Kilburn and West Hampstead were once home to many churches and chapels. House building increased dramatically during the late nineteenth century at a time when attending a place of worship was mandatory for most people. Some were already committed to a faith but there was fierce competition between the denominations to persuade undecided residents to attend their services. A charismatic minister such as the Rev. Richard Kilpatrick at the impressive St Augustine’s Church in Kilburn Park Road, attracted huge numbers of worshippers. People moved between churches and sometimes between faiths while a developing neighbourhood encouraged non-conformist faiths to extend their influence, by building new places of worship. But this was expensive and a major role for all ministers was to fund raise and reduce construction debts.
Many of the religious buildings have been demolished, redeveloped, or repurposed but the story behind why and when they were built is not always well documented. Nor is the day-to-day life of their ministers.
Marianne found some old documents relating to the Brondesbury Baptist Chapel that stood on the corner of Iverson Road and Kilburn High Road. These included a Jubilee Booklet celebrating the first fifty years of the Chapel with photos of ministers and personal reminiscences. For this blog story we have added reports from local papers.
How Brondesbury Chapel came about
The first Baptist chapel in Hampstead opened on Heath Street in 1861, but soon;
‘another Hampstead was springing up on the west, and solid blocks of houses were covering the meadows where the lark had so lately been wont to sing, and the hawthorn to blossom, undisturbed’, (Annals of Hampstead, T. Barratt, 1912).The new district was Brondesbury, a large area covering both sides of Kilburn High Road.
Creating the Chapel came down to a decision made by the London Baptist Association, (LBA) and the Baptist community centred on the Abbey Road Chapel across the parish boundary in St Marylebone. They discussed three options: wait for a while; install an organ at Abbey Road or build a chapel in Brondesbury, to spread the Baptist message to the growing number of residents in the district. The ‘do nothing for now’ policy apparently had no supporters. The organ was popular but, in the end, building the Chapel won the vote.
Next came fundraising, starting with a big bazaar held at Kilburn Town Hall in Belsize Road. Some sources say the land was gifted but the LBA paid £850 for the freehold site. It formed part of an estate sold off in plots by the British Land Company from 1869-1870 onwards. The land and building cost £6,557, of which the LBA gave £1,094. The plans were delayed, the first proposals being considered too elaborate and expensive. This led to a change of architect, with Mr Arnold who figures in early mentions of the Chapel being replaced by William Allen Dixon who specialised in churches, in particular Baptist ones.
The foundation stone was laid shortly after 3pm on 14 May 1878, to the accompaniment of hymns, prayers, and scripture readings. As was the custom on such occasions, a bottle containing contemporary newspapers was placed in a cavity in the stone. The main road was then known as Edgware Road until Shoot-up Hill was reached, but the programme gave the new Chapel’s location as ‘Kilburn Rise’. The event presented an opportunity to raise funds, with tickets costing 1sh to watch the stone laying and attend a tea after the ceremony.
This was not the first site in the neighbourhood the Baptists had been interested in. Seven years earlier, they had tried to buy the land opposite, where later the North London Tavern was built. Then an attempt was made to rent rooms in Winchester Avenue, off Willesden Lane. They were forced to withdraw when they found all religious meetings were forbidden in the rooms which were owned by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; (maybe they were seeking to protect the local C of E churches from competition?) Next the Baptists almost secured a plot in Netherwood Street; ‘they came so close to a bargain that lawyer met lawyer’ but fell out over the asking price, while an option on a second site in the road also fell through.
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Brondesbury Chapel (copyright, Marianne Colloms)
It seems remarkable that it took less than a year to build the Chapel. The builders were W. Bangs and Co, from Bow. Brondesbury could hold 735 worshippers with scope to increase that to 1,000. The first service was held on 9 April 1879, followed by lunch presided over by Mr. Joseph Peters. He was a member of the carriage-building family who owned The Grange, a large house set back from the Kilburn High Road and demolished after the death of the last occupant in 1910. In his novel ‘A Kilburn Tale’, Ernest Raymond described the red brick Brondesbury building and its ‘sugar loaf spire,’ a reference to the fact that at the time, refined sugar was sold in a tall cone, needing sugar nips to break off pieces for sale.
