Hampstead from the Kilburn Road

In our first book ‘Kilburn and West Hampstead Past’ (Historical Publications 1999), we showed an engraving from Edward Walford’s 1878 ‘Old and New London’ Vol. 5, which was entitled, ‘Hampstead from the Kilburn Road’. At the time we believed the artist’s viewpoint was looking from the Kilburn High Road down West End Lane over the small bridge across the Kilbourn Stream at that point, with St John’s Church in Hampstead on the hill.

In September 2020 we found a painting on the Art UK website, entitled ‘Hampstead from the Kilburn Road’ by AW Sharp, 1824. This must have been used to produce the engraving in Walford, but the engraver has made a few changes including the bridge.



The painting is in the Camden Local Studies and Archive Centre so we asked archivist Tudor Allen if he would kindly look on the back of the painting for any provenance and check the records. Unfortunately, there was nothing on the back.

The only reference Tudor and his staff found was that the Hampstead Library Committee Minutes for 10 June 1938 which noted there, ‘was an offer of an oil painting by A.W. Sharp of Hampstead from the Kilburn Road, 1824 which should be accepted for a price not exceeding £1 and the painting should be repaired and framed at an approximate cost of £3’.

The Artist
We found an artist called Arthur William Sharp who came from Budbrooke in Warwickshire. He came to London, and by 1861 he was at 15 Belsize Park. He moved to Kensington and from 1876 to 1881 he lived at No.1 Chepstow Villas in Bayswater. He seemed to be a good candidate as the painter of our picture, but then we found he had been born in 1836.

Thinking that Hampstead Council may have been given the wrong artist name, we searched for other possible artists and found two William Sharp’s. There was a famous painter and engraver called William Sharp, but he died in Chiswick in 1824 and was too ill at the time to have completed our painting.

A second William Sharp was born in Portsmouth in 1803 and died in 1875. Therefore, he would have been 21 at the time of the painting. In 1821 he was living at 5 Tichbourne Street Edgware Road, so could have easily walked to Kilburn. He married Emma Georgina Nesbet in St James Paddington in April 1827. They emigrated to America and arrived in New York on 24 December 1838. As an engraver he introduced the technique of the chromolithograph to America. He died in Milton, Norfolk County Massachusetts in July 1875. This William Sharp seems to be the most likely artist of the Kilburn painting.

Where was the picture painted from?
We looked at a map produced for John James Park’s 1814 book of Hampstead which showed there were two bridges over the Kilbourne stream. The small one in West End Lane, and the main Kilburn Bridge in the High Road near Maida Vale. By drawing sight lines on the map to St John’s Church in Hampstead we do not think the artist could have painted the view from either of the bridges.

        1814 map from Park with three sight lines to St John’s Church in Hampstead

A better perspective is obtained if the viewpoint was at the top of Shoot-Up Hill looking down Mill Lane. This suggests that the man and his sheep are in Mill Lane and we are not looking at a bridge in the original painting, but a wall which the engraver has made into a bridge. From this viewpoint the house shown in the mid-ground would be New West End House, later called West End Hall, and occupied by the Miles family since 1814. The path climbing up to Hampstead is Frognal. 

Painting of New West End House (From Jim and Jenny Marley who are related to the Miles family)

We would like to thank Tudor Allen and the staff at Camden Local Studies and Archive Centre.