Created on the River Brent with its tributary the Silk Stream to provide water for the Grand Union and Regent Canals, the Brent Reservoir in northwest London is familiarly known as the Welsh Harp, after the nearby Old Welsh Harp coaching inn. For many years, the water was close to and easily accessible from the Edgware Road or the surrounding fields.
The reservoir became a popular destination for Londoners, who went to enjoy the many attractions it had to offer. Early pedestrians walked along the main road and visitor numbers increased as bus, tram and train services were all laid on. Their first destination was often the pub at the edge of the reservoir. The heyday of the Old Wesh Harp was in the mid-nineteenth century under the stewardship of enterprising landlord William Perkins Warner. He used both the pub grounds and the waters of the reservoir to stage a huge variety of entertainments. In season, fishing was particularly popular, but bathing, boating and ice skating were all on the agenda.
Warner knew the neighbourhood from childhood, living close by on the family farm, where his father was involved in a tragic accident soon after the first phase of the reservoir was completed in 1835.
Seasonal events – such as a heatwave or cold snap – would attract people in their hundreds, to its banks to swim, go boating or skate. Whether or not you could swim might determine the outcome of an accident but other factors such as icy water or unfamiliarity with how unstable a boat could be, also played their part. Some perished trying to help friends or family, and sadly, some went determined to commit suicide.
In this story we look at some the events which occurred at the Welsh Harp.
The Sidebottom brothers
Four brothers set out for a dip early on the morning of 14 August 1835. Or more accurately, three were intending to go in the water, Alexander, William and Edward; their older half-brother Charles went along to keep an eye on his siblings. They were the sons of Alexander Radclyffe Sidebottom, a lawyer with a practice in Serle Square Lincoln’s Inn. The family lived in Sloane Street and Alexander had rented a home in Kingsbury, a large house by the name of Mount Pleasant just a short distance from Edgware Road. England was experiencing a prolonged dry spell, and the brothers enjoyed a pleasant walk by country lane and across fields, to the Welsh Harp.
It seems they made for the west end of the reservoir, where at some time between 6am and 7am, Kingsbury farmer George Mantell was alarmed to see Charles plunge fully dressed into the water. George didn’t hear any cries for help but immediately thought there had been an accident and ran to the spot. There was no one to be seen. ‘The gentleman had disappeared, and his hat and cane were floating on the surface of the water’. Mantell rushed to Blackbird Hill Farm, the home of William Warner senior, where men with dragnets were dispatched to the reservoir.
Sadly, all four brothers drowned, but what exactly happened would never be known. Charles must have responded to some sort of emergency and jumped into the water to try and help. When the bodies were brought ashore after three hours, it was reported Charles was found clasped in his brothers’ embrace. The bodies were taken to Warner’s farm. When their father heard there had been an accident, at first, he had no idea how devastating the news was. Alexander was met by Mr Warner and when he learned there had been four fatalities, he collapsed.
An inquest was held the same day at The Plough Inn on Kingsbury Green. The jury first visited Warner’s farm to view the bodies. ‘So intense was the feeling that prevailed in the surrounding country upon the melancholy occasion, that a great number of gentry and inhabitants surrounded the house, anxious to evince their sympathy. The bodies of the four brothers were ranged abreast of each other on the floor’. Charles was in his outdoor clothes, his brothers were naked and wrapped in blankets. The inquest verdict was, that Alexander Henry Sidebottom aged 19, William George Sidebotton (17) and Edward Sidebottom (15) were accidentally drowned while bathing and that Charles Radclyffe Sidebottom (31) was accidentally drowned in attempting to save his brothers.
Mantell told the inquest that he believed the Welsh Harp was shallow at the edge but suddenly became deep and there were no notices cautioning bathers.
The brothers were buried in a specially constructed vault at Old St Andrew’s Church Kingsbury, where there is a plaque to their memory. We have not found a record of how poor Mrs Sidebottom coped, but her husband was too ill to attend the funeral.
