History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

George Hibberd was born in Upper Cleveland Street Marylebone in 1833 and became a carpenter like his father. He joined the Navy as a carpenter in 1851 and fought in the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 between Russia and the allies of England, Turkey and France. George served on the 120-gun, three-deck battleship HMS Trafalgar from July 1851 to April 1855 and the 14-gun floating battery HMS Meteor from 1855 to May 1856. He was awarded two Crimean medals, one from England and one from Turkey. After he returned home, he married Lucy Hutson Hope in March 1858 and they had eight children, including a daughter Lucy who was born in 1869. In the 1870s they lived at 2 Peel Road Kilburn. The Salvation Army worked in the poor areas of Kilburn. They recognised the value of music in promoting the gospel and recruited and trained people to form bands. Popular tunes were adapted so that ‘Way down upon the Swanee River’ became ‘Joy, freedom, peace and ceaseless blessing’. They used a mission hall in Pembr...

John (Jack) Lemon Burton was born in 1911, the son of engineer John Lemon Burton senior whose unusual middle name came from his mother Charlotte Lemon. At the time of Jack’s birth John senior was living in 27 Hopefield Avenue Brondesbury but then moved several times before settling at 17 Cavendish Road Kilburn in 1930 where he died in 1954.  17 Cavendish Road in 2012 Jack in the garden with his home-made pedal car As a teenager, Jack sometimes drove his father’s car, and to hide his age, wore his father’s bowler hat while his father sat beside him wearing Jack’s Kilburn Grammar school cap. Jack was fascinated by Bugattis, and bought his first when he was aged 16. Later his father bought Jack the blue Type 37A which Sir Malcolm Campbell (the world land speed record holder) had driven in competition. Jack began racing Bugattis in Brookwood and broke the lap record in 1939.  Malcolm Campbell’s Bugatti owned by Jack Lemon Burton In 1927 with help from his father, Jack established ...

This the story of a 1950s swindle to get money from young couples desperate to buy their own homes. The brains of the scheme lived in West Hampstead, Kilburn and Willesden. On 11 September 1956, five men appeared at the Old Bailey charged with fraud. They were William Frederick Montgomery (46) a clerical assistant of 2a Riffel Road Willesden, John Frederick Attenborough (54) the company negotiator of Albion Street Dunstable, Herbert Henry Skelly (35) master builder of Manor Road Dagenham, Richard Neel (46) travel agent of Beckenham Road Beckenham, and Ernest Rea (79) the company director of Katherine Road East Ham. They were charged with conspiring together between February 1953 and January 1955, to defraud people to buy a home from the Harmsworth Building and Construction Company Ltd. 120 prospective buyers paid deposits totalling £23,184 (today worth about £870,000), for homes that were never built. All five men pleaded ‘not guilty’. Deposits were not returned, and the company went t...

   Sean Connery, 1980   Edinburgh On his dad’s side, Sean, or as his birth certificate records ‘Thomas’ Connery, had Irish roots. His dad Joe was a jobbing labourer in Edinburgh who married Effie Maclean in 1928. Thomas (Tommy) was born two years later in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh’s industrial district, where the grime and smoke had gained it the nickname, Auld Reekie . There wasn’t much money and Tommy had a tough childhood. He got his first job when he was nine years old; helping on a milk round before school, with an evening shift as well at a butcher’s. He was a physically strong kid, fit and good at sport, but he was restless, and keen to leave Fountainbridge behind. So, he joined the navy when he was seventeen. Although he signed up for seven year’s active service he was invalided out in 1949, suffering from duodenal ulcers. Back in Edinburgh, Connery took up a British Legion scholarship and trained as a French polisher. He was a seriously good footballer and at o...

