History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Do you remember rag and bone men, or totters as they liked to be called, coming around Kilburn with their horse and carts, shouting out the unintelligible ‘Raaa-Boon’, or 'Any Ol' Iron'? Or perhaps you remember the TV series Steptoe and Son, or does it only conjure up today’s singer Rag’n’Bone Man (Rory Charles Graham).   Rag and Bone man in Streatham 1985 (Tony Rees, Wikipedia) In 1966 Brent Council, which had been formed the year before, caused a local outcry when they moved 14 rag and bone men from South Kilburn to their yard in Dyne Road near the old Willesden Town Hall.    The previous Willesden Council had compulsory purchased two short roads in South Kilburn called Cambridge Mews East and Cambridge Mews West in 1934. The small mews had been built about 1870 on either side of Cambridge Road, when it provided stabling and accommodation for the carriages and coachmen of the middle-class and professional people who lived in the surrounding streets. ...