History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

  Barrage balloon over  Kilburn, The Sphere, 11 March 1939   The crowd standing outside J. Salter’s a dentist at No.178 Kilburn High Road are looking across the main road in amazement, as a barrage balloon is launched from the car park of the Gaumont State cinema. The Midland Bank shown on the right is now the Spicy Basil Thai restaurant. At the end of February 1939, the Gaumont cinema group took part in an RAF campaign to recruit 2,000 people for the Balloon Squadrons. While they showed the George Formby film ‘It’s in the Air’, barrage balloons with coloured streamers were launched over cinemas in Kilburn, and other parts of London. During the War, more balloons were based in the Grange Park Kilburn along with a battery of AA guns. The balloons were designed to stop low flying aircraft. Filled with hydrogen and connected to steel cables, they were tethered to the ground often using large concrete blocks. They had been used in WWI, but as preparation for the next war, Balloon Co

A face many of us knew from his stage, TV and film work, Sandor Eles, was born in Tatabánya , 60km west of Budapest , in June 1936. He became a British citizen on 10 January 1977. After a long and successful career, h e died of a heart attack on 10 September 2002.   Sandor Eles, 1964 While doing some research on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), I was surprised to find that he died in his flat in Morland House, 17 Brondesbury Road Kilburn. At the time of his death Sandor did not have any heirs, and his name appeared on the Government Bona Vacantia list of unclaimed estates.   Sandor was orphaned and aged 20, fled during the Hungarian Revolution of October and November 1956 when Soviet tanks entered Budapest. After receiving help from the Red Cross in Vienna, he travelled to England, unable to speak the language. Nonetheless, having trained at a student theatre in Hungary, he attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and began his professional stage career in 1958.  

In our previous blog story, we told how the locals fought to save West End Green in the 1880s. http://kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-fight-for-west-end-green.html Here we reveal the struggle of residents some ten years later, to stop the nearby Fortune Green being built on by speculators. They realised how important it was to save open spaces as public recreational land, in the face of the overwhelming development going on all around them in the late 1880s and 1890s. The Early History of The Green The derivation of the name is unknown. Fortune Green is clearly shown on early maps such as Rocque’s (1746) and was much larger than it is today. In the early nineteenth century, three cottages were built on the Green, next to the ‘Prince of Wales’ beershop, which stood roughly where is now a kitchen and bathroom showroom on Fortune Green Road. Prince of Wales pub on Fortune Green   Like West End Green, Fortune Green was part of the ‘waste’ of the manor of Hampstead,