History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Emily Ayckbowm was a remarkable woman who was ahead of her time. Her father Frederic served as the rector of Holy Trinity Church in Chester for 30 years, and at one time, he was tutor to the young Duke of Westminster. Born in Dublin from a German family originally named Eichbaum, Frederic changed this to Ayckbowm. Emily, his eldest child was born in Heidelberg in November 1836. Soon after Frederic took up his post at Holy Trinity, his wife died leaving three children under the age of five. In 1856 Emily and her sister Gertrude returned to Chester after a two-year tour of Germany and Italy where they had witnessed the rich and poor worshipping side by side. In the Holy Trinity Church almost all the pews belonged to wealthy families and the poorer members of the congregation were pushed into the corners of the gallery. Emily said the slums of Chester were just as bad as those of London . She and her sister visited the poor, held classes for adults and children and at...

Bird in Hand, West End Lane (Dick Weindling, August 2018) No.12 West End Lane was the Bird in Hand, first named in 1831 as a beerhouse run by James Paty, who had just gone bankrupt. He is described in the proceedings as a retailer of beer at Kilburn, formerly a timber dealer and stagecoach proprietor of Paddington Green. From 1840 to at least 1861 the owners of the beerhouse were William and George Verey who ran the Kilburn Brewery in the High Road near today’s Brondesbury Overground station. Members of the same family ran the Bird in Hand for 70 years. It backed onto a crowded set of mainly working-class streets between Belsize Road and West End Lane , with more of the same across the High Road in Willesden. In 1861, Ellen Lovegrove was living with her uncle, a publican in Child’s Hill. She married William Grantham in 1866 but he died three years later at the Bird in Hand where he was almost certainly the beerhouse keeper.  Ellen took over and the following ye...