History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

An Act of Parliament was passed in July 1863, authorising the Midland Railway to build an extension from Bedford to a London terminus on Euston Road at St Pancras.  The company acquired a large amount of land along the route, near the village of West End (later, this became West Hampstead). There was no local station when the line opened to traffic in 1868. ‘West End’ station was a later addition, opening on 1st Match 1871 in a converted villa on Iverson Road. Access to trains was via a footbridge over the lines. Despite the absence of a passenger service, the original construction work included building a large area of sidings to the west of West End Lane, to store or tranship goods in wagons. Appropriately, they were given the name of West End Sidings and could hold around 900 wagons. The job of moving wagons and goods was undertaken by railway workers known as ‘shunters’, men assigned to specific sidings. 1915 Map showing West End Sidings and the surrounding stree...

George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in India, where his father worked in the Indian Civil Service. He took his pen name from the King of the time, George V and the River Orwell in East Anglia.    Orwell died 70 years ago on this day, 21 January, in 1950.   George Orwell at the BBC Orwell is best known for his books such as The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Animal Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In 1942 he rented 10a Mortimer Crescent Kilburn which was the lower half of a large semi-detached house: the ground floor and basement. He moved here w ith his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy f rom Langford Court, a modern block of flats in nearby Abbey Road. Mortimer Crescent was built in 1854 on the Greville estate and originally called Mortimer Road after Thomas Hill Mortimer. He was the solicitor for both Fulk Greville Howard and the later owner of the property, Colonel Arthur Upton. The houses were built for wealthy an...