academy. Hail this termination of public accountability as a triumph of “freedom from control”. Make sure that your own burgeoning powers of control over the nation’s teachers and young people is never mentioned. It is crucial that whenever an academy fails an inspection, you must rubbish the teachers, showing how, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to keep tabs on all the academies, so I suggest that you create a set of regional committees to manage them. These must not be called “local” in case people compare them to local authorities and the management committees must not be elected, but made up of people appointed by you.

5 Teachers
Abolish all teacher training. In a key speech, try to whip up people’s bad memories of individual teachers (who were usually just people trying to implement what governments made them do) by saying how “we all hate teachers”. Play to people’s feelings that it is always other people’s children who are “bad influences” on their own, and what is needed is a “firm hand”. This should enable you to usher in the replacement of teachers by ex-military personnel who can do the job of patrolling past the computer terminals (equipped with News Corporation syllabuses), which all children will be looking at all day in the exciting schools of the future.

6 History
You must work even harder on the history curriculum, ensuring that all our children in England are proud of our country’s history. I’m not absolutely sure what this means if Scotland becomes independent, but I’m sure you’ve figured out what “our country” means better than me. Meanwhile, can we make sure that dead white men are celebrated the most? All attempts to show either that some dead white men did bad things, or that there are some important things done by dead white women, dead black men and even dead black women, must be eradicated. We need to have our classrooms filled with pride. After all, thanks to your government, more and more children are arriving at school with empty bellies, so at least let’s fill them with pride, eh?

7 Business
All schools must be turned into limited companies. Headteachers should be employers (“school company directors”) while compulsorily non-unionised teachers and pupils are the workers. Schools should be required to make goods and sell services for money and become places that offer car-cleaning, photocopying, fruit-picking, biscuit-making and the like at highly competitive rates.

8 Your job
The moment it looks as if staying in your job is an impediment to your long-term objectives of becoming leader of the Conservative party, make it clear to David Cameron that you’ve never been very interested in education and you have outlived your usefulness.

I hope that these proposals will be of use to you throughout the year.