The South Kilburn tragedy
July 1928 was exceptionally hot. On Sunday the 22nd, three lads set off from their homes in Denmark and Albert Streets in South Kilburn, to walk to the Welsh Harp. Percy Coulter, Frederick Simmonds and Evan Brown were aged between 13 and 15. Evan was the youngest and still at school, Percy and Fred were both employed at Crossley Mattress Works in Salusbury Road Kilburn. That day the temperature reached 33C in London. Simmonds was a strong swimmer and suggested to Evan that he went in the water, but Evan refused because he couldn’t swim. Simmonds encouraged Coulter, another non-swimmer, saying ‘it will be all right if I go with you’. Evan sat and read a paper before going off to ask a passerby what time it was. When he returned, there was no sign of his friends. But their clothes were still on the bank, so Evan assumed they’d gone for a walk and sat down to wait. After a while he went in search of Percy and Fred, but when he couldn’t find them, he went home carrying his friends’ clothes with him. ‘In case they were stolen’ he said. The boys went missed around 4.30pm but the police were not alerted until 8.00pm. The reservoir was dragged and the two bodies were found late on Tuesday morning. From marks on his body, it appeared Fred had been dragged down by his bigger friend, whom he had tried to save. At the inquest the coroner made special mention of Fred’s action. Percy and Frederick, childhood friends, were buried at Willesden Cemetery in the same grave.
Boats and sailors
Down the years, the Old Welsh Harp pub hired hundreds of boats to visitors, without any problems. But on 5 April 1890, a few hours after a boat was taken for a pleasure trip, it was discovered floating keel upwards on the water. It took a while to sort out what had happened, as no one knew where the boat capsized or who was in it. Then a boatman at the Harp remembered a family of three: William Joseph Helps, his wife Lizzie and his eight-year-old stepdaughter Violet Mitchell Brander, who was known as Maria. No trace was found of them on the shore, and it was assumed they had drowned. It took time to find the bodies, 19 days in the case of Maria.
At the inquest, opinion was divided as to whether the boat might have capsized passing over a series of posts that divided fields and ran down into the water. John Warner (brother of William junior), said the accident had happened in open water, not near the rails. A verdict of death by accidental drowning was given, with the proviso that a letter should be sent to the Canal Company who owned the reservoir, asking for a notice board be put up, saying the fences were dangerous.
The Helps family lived at 37 Charteris Road in Finsbury Park. William and Lizzie married in 1883; he worked as a merchant seaman, chief steward of the National Line steamer, Canada. His estate valued at £110 was given to James Brander, the maternal grandfather of William’s surviving children, William Harry and Clifford Racey Helps. As commonly happened, the boys were taken in by members of the family.
Ice Skating
Many people enjoyed skating on the frozen ice. In William Warner’s time, as many as 10,000 people could visit the reservoir during a cold spell, but the Welsh Harp was treacherous. Where the Silk stream still ran through the reservoir it could make the ice much thinner towards the middle. Skaters and others who walked or ran on the ice, could misjudge the thickness and strength of the surface and fall through: the shock of immersion in the freezing water resulted in almost instant death. Warnings to stay off the thin ice were often ignored.
If you weren’t there at the time, it was all too easy to criticise the actions of those who tried to help. At an inquest in 1886 a dissatisfied juryman questioned the attempt made by a witness to save Henry Boylett. James Spring saw Henry fall through the ice, encouraged him to stay still but when he returned with a pole, Boylett had struggled and ‘gone down’.
Juror: I heard Mr Spring could have reached him with a walking stick. He had not exerted himself as much as might have been expected.
Mr Spring: I should have been able to save the deceased if I could have reached nine feet. I was left alone on the ice with the drowning man.
Coroner to the juror (with a degree of sarcasm): It is a pity you were not there.
Juror: I should have broken the ice and not have been afraid of a wetting.
Coroner: I certainly do not think we can blame Mr Spring.
