Willesden and the Treatment of Stammering

Stammering or stuttering (as it is called in America), is a condition that disrupts the normal flow of speech and when acute can profoundly affect a person’s life. During the late Victorian and Edwardian period, a house in Willesden played an important role in helping people who stammered.

Tarrangower
Tarrangower was named after a gold field in Australia. A large, detached house in Willesden Lane, it was built by John Marrian probably using money inherited from his wealthy father John senior, who died on 13 September 1881 leaving £69,089 (worth about £9.6M today). But John Marrian junior did not live very long to enjoy his new house as he died there on 28 March 1886.

When it was offered for sale in June, it was described as ‘a very perfect modern residence’ having 10 bedrooms and a billiard room and library. The gardens and grounds with a tennis court were about an acre. Later the house was numbered 178 Willesden Lane.

Tarrangower

By 1891 Sir Bradford Leslie was in residence. An eminent engineer, he had retired as the chief engineer of the East India Railway Company. Living next door in a house called Sherwood was Walter James Ketley, an elocutionist who used the Beasley method to assist stammerers. Later in 1909, Ketley moved into the much larger Tarrangower.

Benjamin Beasley
At the time, Benjamin Beasley was called the greatest living exponent for the treatment of stammering. He was born in 1832 in Cradley Worcestershire, the son of a major iron and steel manufacturer who supplied gun and sword makers. Ben stammered as a child and determined to overcome it, as a young man studied elocution and how actors spoke their lines, and amazingly cured himself. After working in his father’s steel mill Ben became a gun maker and then a wine and spirits merchant.

Benjamin Beasley

He decided to use his money to assist young stammerers and opened his first residential home at Green Bank House, in Hall Green near Birmingham. The earliest advert we could find for his pamphlet, ‘Stammering: Its Treatment, by one who cured himself after suffering for more than thirty years’, was in November 1878. The price was a shilling or thirteen stamps. Beasley spent a summer in Huntingdon near Cambridge and heard about Brampton Park owned by the Duke of Manchester. It was a very large manor house set in extensive grounds with stabling for 40 horses. About 1889 Beasley decided to lease the property as a residential home. The house provided ideal accommodation for the 23 young men shown in the 1901 census as living and studying there.

Brampton Park illustration from 1889

The home was very successful until a fire broke out on 24 January 1907. Beasley saw his dream go up in smoke as he watched firemen fighting the flames for three days. Deeply depressed, he moved to the local George Hotel where he died about three weeks later on 11 February.

Walter James Ketley had worked with Benjamin Beasley from the start, and when he was aged 27 he married Benjamin’s daughter Julia Beasley in 1883.

WJ Ketley
Walter carried on in Willesden at Tarrangower and after Beasley’s death he gave interviews to the press and wrote a book called ‘Stammering: The Beasley Treament’ (nd, probably about 1911), to promote the home.
Lecture room in Tarrangower from Ketley’s book
Drawing room

When Ketley died at Tarrangower on 16 February 1927 the home for stammerers closed and the house was divided into three flats.

Tarranbrae
Tarrangower was at the corner of the Lane and Mapesbury Road, and as Marianne pointed out, this was one of the earliest examples of Victorian houses being replaced by residential apartments in the late 1930s. Its position conferred extra value by allowing the block to wrap round the corner. 57 flats replaced two houses: Tarrangower and its next door neighbour, No.176, Red Brae. The name chosen for the development - Tarranbrae - combined that of the demolished properties.

It was designed by the prestigious firm of architects Adie, Button and Partners, who were also responsible for the Park Lane Hotel in 1927. An article on Tarranbrae appeared in The Architects’ Journal of 4 August 1938.
Moody photo from 1938 Architects’ Journal

Tarranbrae in 2016

Now forgotten, Beasley and Ketley should be remembered for their pioneering work in helping stammerers in Tarrangower Willesden Lane.

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...

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...

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