The first minister is appointed
A further £1,240 was raised towards costs but this left a balance of £4,000 to be repaid. This formidable task faced the minister and his congregation, which by January 1880, numbered 45 persons. The Rev. William Scriven was appointed the first minster in October 1879, coming to Kilburn from Norfolk. But he was only there for 15 months. The Booklet says that ‘little is known of that period’ but there are many mentions of Scriven in the local press, including one on 24 December 1880 when the Willesden Chronicle abruptly reported that he had ‘ceased to be the pastor’. A rapid parting of the ways as only a couple of weeks before, a lecture by Scriven had been advertised and in October his ministry appeared on course. There were 80 regular attendees, a flourishing Sunday School and a Band of Hope (the Temperance movement, Scriven was a lifelong teetotaler), while other clubs had been started. A bazaar held over several days raised upwards of £500. But it seems officials had expected more of Rev. Scrivens, believing the congregation had not grown fast enough and he’d raised too little money. There was a big debt from the original building outstanding and ‘the cause appears not to have progressed under Mr Scriven’s ministry as was anticipated’. That may have been the case, but a comment by a chapel member in support of the Reverend appeared in the local press: ‘I should be glad to know in what the non-success of Mr Scriven’s labour consists, and how judgment can be fairly pronounced upon so short and comparatively unaided an effort’.
Scriven’s successor
In May 1881 the chapel was still without a minister. The Rev. John Charles Thompson was asked to step in on a couple of Sundays, before being offered the permanent post in June at an annual salary of £175. ‘The matter of the salary did not oppress me, but when I considered the congregation was small, and the debt on the Church over £4,000 – schoolrooms to be built – an organ installed – and an apse or organ loft made – the call to Brondesbury seemed one to test the quality of one’s metal’.
In the Jubilee Booklet, Thompson wrote that he accepted the post on condition the debt was lowered by £1,000 before the end of the year. The Chapel deacons said this was impossible, but Thompson undertook to raise £500, if the Chapel and congregation matched him. As he told it, he was £50 short on the December morning he was to meet the Chapel officials. Answering a knock at the front door he saw a poorly dressed woman who he thought was begging. ‘I haven’t had my breakfast yet!’ he told her. She apologised and handed him an envelope that contained the £50 he needed. Thompson said it was a gift from a bedridden resident who had never been to the Chapel but admired his work.
Thompson’s version of events, while it tells a better story, is a year out. The money was due to be repaid by the end of 1882 not 1881, which makes more sense. Months before the December deadline in 1882, he told a meeting that a £50 donation, which would be set aside to repay costs, had been received from ‘a stranger to all, a person who had not heard nor seen me’.
In 1885, the Chapel was licensed to hold marriages, a further source of valuable income.
For the most part, Thompson got on with the deacons and the Chapel’s major benefactors. An enthusiastic fund raiser, ‘he laboured strenuously against serious difficulties for elevem years and laid strong foundations for future growth’.
A second plot of land in Iverson Road was earmarked for a hall in 1880 and it was discovered the 99-year lease would be forfeited if building didn’t start. Thompson duly began his campaign with another bazaar at Kilburn Town Hall. The foundation stone for Brondesbury Hall was laid on 10 June 1884, celebrated by bunting and flags strung across the High Road and Iverson Road. The Hall (Nos.9-11 Iverson Road) opened on the 24 October, with classrooms at street level and a lecture hall on the upper floor. Designed in the gothic tradition, the local press noted ‘the ornamental front elevation will tend to raise the architectural character of the road’. Next came improvements to the main Chapel including the installation of an organ in 1890. All this required yet more fundraising by Thompson and his dedicated band of helpers.
The Kilburn shooting
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The whole of Kilburn was shocked in July 1889. An attempted murder and suicide in Iverson Road was widely reported and it involved members of Thompson’s congregation. Leonard Handford shot and wounded his estranged wife Sarah and his mother-in law, Elizabeth Deveson in the street, as they were walking home from a Sunday morning service at the Brondesbury Chapel. He then turned the gun on himself. Incredibly, all three survived, probably because he had used a small-bore pistol. In court Leonard claimed the Devesons had treated him badly while Sarah had become bad tempered, hard to get on with and stopped him seeing his son. Leonard was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. Sarah and her mother were staunch supporters of the Chapel, and her father Daniel Deveson was one of its deacons.
For a detailed account of the event, see our previous blog story published in West Hampstead Life.
Rev. Thompson had come to Kilburn following a breakdown and in 1883, it was noted he was on holiday for health reasons. In the winter of 1891, he was allowed seven months paid leave of absence which he spent in a Swiss health resort. He returned to Kilburn the following May, but continuing health problems forced his resignation in October.
