History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Victorian West Hampstead and Kilburn was created by hundreds of builders, some building just one or two houses, others whole runs of properties. Some worked independently while others forged links with fellow develo pers. Many went bankrupt in the process. Marianne’s interest was aroused when she bought a couple of postcards addressed to a ‘Marguerite Rathbone’ of NW6. Her father Arthur Rathbone was responsible for many houses in the neighbourhood, he stayed solvent and passed on a large property portfolio to his heirs. The cards were posted in May and June of 1909 by Margery Berman to her friend Marguerite. They were addressed to ‘Sandown’, Westbere Road, a detached house which became number 14, near the junction with Mill Lane. Arthur Rathbone At the time, Marguerite was living with her widowed mother Emma and several of her siblings. Emma Maria Lawson had married Arthur Rathbone in 1878 in Bethnal Green and they had nine children. The 1881 census has him working...

On the 26 February 1895 Edwin Levy died from a heart attack at his home, 31 Compayne Gardens West Hampstead. He had bought the newly-built house a few years earlier and named it ‘Beaulieu’ after the village on the French Riviera which he regularly visited. When he died Levy was a very wealthy businessman, but he had a mysterious past. There are no biographies about him but here is what we have found. Edwin was born on 29 August 1840 at 38 Warren Street, the son of Aaron and Hannah Levy. His father was a tailor but struggled for work and was in the Shoreditch Workhouse in 1843 for a short period. Edwin married Annie Sweeney in 1860 and they had two children. Levy started work as an oil and colourman selling paint at 2 Great St Andrews Street in Seven Dials. By 1866 he had changed careers and was doing work for the Marquis of Townshend’s Society for the Protection of Women and Children, when he acted as an observer at several trials involving children. One of the cases wa...

The North London Tavern on the corner of Cavendish Road and Kilburn High Road was originally the North London Railway Hotel, after the railway company that ran the service from the nearby station now called Brondesbury on the Overground. The name was shortened to the North London Hotel in 1895.   In the early hours of the morning of 12 June 1946 , Maurice Herbert the licensee, heard noises in the cellar and called the police. At 2.15am the pub was surrounded, and four men were found stealing 130 bottles of gin which they were about to load into a waiting van. PCs Ian Moir and Robert Wade saw two men climb onto the wall at the rear of the building. Moir said, ‘I shouted to them to come down. Davis fired two shots and they ran towards Cavendish Road. I followed them and Davis pointed the pistol at me. I threw my truncheon at him and grabbed him as he was climbing a fence. As we struggled he hit me on the head with the pistol butt’. PC Wade arrived and they arrest...

There have been over 60,000 burials in Hampstead Cemetery in Fortune Green Road since it was opened in 1876. But this sad story is about four bodies that were found above ground, the result of suicide and perhaps, murder. Alfred Chambers In 1884, the body of Alfred Pierpoint Chambers was discovered by a grave digger lying face downwards on the grave of his wife. Alfred was a photographer with a studio in Clapham. Alfred and Ellen were married in 1867, but since her death in 1882, Alfred had been very depressed. The post mortem revealed he had taken cyanide which was used in processing photographs. Henry Butterworth In December 1885, an inquest was held on Henry Butterworth, the owner of a chemist’s shop at 70 Tottenham Court Road. Today it is CEX electronics store, one of the few surviving original properties, immediately south of Goodge Street underground station. His widow Elizabeth told the inquest court that Henry had left home on the 26 November, saying he...

This unusual story from over 30 years ago looks at events which had links from Kilburn to both national and international events. There are similarities with John le Carr é ’s The Little Drummer Girl which was written in 1983 and made into a TV series shown on BBC last year. In 1986 Ann Marie Murphy was living in a terraced house in Mazenod Avenue Kilburn which the 32-year-old shared with two friends. Ann was born into the large family of lorry driver William and Kathleen Murphy who lived in Sallynoggin Park Dun Laoghaire, a small coastal town about eight miles south of Dublin. She left school at 14 and worked for ten years at the Glen Abbey tights and stocking factory at Blackrock, about two miles from her home. In October 1984 Ann and her friend Therese Leonard came to London and got jobs as chambermaids for the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane . They initially lived in the staff house in Earls Court . Therese met Jordanian Khaled Hasi whose flatmate was fellow countryman Nez...

Nellie Seymour was an attractive actress, one of many who made a living from the stage; it was a hard life, often moving with a company from town to town. If you were lucky, you found a role in a production that stayed in a theatre for a few months. One such was ‘Sergeant Brue’ by Owen Hall which premiered in London in 1904. A musical farce, the plot centres around the police sergeant of the title, who comes into £10,000 a year, on condition he remains in the force and is promoted to inspector. Nellie played Vivienne Russell, a society lady and one of the chorus .   The cast of Sergeant Brue, Nellie is seated in the centre (Marianne Colloms) The play was staged at the Strand Theatre and the Prince of Wales Theatre, running in London ’s West End until February 1905. The ladies are carrying unusual animal heads or masks which they had to wear at some point in the performance. One critic disparaged another prop, paper hoops, because the ladies were expected to jump thro...