Kilburn Heroes in the Blitz

It is 80 years since the Blitz, which lasted from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. The intense night bombing of London damaged buildings and killed or injured thousands of civilians.

We have discovered that two people from Kilburn were awarded medals for their bravery in 1941.

Clifford Stratton
Seventeen-year-old Clifford Stratton was an electrical engineer’s assistant who lived at 42 Buckley Road in Kilburn (later in the 1950s and 60s he is shown at No. 48). He had been a volunteer warden for six months.

On the night of Wednesday 16/17 April 1941, 685 German bombers attacked London. This was the largest attack since the Blitz began and some planes made two or even three sorties that night. A huge number of buildings were destroyed, and 1,720 Londoners were killed in what became known as 'The Wednesday'.

Clifford was part of a team of stretcher bearers who rescued a man and two girls trapped on the fourth floor in flats in Portpool Lane, off the Grays Inn Road Holborn. The building was on fire and more bombs were falling. Climbing to the top of their ladder they found it was too short, so they jumped onto a windowsill, and after tying the girls and the man to their backs, they were lowered to other wardens on the ladder. They were incredibly lucky, a few minutes after the rescue, part of the building collapsed.

The team leader, 30-year old Maurice Cohen, was awarded the George Cross, and Stratton was given the British Empire Medal (civilian). Clifford was a scout in the 15th Holborn troop, and he was also given a Silver Cross scout award. He had only recently returned to warden duty after an operation on his foot.

In 1945 Clifford married Phyllis Meredith in Lewisham, and they were still living in Kilburn in the 1960s.

Surprisingly, given the tight wartime censorship restrictions, the government allowed a set of 12 postcards called ‘London Under Fire’ to be published. Two of the set showed the bomb damage in Holborn.

Herbert Cockburn
In the same air raid in a different part of London, Police Sergeant Herbert Cockburn was awarded the BEM Civilian medal, for a rescue in Whittaker Street near Sloane Square station. Cockburn had been stationed at the nearby Gerald Road police station in B Division for a year.

After he and two constables were told a woman was trapped in the debris of a bombed house, Cockburn took charge of the operation and lying full length, he began tunneling through the rubble. After an hour he reached the woman who was trapped in a chair by surrounding timber which was supporting the mass of rubble from above. At great risk to himself, he managed to cut through the timber and the arm of the chair and release the woman. It was due to his courage that she was rescued.

He had joined the Met as a PC in November 1929 and was awarded the King’s Police Medal two years later. On the 29 December 1931 he had been on patrol in the Edgware Road when a horse pulling a van went out of control. Constable Cockburn tried to grab the reins but was knocked down. Refusing to be defeated, he stopped a taxi and went in pursuit of the runaway horse. Hanging on the outside of the taxicab he seized its bridle, but the horse crashed into an omnibus and Cockburn was again thrown into the road. Although injured and badly shaken he continued the chase and after a considerable distance, managed to stop the horse. He collapsed and was taken to hospital and put on the sick list.

Herbert had been living at 44 Brondesbury Villas in Kilburn with his wife Dorothy since 1936. He left the Met in 1946. When he died in April 1980, he lived at The Cottage, the Old Farmhouse, Oakley Green Windsor.

These were the only two people from Kilburn given a civilian gallantry award.

False Arrest: the Allum and Hislop Case

Trinidadian Desmond Allum came to London to study law in 1958. He worked in hotel kitchens and the Post Office and studied law at night. He qualified and was called to the Bar in the summer of 1962 and then got a job with the Inland Revenue. In 1964 and 1965 he lived at 116 Greencroft Gardens in West Hampstead. His friend George Hislop was born in Tobago. He played cricket for Trinidad and represented the West Indies at the Empire Games held in Cardiff in 1958. The following year he came to London to train as a teacher. In September 1962 he started work as a PE teacher at the Hillcroft Secondary School in Tooting Bec. The Incident On the evening of 31 January 1963 Allum and Hislop had visited friends at 351b Finchley Road (now redeveloped as part of the JW3 Centre). They left and were walking down Finchley Road towards the underground station on their way to Balham. At 9.25pm they were stopped and questioned by two plain clothes detectives who asked them to turn out their po...

Kilburn National Club

This popular music venue was at 234 Kilburn High Road, on the corner of Messina Avenue. Many famous musicians including Johnny Cash and David Bowie played there. We look at the original building which was the Grange Cinema, and what happened when the National closed and was taken over by two different church groups. Grange Cinema The Grange was a large mansion standing in grounds of nine and a half acres and with a frontage to Kilburn High Road. It was the home of Ada Peters the widow of a wealthy coach builder who made coaches for Queen Victoria . Following Ada ’s death in 1910, the property was sold. The new owner was Oswald Stoll, a major name in the entertainment world who had already built the London Coliseum in St Martin ’s Lane, near Leicester Square . Stoll wanted to erect another Coliseum theatre in Kilburn. In fact, progress overtook him and instead of a theatre, the 2,028 seat Grange cinema opened on 30 July 1914 . This remained the biggest cinema in Kilburn until th...

Smith’s Crisps

This is the story of how Frank Smith and his friend Jim Viney, began in a small way in Cricklewood and built the large and successful company of Smith’s Crisps. Early years Frank was born in 1875, in Hackney. His parents had left their native Suffolk by the mid-1860s for London, where his father ran a fruiterer and florist business. By 1881 the family were living over their corner shop at 128 Stoke Newington High Street, moving to Kingsland Road by 1891. Frank started working when he was 10-years old and went with his father to Covent Garden each morning to buy produce for their shop. Frank married Jessie Minnie Ramplin in Southwark in 1902. The couple and their six-year old daughter Laura were living in Mona Road Deptford in 1911, when Frank gave his occupation as ‘commercial traveller, confectionery’. Soon after this he went to work for a wholesale grocer by the name of Carter, in Smithfield. Carter had a side-line making potato crisps and Frank saw great potential in the product and...

History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

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