History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

   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...

‘One Life’ is a new film directed by James Hawes, starring Antony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Flynn. The title comes from a line in the Talmud, translated as; ‘Save one life – save the world’. It tells the amazing story of Sir Nicholas Winton who rescued 669 children from the Nazis. Antony Hopkins in One Life Nicholas Winton was born as Nicholas George Wertheim. The Wertheim family originally came from Prussia, (part of the German empire). Grandfather Nicolas was working as a clerk and living in Manchester in 1871. By 1895 he had moved to ‘Stonecroft’ No.5 Cleve Road in West Hampstead, where the family remained until 1933. His son Rudolf, a bank manager, took over the house in the early 1900s and Nicholas George was born here on 19 May 1909. Because of growing anti-German feeling, the family changed their name to Winton in October 1938. Nicholas lived briefly at 5 Belgrave Road Marylebone, and he was at 20 Willow Road in Hampstead by 1938.  In December 1938, twenty nin...

There were many tributes to this well-known actor who died yesterday, aged 95.  He spent some of his childhood in West Hampstead which he wrote about in his autobiography ‘I must be in there somewhere’ (1989) Hodder & Stoughton. Born Sidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland in 1928, Joss Ackland was three years old when his family moved from North Kensington into the basement flat at No.86 Hillfield Road. He wrote: ‘I was a young boy in West Hampstead where I could travel from my house to the foreign lands of Mill Lane - to the outer space of my primary school (Beckford) with the exciting knowledge that the great planet of West End Lane was in the distance, and my spaceship was eventually able to take me by bus to the fantastic world of the cinema, near Golders Green’.  Then there was the massive State Cinema on Kilburn High Road, where the film was preceded by an hour’s variety show of ‘ventriloquists, high wire acts, musical saws, conjurors and always lines of beautiful high-kicki...

Researching the old newspapers, I was surprised to find that a ‘kinematographer’ had lived briefly in West Hampstead. In this story we look at his career in films. In March 1915 he was looking for work and put an advert in the section ‘Engagements Wanted’ in the trade magazine The Bioscope. It read: Alphonso Frenguelli, camera artist, disengaged, eight years experience, 78 Harvard Court, Honeybourne Road, (West Hampstead) As an important cinematographer and film director at the start of the silent pictures era he was not out of work for long.  He was part of the large Frenguelli family in Rome, where his father was an official artist in the Vatican. Alphonso Goffredo Frenguelli was born there in August 1894. He got into the developing film industry and was the managing director of Celio Films, and then chief cameraman for the famous Cines Co. of Rome. He won the gold medal for cinematography two years in a row at the Italian International film exhibition.  Frenguelli was the l...

The charismatic, but controversial politician Sir Oswald Mosley was born in Mayfair in 1896. He came from a wealthy aristocratic family in Staffordshire who until 1846 were lords of the manor of Manchester. After serving in WWI, he married Cynthia ‘Cimmie’ Curzon, daughter of the Foreign Secretary in 1920 and their wedding guests included King George V and Queen Mary. After a period in the Conservative Party and then the Labour Party, Mosley started his own New Party in March 1931, but it failed to secure any seats at the general election that October.  Following the rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy, and after meeting Mussolini, Mosley set up the British Union of Fascists (BUF) on 1 October 1932 at 12 Great George Street. That year he began an affair with Diana Mitford who was married to Bryan Guinness. After the death of Cimmie in April 1933, Mosley married Diana in Berlin on 6 October 1936 at the home of Josef Goebbels, with Hitler as the guest of honour. However, Mosley look...

Charles Booth’s ‘Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London’ undertaken between 1886 and 1903, was conducted as a series of interviews. Liverpool-born Booth was a shipowner and sociologist. He financed and devised one of the most comprehensive oral surveys of London life, covering poverty, industry and religious influences. It included the creation of a series of ‘poverty’ maps. These were coloured to show the status of the residents, street by street, from the poorest to the very wealthiest. Here is an example of the local poverty map, but it is not possible to see the detail in this blog. The interviews included talking to the local clergymen, and their comments in 1898 and 1899 form the basis of this blog story, with additional material from policemen who walked the investigators around their beats. Locally, it was Inspector Wayman who described some of the streets and their residents. He had been based in West Hampstead for four years, and was described as a ‘melanc...