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Willesden Paddocks, From Horses to Tanks

This was a famous stud farm run by the Tattersall family who today are still one of the leading sellers of thoroughbred racehorses. It was part of Upper Oxgate which was off the Edgware Road beyond Cricklewood at the corner of today’s Oxgate Lane. In 1838 the Duke of Buckingham sold 96 acres of the Roberts estate to Edmund Tattersall. He carried out an extensive building conversion of the old houses on the property, some dating back as far as 1670, to create his stud farm. The illustration of the property is by George Tattersall, a talented artist member of the family, from his book on ‘Sporting Architecture’ (1841). Wealthy racehorse owners could send their mares to Willesden Paddocks for 12 shillings a week to be ‘covered’ by resident stallions at the stud: the fee in 1853 was 15 guineas. This area on the outskirts of London was popular for horse breeding and there was another stud farm at Neasden. Willesden Paddocks, George Tattersall, 1841 ‘Voltigeur’ and Sir Edwin Landseer ...
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Freddie Bartholomew: Harlesden to Hollywood

The famous child actor, Freddie Bartholomew, was born on 28 March 1924 at 17 Radcliffe Avenue Harlesden. His father Cecil Llewellyn Bartholomew had travelled to Canada in 1913 and joined the Canadian Army in November 1915. He was sent to fight in France and Belgium where he was injured and had his right leg amputated. He was discharged in January 1918 and returned to his parents in Warminster Wiltshire. In 1919 Cecil married Lilian May Clarke. They first lived at 300 Earlsfield Road Wandsworth and had two daughters, Eileen born in 1920 and Hilda in 1922. A year later they had moved to Harlesden where Freddie was born. When Freddie was three and a half, he was sent to live with his maiden aunt Millicent (also spelled as Myllicent), who had pleaded to be allowed to bring him up at Carlton Villa Warminster, the home of his grandparents. ‘Aunt Cissie’ encouraged Freddie’s acting and he appeared in local amateur shows. She enrolled him at the Italia Conti children’s theatre school in Lamb’s...

Spirit Photographs and a Cricklewood Photographic Company

This is the story of how a Cricklewood factory played an important role in exposing a fraudulent spiritualist medium in the 1920s. Photographic Dry Plates To record an image, early photographers used wet plates which had to be processed straight away.   In 1871 Richard Maddox coated a glass plate with a gelatine emulsion of silver bromide. He found these plates could be stored until needed, and after exposure in the camera, taken to a darkroom for development at leisure. Joseph Acworth Joseph Acworth was born in Chatham in 1853 and was interested from boyhood in the experimental sciences. He began working in the laboratories of the Royal College of Chemistry in South Kensington, (now part of Imperial College). Acworth became fascinated by the photographic dry plates which Maddox had invented, and he worked in the labs of the newly created Britannia Dry Plate Company at Ilford. He went to the University of Erlangen in Germany where he...

Wartime Decca

This story looks at events in the Decca Studios in Broadhurst Gardens West Hampstead during World War Two.   Decca Studios, 1963 Arthur Haddy (1906 to 1989) Arthur Haddy was the chief engineer at Crystalate and then Decca Studios which took over the building in 1937. During the War he was asked if Decca could help remove the static noise in intercepted radio signals picked up from German aircraft by the chain of ‘Y’ listening stations which were spread around the coast. He went to the Y HQ in West Kingsdown Kent to collect some wax recordings which were sent to the studios for improvement. The cleaned recordings were returned to the RAF to assist transcription, before they were sent to Bletchley Park. Arthur Haddy, 1970s (Getty Images) The company was also asked by the Government to develop a method of detecting submarines from their engine noise. An important event occurred on 27 August 1941 when the German U-boat U-570 was surprised by a Coastal Command aircraft which dropped dep...

Whodunit? A True Crime Kilburn Murder

It was not a high-profile murder. A poor man was killed in a poor part of London during the War, so it did not receive much press coverage. This detailed blog story takes us into the seedy underworld of London gangs and tells how a petty criminal fought to prove his innocence and became a television playwright. The Crime It was wartime in Kilburn and like the rest of London, people were suffering from the continued bombing in the Blitz. In 1941 on 12 April, 56-year-old George Ambridge was murdered at his home, 2 Hampton Road, Kilburn. This was a short street linking Kilburn Park and Cambridge Roads, which has been swept away by the large-scale redevelopment of South Kilburn. George worked as a rag and bone man and delivered coal. But he was also a ‘fence’ for stolen goods. At the time of the murder he was a widower, living alone with his dog in the small flat over a disused stable in Hampton Road.     No.2 Hampton Road The police made little progress, until nine months later i...