History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

In 1899 George Raymond Birt was living at 58 Compayne Gardens where he had recently moved from 20 Besize Grove , Belsize Park. But when Inspector Murphy and Superintendent Holmes from the City Police called at the house on 17 February with a warrant for his arrest, he was not there: he had gone on the run. Four weeks later the police received a tip-off and arrested him in Barnsbury. The officers took him by cab to the Minories Police Station where he was charged.  George Raymond Birt was no common criminal; he was the Chairman and Managing Director of the Millwall Docks with an annual salary of £2,000 (today equivalent to about £200,000). The New Millwall Docks, 1868 The Millwall Docks After more than two years building and difficulties obtaining the finance, the Millwall Docks eventually opened in March 1868 on the Isle of Dogs. It was one of the largest docks in London. George Birt who had previously been the superintendent of the Victoria Docks for ten years, w...

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...

Rock and Roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis was born into a poor family in Ferriday Louisiana in 1935. His musical talent was obvious from an early age and his parents mortgaged their house to buy him a piano. His mother enrolled him in the Southwest Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas , so that he would sing evangelical songs. But Lewis daringly played a boogie woogie rendition of ‘My God Is Real’ at a church assembly. The next morning, the Dean of the School called Lewis into his office to expel him.  Years later Lewis was asked, ‘Are you still playing the devil’s music?’ He said, ‘Yes, I am. But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil and they don’t’. Jerry became known as ‘The Killer’ from a school nickname and as ‘the ‘wild man of rock’ from his high-energy performances of piano playing and singing. In 1956 he went to Sam...

As the festive season approaches, we were fascinated to find two stories which involved soldiers in Kilburn at Christmas in 1915. The First World War had been going on for over a year. The men who had signed up enthusiastically in September 1914, confidently believing it would all be over by Christmas, were now bogged down in their trenches in Flanders. The first story concerned Kilburn Lane School . The map below shows the school which opened in 1885, on the corner where Kilburn Lane turned a right angle near the Chamberlayne Road end. Today only the infant school building remains and the Moberley Sports centre has been built on the rest of the site. Kilburn Lane School in 1894 Cookery Class in Kilburn Lane School, about 1898 The Boys band in Kilburn Lane School, about 1898 Christmas 1915 A newspaper in December carried a story about a seven year old unnamed girl in the infant school who said to her teacher, ‘Please Miss, can’t we give the wound...

In July 1907 the Daily Express ran a series of front page articles about a woman in West Hampstead who they dubbed the ‘Queen of Madagascar’. She was Elizabeth Horne who had lived with her husband Frederick at 18 Greencroft Gardens since the late 1880s. Elizabeth was the daughter of Alexander Cowie, a Scotsman who had opened a boys’ school in Box Villa, Marlborough Road St. John’s Wood in 1829. They were a very religious family and her brother William became the Archbishop of Auckland in New Zealand . Elizabeth was born in 1837 and she married Frederick Warlters Horne in Hampstead in 1879. Born in Norwood in 1854, Frederick worked in a merchant firm set up by his father who traded goods with Spain and Portugal . The 1907 Exposé The Daily Express said that, ‘As a result of an exhaustive inquiry made by a special representative of the Express, the public are now placed for the first time in possession of the full facts’. The articles revealed a ‘secret syndicate’ where M...