History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

This is a story of the darker side of Victorian theatre which follows the complex links between the London Pavilion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus , Kilburn and a vicious acid attack on an actress. The London Pavilion The imposing London Pavilion occupies a prominent site at the corner of Shaftsbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus . In the late 1980s the building was gutted and redeveloped behind the Grade II listed façade. This was the second ‘Pav’ on the site: the first dated from 1859 and was a humble affair, an entertainment room attached to the Black Horse Inn in Tichborne Street (now part of Great Windmill Street ). It was the brainchild of Emil Loibl and his business partner Charles Sonnhammer who roofed in the irregularly shaped yard of the Inn to create the first London Pavilion Music Hall . A gallery was added on the north and east sides in 1861, and further improvements followed in 1876. Both men were born in Vienna and came to England in January 1844. F...

Harry Coles was born in 1866 in Devizes Wiltshire, the son of a labourer. On 1 January 1888 when he married Harriett Randell, Harry was an attendant at the County Asylum in the town. While living in Devizes the couple had two sons Clifford (1889) and James (1890), baptised a month before they moved to London , where Harry joined X’ division of the Metropolitan Police in September 1890. In the early hours of 13 January 1897 PC Harry Coles 340X was on his routine patrol in Kilburn when he saw two powerfully built men acting suspiciously near No.91 Brondesbury Villas. The old hob-nailed boots which could make a noise as a policeman approached had been replaced by rubber-soled boots, so PC Coles was able to get right up to the men in the dark. When they saw him one of them tried to hit the constable with a jemmy before they made off down the street towards Woodville Road . There they climbed a fence onto the London and North Western Railway (today’s London Overground). PC Col...

Just before 6pm on Wednesday 9 March 1994 four mortars shells hit Heathrow Airport . Earlier, news agencies had been telephoned by a man with an Irish accent and using a known IRA code word he said, ‘In one hour’s time, a large number of bombs will be going off in Heathrow Airport . Clear all runways. Stop all flights’. The Anti-Terrorist branch of the Metropolitan Police and airport officials decided not to close the airport after a sweep of the terminal buildings and the runways found nothing suspicious. About 45 mins after the mortars landed they closed Heathrow. The missiles had been launched over the airport fence from 6ft-long tubes fitted in the back of a red Nissan Micra parked about 400 yards away in the Excelsior Hotel car park, just outside the airport. After launching the missiles, a charge inside the car set it on fire and the blaze spread to surrounding cars. The Nissan had been stolen in Kilburn the previous Saturday night and fitted with false number plate...

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...

Opposite Belsize Road, the ground floor of Nos.67-75 Kilburn High Road were occupied from 1956 by Raymond Way Motors. For many years there was also a smaller site with an office and garage at No.10, on the corner of Greville Road . Over time Way had other outlets in the area and a motorcycle department at No.36 Willesden Lane. Site of the Raymond Way showroom, (Dick Weindling, 2012) The famous car and motorcycle company were founded by Douglas Raymond Way (1905-1981), who came to Kilburn in 1933. He was originally based in the old Humber car repair works in Canterbury Road (previously the Saxby and Farmer railway signal factory, which has now been demolished). It was the largest used-car dealership in Europe, selling 2,000 cars and motorbikes a year. ‘Don’t delay, buy your car the Raymond Way ,’ was one of his best known slogans. The firm supplied cars for the television series Z Cars , and even had an aviation department, displaying a Piper aeroplane in the Kilburn sh...