Reverend Charles William Vick
His successor Reverend Vick acknowledged that Thompson had done a good job, building numbers and reducing debt, creating new classes and opportunities. Vick was interviewed for Booth’s Life and Labour survey in 1898, (see our recent blog) when he was described as a ‘smart business-like man, well built, broad of forehead, bright eyes, and a large mustache, evidently full of energy and zeal’. He had been called away the previous day to Ipswich, but anxious to keep his appointment with the interviewer, he caught the 6am train to make sure he was home in time.
Vick was the only salaried worker, but there were nine deacons and 46 volunteer Sunday School teachers. He described the Chapel as a ‘busy hive’. The services and clubs give an idea of just how busy it was: on Sunday, as well as two public services, there were two Sunday Schools, two children’s services, a prayer meeting and a bible class. There were classes and clubs every other day of the week, plus concerts in the hall and open-air meetings on Sunday evenings at the corner of Exeter Road. Vick described the most deprived part of his district as Palmerston Road, Netherwood and Kelson Streets (where no original properties survive today). The population was increasing there and across the main road, as larger properties were divided and occupied by more than one family. But in his opinion ‘real poverty was slight’.
A religious census held at the turn of the century noted that of the four Baptist chapels in Hampstead, Brondesbury Chapel had the highest overall attendances. ‘The work is well organized, the worship devout, the services are bright and helpful’. 221 persons attended the Sunday morning service and 387 the evening, plus 314 at the Mission room services in Brondesbury Hall.
The Rev. Vick left Brondesbury a few months after his 28-year-old son Kenneth was killed in WWI. The Jubilee Booklet talks about war dead; while Kenneth is not among the men named, he was remembered on the War Memorial in the Chapel. The tragedy may have promoted his father’s resignation and move to Nottingham.
Kenneth Jesson Vick enlisted in August 1914, a month after WWI broke out and fought at Ypres, the Somme and Arras. While in France he learned to fly. Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), Kenneth was sent to Yorkshire in 1917. He was killed when his BE2e plane broke up in the air on 5 July: ‘part of the machine fell to the ground and he crashed to earth with the remainder’. The inquest attracted national interest among the press after a military officer told the court that he did not know the exact cause of the accident. That was up to a ‘Special Accidents Committee’ from London, who would carry out an investigation.
The press reported some of the discussion at the inquest.
A juryman asked: What is the constitution of this Committee? Is it formed of experts or is it purely military? The officer replied: It is a military body.
Juryman: We are here to ascertain the cause of death. We know nothing as to what caused the accident. Will the father or relatives of the deceased be represented at the inquiry?
Officer: No, he cannot be present.
Rev. Vick: Surely I am entitled to know how my son came to his death in this manner. I would like to be present at the inquiry.
Coroner: I don’t think they will permit you.
The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death. However, the jury added a comment to the effect they were in the dark as to the real cause, while the ability to determine the circumstances had been put under military control. The Officer told the Reverend Vick that he might be able to give him information privately by letter, but we don’t know if this happened. It seems that because it was wartime the Special Accidents Committee was created, and information was censored so the enemy would not be given details about the crash.
Kenneth is buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Beverley, where his epitaph reflects his family’s religious background: ‘Still on active service in another Battn of the great army of God’. He is also commemorated on a memorial at All Saint’s Church Bishop Burton, but his name is misspelt as ‘H J Vick’. Both his brothers survived the War.
The Baptists leased space in the Iverson Road Hall to outside concerns and it is unclear whether use connected to the Chapel continued on a constant basis. ‘Brondesbury Concert Hall’ appears in local directories from at least 1926 through to 1940. Possibly dating from WWII, part of the building was registered as ‘light industrial premises’. Sellinger Exhibition Displays were listed in 1954. Also, from the end of 1951 until 1980, Alsans Furnishings Ltd of 306 Kilburn High Road made curtains and upholstery work there.
The Iverson Road Hall
The Chapel and Hall are demolished
The Baptists wanted to replace the Iverson Road Hall with a purpose-built Christian centre, a goal partially realised when in 1984, Camden Council gave permission to demolish it and build residential accommodation over a church at street level. Today it is the Brondesbury Christian Church. An earlier plan involved redeveloping the main Chapel as flats and a smaller church. In the event, as the Hall site provided a new place of worship, the Chapel was demolished after it closed in 1980, to be replaced by a wholly residential block, Spring Court, No.1b Iverson Road.
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