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Two Tailors of Kilburn

Kilburn attracted several tailors and outfitters with two leading concerns facing one another other across the High Road for many years. Both were family concerns and while there are images of some of their shops, no photos of the people involved appear to have survived. Neither family had any obvious links to the area so why choose Kilburn? Almost certainly they were attracted by the sales potential, it was a thriving neighbourhood with good transport links and an ever-increasing network of streets and customers on either side of the High Road. For both it proved to be a good choice. Alexander the Great: Jacob Alexander The more successful company, in terms of size of business, traded from Nos.122-126 on the corner with Quex Road for over half a century and was originally started by Jacob Alexander. Born in 1821, he lived in the province of Posen in Prussia (then part of the German Empire, now Poland). A tailor and outfitter by trade, he had four sons: Isaac b.1862, Adolph b.1865, The...
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Cholmley Gardens, West Hampstead

Cholmley Gardens is a rectangular block of flats bordering Mill Lane, Aldred Road, Hillfield Road and Fortune Green Road.  OS Map 1950s Cholmley Lodge   The site was previously a large house set in extensive grounds, called Cholmley Lodge dating from 1813 and built for Thomas Walker who was there by January 1814. He was a senior legal officer with the title ‘Master of the Court of Chancery’.    After several other occupiers, Dr Herbert Evans rented the Lodge in 1844 and later purchased the property but only lived in West End for a few months. He had been family physician to the artist John Constable and cared for his wife Maria, who died of tuberculosis in 1828, at the family home in Well Walk, Hampstead. Constable painted the doctor’s portrait the following year. Barrister Edward Thornton lived at Cholmley Lodge from about 1847 to 1852. He did a great deal to help the West End villagers, who presented him with a written testimonial and silver inkstand as an expressi...
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Gerry Anderson and Kim Philby lived in the same house in West Hampstead

This is a story about a house in West End Lane, the filmmaker who grew up there as a young boy, and a famous Soviet spy. As a child, Gerry Anderson grew up in West End Lane West Hampstead. When Dick spoke to him on the phone shortly before his death, Gerry said he couldn’t remember exactly where he had lived but it was at the top of a large house on West End Lane, with a tent-shaped glass roof over the front door. There was a garage with a driveway at the side. His family of four lived in poverty in one room, with a blanket hung up to separate the cooking area from the sleeping area. They shared a bathroom with the other tenants who included a rather sinister ex-convict, an eccentric artist, and a woman who later Gerry realised was probably a prostitute. Age five, Gerry went to Kingsgate Infants School. His mother would see him across West End Lane, then he walked by himself down Cotleigh Road to the school. He said he hated the afternoon rest period when the children were forced to ...
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Darrell Figgis, the Forgotten Irish Patriot in Hampstead Cemetery

In May 2008, the Irish researcher Breandán Ó Corráin, was in Hampstead Cemetery Fortune Green Road, looking for a grave. He found row number J8 and worked his way along the line checking the numbers on the back of the stones to the position of grave number 35, but there was nothing visible. Having travelled so far, he decided to dig and eventually found a small headstone covered with six inches of soil. It said:  ‘In Loving Memory of Darrell Figgis, died October 25th 1925. Not gone from memory or from love, but to our Father’s home above’. This was the grave he was looking for which had remained hidden for over 80 years and Breandán wrote a letter to the Irish Times about his discovery.   Figgis grave stone This is a very tragic story with three interlinked deaths between 1924 and 1925. Darrell Figgis was at the heart of the fight with Britain to establish the Irish Free State, but divisions within the movement and his early death made him a forgotten man.  He was born at...
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