History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

While I was researching musicians who lived in North West London for a forthcoming online map, I found this tragic story about a Cricklewood family. In 1971 No.17 Olive Road was the home of a family of talented musicians. The father was Winston McKenzie, a jazz bass player from Guyana. His son Michael, known as Binky, was also a bass player with blues bands such as Alexis Korner and John McLaughlin. Another son Bunny, was a musician with several bands including Aswad. Winston’s daughter was Candy (Annette) McKenzie, a singer who worked as backing vocalist for many bands including Bob Marley, Aswad, Gary Moore, Go West and Leonard Cohen. Candy married Richard Sims an American sailor in 1970 when she was 17, and they had a daughter called Tamara.   Candy McKenzie In the late-60s Binky’s girlfriend Anne was the sister of Andy Fraser the bass player in Free. Andy said that Binky was an incredible player, ‘like the next Jimi Hendrix on bass’, but he was very intense w...

The Red Lion at No.34 Kilburn High Road is one of our oldest pubs but is currently closed. It is not possible to trace it to 1444, the date displayed at the top of building.  The 17 th century is probably when it first started selling beer but the earliest recorded licence dates from 1721. There are paintings of the old pub by local artist John Rathbone in 1789 now in the British Museum, and one by his friend George Morland is in the Tate Gallery.  Rathbone, 1789 (British Museum) The pub was rebuilt several times. The present ‘palatial building’ dates from 1890 when it replaced a two-storey building, with a large bow front on either side of the main entrance and a veranda at first floor level. The work took eight months to complete and the Red Lion reopened that November. The following January, 300 people crowded in to watch a special billiards match between the famous players Hughie McNeil and William Spiller. Two-storey building in 1889 (Englis...

In this story we look at the life of Bernard Spilsbury, rather than the many cases he was involved in. We are particularly interested in the period when he lived in St John’s Wood and also just off the Finchley Road. Bernard Spilsbury was born on 16 May 1877 in Leamington Spa, the eldest of the three children of James Spilsbury, a manufacturing chemist who later moved to London. Bernard went to Oxford where he took a degree in natural science. For his medical studies at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington’s Praed Street he was fortunate to work with three brilliant forensic scientists: the toxicologists Arthur Pearson Luff and William Willcox, and Augustus Joseph Pepper, a leading pathologist.  The three men had developed a good working relationship with the Metropolitan Police under Edward Henry, the Commissioner from 1903 to 1918. He was dedicated to making criminal investigations more efficient and modern. Spilsbury who succeeded Pepper at St Mary’s when he retire...

The building at the heart of this story is today’s Kingsgate Workshops at Nos.110-116 Kingsgate Road in Kilburn. It was constructed about 1887 by John Allen and Sons who were local builders of many of the houses in the area. When they moved across the High Road to a site that later became the State Cinema, the building in Kingsgate Road was taken over by Robert Charles Barnes in 1894. Originally a greengrocer by trade, he moved from Marylebone to Kilburn in the mid-1850s, opening a shop at 7 St George’s Terrace (which was later re-numbered as 240 Belsize Road ). During the 1870s, Robert changed career and gave his job in the 1881 census as that of a furniture van proprietor, employing five men. His office was at No.199 Belsize Road . The business expanded, and by 1891 Barnes also had premises at 251–255 Kilburn High Road and 252–254 Belsize Road . In 1894 Barnes converted the large Kingsgate Road premises into a depository, where people paid to store their furniture and ot...

In 2012 we published an e-book entitled ‘The Marquis de Leuville: a Victorian Charlatan?’ The charismatic Marquis was the lover of Ada Peters who lived in Kilburn. She was the wealthy widow of John Winpenny Peters, who owned a successful coach building business which made coaches for Queen Victoria. John died in 1882 at The Grange, a mansion on the Kilburn High Road, roughly where the Grange Cinema (currently used by the church group UCKG), and Grange Park are today. As was the case with many marriages at the time, John’s will made some personal provision for Ada, but if she re-married, she lost most of her inheritance including the right to live at The Grange, and the house with its extensive grounds would revert to the Peters family. Instead Ada and her Marquis decided to enjoy her considerable fortune and never married but their relationship lasted many years. For more information the e-book can be found here. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marquis-Leuville-Victorian-Fraud...