This is a strange story from 1909. On the afternoon of 9 September, seventeen year old Percy Day who worked locally as a clerk for the Midland Railway, was walking with three friends along the Edgware Road in Cricklewood. They were chatting about football and had just reached the junction with Oxgate Lane (near today’s Wing Yip Chinese superstore) when a cyclist passed them.  A cyclist from the 1900s (Getty Images) He got off his bike, reached into his jacket pocket pulled out a revolver and without warning, fired at the men hitting Percy in the arm. The assailant got back on his bike and cycled off rapidly in the direction of Cricklewood. Fortunately, Percy was not badly wounded and jumped on one of the new electric trams and pursued the cyclist. Cricklewood tram c.1906 When they reached The Crown Cricklewood, the conductor told a policeman on point duty what had happened. Percy and the PC boarded a motor bus and chased after the cyclist, overtaking him in Kilburn and arresting ...

Elizabeth (Lillie) Miers was born in 1872, the daughter of Joseph Miers and Cecilia Levy. They had married in January 1868 and lived at 47 Oxford Road Kilburn, where they had six children. But the marriage was not successful and they divorced in 1883. The divorce papers said that since December 1882, Cecilia had committed adultery with Alfred Nathan and cohabited with him since January the following year. Nathan was a teacher of modern languages and by 1891 he and Cecilia were living in Staines with two children. Ten years later Joseph Miers was living with three of his daughters at 18 Summerfield Avenue in Queens Park. He was a wholesale clothier with an office in the City, and Lillie worked for her father as a commercial traveller. When she became 21, she had invested £300 in his company, but later the business failed and Joseph went bankrupt. On 15 September 1901 he committed suicide by taking poison in his office at 56 City Road and died in St Bartholomew Hospital. Lillie was devas...

Alan Stuart Spaughton was born at 13 Lowfield Road in Kilburn in 1931. He shortened his name and performed as Alan Stuart. He played tenor sax with Tommy Steele’s Steelmen in the 1950s at the famous 2Is club in Soho and on film and TV shows. On some occasions Alan played sax while lying on his back. In 1957 they had hits with ‘Singing the Blues’, and performed at the Royal Variety Show for the Queen and Prince Philip. Alan stayed with Tommy and the Steelmen until 1959. Tommy Steele and the The Steelmen in 1957 (Getty Images). Tommy Steele and The Steelmen (1957), Alan is on the left In 1956 he married ‘Megs’ Margaret Leggett who had worked as a dancer with the Tiller Girls and an extra in numerous films. Then through a friend he had last seen while playing the back end of a pantomime horse, Alan met Stanley Kubrick who saw a resemblance to Peter Sellers and asked him to play his double in the film Dr Strangelove (1964). In a newspaper interview Alan said, ‘It was quite an undertaking b...

Dr Arthur Fuller was called to the Old Bailey to testify about a fatal accident he attended on Maida Vale, around midday on Sunday, September 26, 1909. He said: ‘Birdseye was lying on his back in the roadway, quite dead. The injuries were consistent with the man having been run over by a motor bus’.  At the inquest, the driver of the bus, Sidney John Hughes was charged with manslaughter, ‘the killing and slaying’ of 59-year-old William Birdseye and bailed pending trial at the Old Bailey.  The Victim and the life of a costermonger William was born and bred a Londoner. He lived at several addresses in St Marylebone and by the time he was 28, was working for himself as a costermonger, along with two younger brothers. Costermongers were a common sight on London streets. Their wares included fruit, meat, fish and vegetables sold from a basket or more commonly, a barrow pushed by hand or harnessed to a donkey. William Birdseye sold periwinkles and shrimps from a hand barrow.  E...

Walking through the park today, I thought how fortunate we are to have this green space in Kilburn.  One hundred and ten years ago, on 1 May 1913, the gates to Kilburn Grange Park were thrown open to the public for the first time, but without any fanfare or celebration. The fact that we have the park owes more to good luck than careful planning, as this story shows.  The park takes its name from a large mansion, The Grange, which was built in 1831, despite claims about it being a much older property. The house stood facing Kilburn High Road, where the Grange Cinema, now used by the Universal Church, stands today.    Kilburn 1893 showing The Grange and its grounds The Peters family were there from 1843. Thomas Peters was a successful and wealthy coach builder who made coaches for Queen Victoria. The last occupant was Mrs Ada Peters, the widow of his son John Winpenny Peters. Ada died in the house on 5 February 1910. For more information about Ada and her lover the Mar...