History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

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...