History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Byworth and Co. were a diamond mounting firm in 19-21 Heddon Street, a small road off Regent Street. In June 1922 thieves opened two safes with an oxy-acetylene cutter and stole jewelry worth £20,000. Nobody was convicted. Over 30 years later they were the target of another robbery. The premises closed as usual on Friday night 16 July 1954 after the week’s work. When the staff returned the following Monday, they found the door to the safe had been blown off with gelignite and the office was covered in dust and debris from the explosion. They immediately called Scotland Yard, and Detective Superintendent Bob Higgins of the Flying Squad was put in charge of the investigation. Altogether £37,000 worth of diamonds, gold, and platinum had been taken from the safe, today equivalent to over £1M. Someone had climbed up to the fourth floor and entered the building through a lavatory window. Lengths of knotted rope were found on the roof. Sup. Higgins asked for accounts of any suspicious activi...

Most people who live here know the local landmark the Kilburn State and its 120 feet tower. When it opened in December 1937 as the Gaumont State, it was the largest purpose built cinema in Europe with 4,004 seats. Today it is a Grade II* listed building. Kilburn State, 2015, (Dick Weindling) What was there before the cinema was built?  Stand and Deliver! Originally there was a large house on the site called The Elms, which was home to a number of wealthy people. These included the widower John Ebbers who moved in with his two daughters in 1832. He was a publisher in Old Bond Street and the manager of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket (which is now Her Majesty’s Theatre). In 1826 he met a young writer called William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) who had moved to London from Manchester . It was an eventful year for Ainsworth; Ebbers published his first novel ‘Sir John Chiverton’ and he married Ann Frances or ‘Fanny’, Ebbers’ youngest daughter. While liv...

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...