Two Gentlemen of Cricklewood

Before Cricklewood became industrialised at the turn of the 20th century, it was a small village near Kilburn. Several villas were built on the Edgware Road near Childs Hill Lane (today’s Cricklewood Lane). This is a brief story of two interesting men who lived in these villas.

In 1854 William Edward Kilburn married Louisa Ludham Tootal in St John’s Church Hampstead. She was the daughter of Henry Tootal, the chairman of the North London Railway Company, who lived in Finchley New Road. The NLR built today’s London Overground line to Richmond and other lines in Docklands.

William and Louisa moved to Woodbrooke House (sometimes called Woodbrook) in Cricklewood, where they stayed for several years before moving to St John’s Wood. William Edward Kilburn was an important early photographer who had opened a studio in Regent Street in 1845. Here he produced daguerreotype portraits of fashionable people. The daguerreotype was invented in France by Louis Daguerre and Nicéphore Niépce and became the first publicly available photographic process. It produced a very detailed black and white image on a sheet of polished silver-plated copper. 

For more information see this short video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d932Q6jYRg8 

Prince Albert who was very interested in science and technology, commissioned W.E. Kilburn to take a photograph of the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in 1848. The image was used to make a woodblock by the Illustrated London News and published on 15 April 1848. It has been claimed this was the first woodblock image to be made from a photo and used in a newspaper.

(Interesting that the images are reversed).

Colourised daguerreotype by W.E. Kilburn

Prince Albert asked Kilburn to take photographs of the Royal family, and this considerably increased his popularity. Kilburn advertised himself as ‘Her Majesty’s Daguerrotypist’.

This 1848 daguerreotype image of Prince Albert by Kilburn has been hand-coloured.

The second gentleman of Cricklewood was James Willing junior who is shown living in Rock Hall (or Rockhall) on the 1881 and 1891 censuses. 

James Willing junior, in his Freemason regalia

His father James Willing senior had founded an advertising company in 1840. They arranged for the wall space, found the advertisers, and organised the printing and pasting up of the posters. 

Bill Posters, 1877

Willing was the first man to make money by leasing advertising space on toll gates. They became a major advertising company and set up Willing House in Gray’s Inn Road and published the annual Willings Press Guide. 

There is a link to Camden in the 1970s and 1980s when Willimg House was the office of Camden Social Services led by Kenneth Urwin.

Rock Hall and Woodbrooke were still there when companies like Handley Page and Smiths Industries were set up and came to dominate Cricklewood. The position of the houses is shown on this 1896 OS map.