History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

In the summer of 1905, Mrs Treadwell the wife of a plumber at 74 Granville Road South Kilburn, packed some sandwiches for her ten year old daughter Ethel and eight year son old William, who were going out to play in a local park. They left their house and met up with eight other children all aged between six and ten who lived in the same poor part of Kilburn.  Instead of going to the park they decided to play on the grass in front of Brondesbury Park Mansions, a small block of flats at 132 Salusbury Road. Brondesbury Park Mansions, Salusbury Road today. It was a hot day and they were thirsty, so they knocked on the door of flat No.9 to ask for a drink of water, but there was no one home. Then led by ten year old James Wilkins, they broke a window at the back of the house and climbed in. They went into the kitchen and found a large cake and some bacon which they ate. Then they consumed the whisky in a decanter. In a bedroom they found jewelry and a wardrobe full of clothes. After th...

On the 12 March 1910 Gordon Selfridge gave a talk to the boys of Kilburn Grammar School. Speaking on ‘Business as a Life’s Work’, he said that England was now in serious competition with the other great commercial nations of the world and they should be pushing in commerce as in any other form of activity. There were certain principles that young men going into business needed to know. These were energy, knowledge of the business, and absolute integrity. He urged the boys, ‘to be broadminded, to be splendid, to be big, and if they could not find an opening in any one place the whole world was open to them’. Gordon Selfridge, (Getty Images)   Gordon Selfridge had started as a stock boy in Marshall Field in Chicago. He worked his way up over 25 years to become a junior partner and a wealthy man. During his retirement, Gordon and his wife visited London in 1906, and he noticed that there was no shop to rival Marshal Fields or the great department stores of Paris. He decided to buil...

In the early morning of Thursday 23 May 1935, a fire broke out in Salusbury Road in West Kilburn near the junction with Lonsdale Road. Leopold Rabbitts, who the press wrongly call Mr Rabbit, was woken up by the frantic barking of Jock, his little wire-haired terrier. He found the room full of smoke and realising there was a fire, he quickly got his wife Gertrude and his teenage children Kathleen and John out to safety. He shouted to neighbours to raise the alarm. Then he went back to get Jock, but the flames forced him back and he fell down the stairs. The fire had started in Samuel Sidders and Son, a printing company where Leopold Rabbits was the caretaker, living above the works at No.115 Salusbury Road. The strong wind spread the fire quickly and soon several buildings were ablaze. In addition to the printing works, these were; Deacour Bros, briar pipe makers at No.107-109, Avery-Hardoll, who made garage petrol pumps at No.111, Harvey Nichols, the major Knightsbridge shop, w...