The Moving Church and The Wembley Wizards

In 1905 the Wesleyan Methodists erected a corrugated iron church in Neasden Lane on the corner with Verney Street.

OS Map of 1912 showing the position of the iron church in Neasden Lane

The iron church before it was moved

These could be bought as kits, and many were used as a temporary meeting place by the local congregation until money could be raised to build a permanent brick building. A major supplier was Humphreys Ltd who made churches, hospitals and other iron buildings.

Humphreys advert from 1902

In 1928 the lease on the land expired and the Wesleyans were offered a site on the eastern side of the newly-built North Circular Road. A contractor said he could move the intact church the short distance of a quarter of the mile along Neasden Lane and six men worked for a week preparing runners under the building.

On Wednesday 27 March 1928 it was towed by motor lorry towards the North Circular but it had only travelled a short distance when the church partly collapsed, slipped off the runners, and blocked the road.

The police insisted the road be cleared as heavy traffic was expected for the international football match between England and Scotland at Wembley on Saturday. At this point there was no option but to take the church to pieces and transport them to the new site.

Wembley Stadium, British Empire Exhibition, 1924/25

The match was a famous victory for Scotland who completely outplayed England. The Scottish team won 5-1 and became known as the ‘Wembley Wizards’. There is a short silent Pathe News film clip here.

A new brick church was built remarkably quickly using the salvaged floor, doors and windows from the old iron church. It was opened on 30 May by Mrs Ellen Gray Beeson, wife of Amos Beeson a major ironmonger at Harlesden for over 70 years and a pillar of the Methodist community.

OS Map of 1936 showing the church on the eastern side of Neasden Circus

However, as traffic levels on the North Circular built up, the noise proved too much and in 1937 the congregation moved again to a third site on Neasden Lane. Demolished around 1980, the site is now occupied by Hazelwood Court with a small modern Methodist church adjacent.

Very few iron churches have survived, and today we are fortunate to have the Kilburn ‘Tin Tabernacle’ in Cambridge Avenue.

Iron Church in Kilburn (Dick Weindling, September 2025)

Comments

False Arrest: the Allum and Hislop Case

Trinidadian Desmond Allum came to London to study law in 1958. He worked in hotel kitchens and the Post Office and studied law at night. He qualified and was called to the Bar in the summer of 1962 and then got a job with the Inland Revenue. In 1964 and 1965 he lived at 116 Greencroft Gardens in West Hampstead. His friend George Hislop was born in Tobago. He played cricket for Trinidad and represented the West Indies at the Empire Games held in Cardiff in 1958. The following year he came to London to train as a teacher. In September 1962 he started work as a PE teacher at the Hillcroft Secondary School in Tooting Bec. The Incident On the evening of 31 January 1963 Allum and Hislop had visited friends at 351b Finchley Road (now redeveloped as part of the JW3 Centre). They left and were walking down Finchley Road towards the underground station on their way to Balham. At 9.25pm they were stopped and questioned by two plain clothes detectives who asked them to turn out their po...

The 1994 IRA Attack on Heathrow: the West Hampstead connection

Just before 6pm on Wednesday 9 March 1994 four mortars shells hit Heathrow Airport . Earlier, news agencies had been telephoned by a man with an Irish accent and using a known IRA code word he said, ‘In one hour’s time, a large number of bombs will be going off in Heathrow Airport . Clear all runways. Stop all flights’. The Anti-Terrorist branch of the Metropolitan Police and airport officials decided not to close the airport after a sweep of the terminal buildings and the runways found nothing suspicious. About 45 mins after the mortars landed they closed Heathrow. The missiles had been launched over the airport fence from 6ft-long tubes fitted in the back of a red Nissan Micra parked about 400 yards away in the Excelsior Hotel car park, just outside the airport. After launching the missiles, a charge inside the car set it on fire and the blaze spread to surrounding cars. The Nissan had been stolen in Kilburn the previous Saturday night and fitted with false number plate...

Kilburn National Club

This popular music venue was at 234 Kilburn High Road, on the corner of Messina Avenue. Many famous musicians including Johnny Cash and David Bowie played there. We look at the original building which was the Grange Cinema, and what happened when the National closed and was taken over by two different church groups. Grange Cinema The Grange was a large mansion standing in grounds of nine and a half acres and with a frontage to Kilburn High Road. It was the home of Ada Peters the widow of a wealthy coach builder who made coaches for Queen Victoria . Following Ada ’s death in 1910, the property was sold. The new owner was Oswald Stoll, a major name in the entertainment world who had already built the London Coliseum in St Martin ’s Lane, near Leicester Square . Stoll wanted to erect another Coliseum theatre in Kilburn. In fact, progress overtook him and instead of a theatre, the 2,028 seat Grange cinema opened on 30 July 1914 . This remained the biggest cinema in Kilburn until the...

History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Search This Blog