History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

The American artist and sculptor Gutzon Borglum lived and worked at Harlestone Villa in Mortimer Road, Kilburn from about 1897 to 1902. The house was later renumbered as No.6 Mortimer Place but was damaged in 1944 by the V1 flying bomb which destroyed North Hall, the house next door. Both were demolished and today the site is covered by Halliwell House on the Kilburn Gate estate.  While at Harlestone Villa Borglum painted murals for private homes, but he is best known as the sculptor who produced the giant heads of US presidents carved into the summit of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Born in a frontier town in Idaho in 1867, Borglum was of Danish extraction. His father was a Mormon with two wives who were sisters. Borglum ran away from home to study art in California, and at the Julien Academy and the Ecole des Beaux Artes in Paris where he was influenced by Rodin. He arrived in London in 1896 and rented a studio in West Kensington before moving to Kilburn. Although gaining recog...

In the Summer of 1972, No.41 West End Lane was demolished because of the levels of radioactivity. This is the story of what caused the radioactivity and some of the interesting people who lived in the house previously. The large, detached house, was built in the early 1870s as ‘The Lodge’ towards the Kilburn end of West End Lane. The first person to live there in 1871 was Peter Clarkson Reed. He was a barrister who had qualified in 1859 and practised in Calcutta. He died at the house in 1876 and left £16,000 to his son John Lindsay Reed of Inner Temple, a barrister who at one time lived in Willesden. Patrick John Benson was at ‘The Lodge’ from 1884 until his death in 1895. Benson was a ‘professor of fencing and gymnastics.’ About 1875 he opened ‘Benson’s Gymnasium and School of Arms’ in Orchard Street, Portman Square. This was a successful business, and when he died he left £21,847 (worth about £2.3M today) to his son Charles, who took over the gym.  At the time of the 1911 census ...

British Homophone was a recording studio behind the present day Sainsbury’s and Superdrug in Kilburn High Road. It later became the famous Irish dance hall The Banba. St Margaret's Before British Homophone opened their recording studio in 1929 this was the site of a large house called St Margaret’s. The last owner and occupier of St Margaret’s was the builder Robert Allen Yerbury who rented the house about 1877. He soon bought the freehold as well as a large piece of land adjoining his grounds. He used the garden in front of the renamed St Margaret’s Lodge as the site for a terrace of shops. Although completely hemmed in by the shops on the High Road, Yerbury was able to rent the house to a series of tenants. By 1903 a hall and conservatory had been added to the back of St Margaret’s Lodge. ‘Professor’ Sidney Bishop ran ‘The Athenaeum’ for dancing there from 1902 to 1914 before moving to nearby Quex Road. During WWI it was used as a Forces recreation room and in the 20s the Hall be...