On a February afternoon in 1909, another skating disaster at the Welsh Harp was reported. Three men and two boys were believed to have drowned after the ice gave way near the middle of the reservoir. Ten minutes after the ice shattered, ‘there was nothing to be seen but two hats lying on the ice’. The alarm was raised and a rescue attempt was made from the bank. A man walked out onto the ice wearing a lifebelt, but the ice gave way and he was pulled back to safety by a rope. A boat was launched, the crew searching below the ice with hooks and grapnels, and after half an hour, they recovered two bodies. 17-year-old Henry Richard Williams, a bandsman with the 4th Royal Fusiliers, was dead, but initially it was hoped that grocer’s assistant Herbert Walter Browning, also 17, showed signs of life. Doctors worked to retore him on the bank, but it was no use. At their inquest PC Kettle said he was near the Cool Oak Lane bridge when he heard the ice crack and immediately ordered between 100 and 200 children off the ice. He had shouted at Browning and Williams, but they took no notice and continued running on the ice until it gave way. The inquest jury verdict was accidental death for both young men.
Mysterious Discovery
A month after the Helps tragedy in 1890 (mentioned above), the water bailiff discovered a body floating in the Welsh Harp. Judged to have been in the water for at least six weeks, the body was ‘a man dressed in a black diagonal morning coat, tweed trousers, white shirt, Merino socks, lace-up boots and wearing a pair of dark coloured gloves’. Clearly this was someone of substance, not a labourer or working man.
When the clothes were searched, three one cent coins were found, and the shirt collar was marked ‘Wolfe Bros Kansas City’. Then two pawn tickets were recovered. One was for 8sh advanced on a pair of gold spectacles on 2 March. The other was for a gold watch pawned for £6. Both were in the name of a Mr H. or A. Dean, of Upper Gower Street. Enquiries revealed his name was Andrew Dean, an American, aged about 28-years old.
To begin with, it was conjectured that because Helps’ job as ship’s steward meant he made regular trips to the States, he might have known Dean. Maybe they arranged to meet at the Welsh Harp and Dean had been a fourth passenger in the Helps boat. But this was soon ruled out.
Reports described ‘the tragic end of a fast life, the sad suicide of a young American’. Andrew had come to England from New York for the sake of his health, and on the voyage, made friends with a Mr Ffoulkes. The two men booked into a lodging house at what was then 37 Upper George Street near Bryanston Square, on 3 January where they shared an apartment and in March, after Ffoulkes paid their bill, £30 was still owing. Dean said he would settle it, giving the landlord Mr Hodgson a cheque, but this was returned with ‘account closed’.
Apparently, Dean had around £280 available (worth about £42K
today), when he arrived in England, but all had been withdrawn from his bank account
by the end of February. He spent most of his time and money at Boodle’s, a
gentlemen’s Club in St James Street and entertaining ‘gay ladies’ at a supper
club. An acquaintance said Dean was a wealthy man, a widower and property
speculator in Kansas City, which agreed with the address found on his collar.
The conclusion was that having spent all his cash (he even borrowed money from
one of Hodgson’s servants) and fearful of being sued, Dean ended his life. The
inquest ruled he committed suicide while of unsound mind and he was buried in a
pauper’s grave at St Mary Church End Hendon. 
Water races and records
It wasn’t all doom and gloom at the Welsh Harp. There are Pathe news film clips showing boat races, glider and speed record attempts in the 1920s and 30s.
Here are three short films:
In 1928 the Duchess of York presented the trophy for aspeedboat race at the reservoir.
The speed boat season at ‘Hendon-by Sea’ opened in rathergloomy weather in 1932.
A dingy regatta was held in 1957.
Boating success
Other sports made use of the reservoir, with boat races and water speed record attempts in the 1920s and 30s.The famous aviatrix Amy Johnson badly scared a newspaper reporter who accompanied her as she drove a speedboat round the reservoir for the first time in 1930. Amy was as daring on water as she was in the air: ‘She banked; she nearly looped, she had perfect control over the powerful engine that provided the pace. We went round and round in circles, we did everything but a nosedive to Davy Jones’ locker. I tried to show I was not scared of falling overboard!’ When Amy decided to race her plane against the boat, she showed her expertise by flying fast and low enough to be almost alongside the speedboat.
The Old Welsh Harp pub was rebuilt in 1938. It finally closed on 18 March 1971 and was demolished that July to build the Staples Corner flyover, completed in 1976. Today the Brent/Barnet Borough boundary passes through the middle of the Welsh Harp reservoir, designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). It remains an important recreational centre used by a canoe and several sailing clubs, with public open spaces on both north and south banks.
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