History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

This is a story of incredible bravery just after the end of WWII. On 8 May 1945 the whole country celebrated the end of the war in Europe and on 15 August the war against Japan ended.  A week later at 1.20 in the early morning of 22 August, Percy Coston a Green Line bus driver, who lived in Harlesden was woken up by his daughter shouting, ‘Fire, Dad!’ He got up and found the fire was next door at No.5 Craven Park Road. From the street he saw two young girls shouting for help from a window on the second floor which was on fire.  Percy ran the 250 yards to the Jubilee Clock where he pulled the fire alarm causing a bell to ring at the local station. The Willesden fire brigade responded within minutes and took him back to Craven Park Road where they set up their escape ladder. No.5 was a five-room house above a shop and the two upper floors were well alight by the time they arrived.  Fireman Frederick Davies ran up the ladder followed by Leading Fireman Norman Thorn. At this ...

Trinidadian Desmond Allum came to London to study law in 1958. He worked in hotel kitchens and the Post Office and studied law at night. He qualified and was called to the Bar in the summer of 1962 and then got a job with the Inland Revenue. In 1964 and 1965 he lived at 116 Greencroft Gardens in West Hampstead.  His friend George Hislop was born in Tobago. He played cricket for Trinidad and represented the West Indies at the Empire Games held in Cardiff in 1958. The following year he came to London to train as a teacher. In September 1962 he started work as a PE teacher at the Hillcroft Secondary School in Tooting Bec.  The Incident On the evening of 31 January 1963 Allum and Hislop had visited friends at 351b Finchley Road (now redeveloped as part of the JW3 Centre). They left and were walking down Finchley Road towards the underground station on their way to Balham. At 9.25pm they were stopped and questioned by two plain clothes detectives who asked them to turn out their po...

This is the story of Arthur Andrews, a career burglar who was responsible for numerous burglaries in our area. In the summer of 1896 he broke into 35 Christchurch Avenue in Brondesbury, 186 Willesden Lane, and 27 Anson Road in Cricklewood. He met Ada Insull while she was in service in West Hampstead and gave her presents including a clock, jewellery and flowers. Arthur promised to marry her and she gave up her job, but the next time she saw him he had been arrested and was in court. Fanny Nisbett, a laundress in Church Street Edgware Road, also became acquainted with Andrews that summer. They went to the Earls Court Exhibition with Fanny’s friend Kate Baker and her boyfriend Harry Bucking who was a sailor. On the way Andrews offered Harry a silver box with a spirit lamp for heating curlers as a present. The sailor declined saying he did not curl his hair. This caused considerable laughter in court as his hair was only the naval regulation length of an eighth of an inch. One evening at ...

This is a shocking story about racism which led to a landmark legal case and is a tribute to a remarkable man who lived in Kilburn at the end of his life. The famous cricketer, Learie Constantine was born in Trinidad in 1901 into a family of cricketers, including his father and a brother. He played for Trinidad and Tobago from 1921, and the West Indies from 1923 to 1939, including several test matches against England. The cricket commentator, John Arlot later said that during his first tour of England in 1923, ‘Constantine learnt much that he never forgot, by no means all of it about cricket: and he recognised the game as his only possible ladder to the kind of life he wanted’. Eventually he became a professional cricketer after struggling hard to make a living in Trinidad, with no permanent job to support his wife Norma and daughter Gloria. His bowling and batting performances in England in 1928 got him noticed. The way Constantine played set him apart from the restrained form of cric...

For many manual workers, life in Victorian London was a mean, hard grind. There wasn’t much relief from the daily routine of work and making enough money to survive. South of Canterbury Road as far as Carlton Vale, many Kilburn streets were lined with terrace houses rented out room by room and occupied by several families. It was a poor, deprived district, and the temporary blurring of reality that alcohol provided was a popular way to forget your problems. But drink too heavily and there could be trouble.  A Troublesome Woman and a Brute of a Husband This neighbourhood and nearby Kilburn High Road were well populated with public houses that were much frequented by locals. If the weather permitted, you left your cramped room and went on the street, adults and kids alike, with the pub an important focus of social life.  Fights in and outside these establishments have featured in several of our blog stories, but this time we are concentrating on just one couple, Richard and Ann ...

The Old Bull and Bush is a Hampstead pub on the North End Way about halfway between Jack Straw’s Castle at the top of the hill and Golders Green in the opposite direction. It was made famous in an Edwardian music hall song by Florrie Forde, ‘Down at the Old Bull and Bush’ which can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZlkScbpwbg Rather oddly the publican kept monkeys in a cage in his garden. On the afternoon of Friday, 19 August 1898, two escaped and stayed hidden on Hampstead Heath until noon the following Sunday, when they were spotted by some boys who threw stones at them. The monkeys jabbered and made faces at their assailants, swinging from tree to tree easily eluding anyone who climbed after them, tempted by the cash reward for their capture.   On Monday, the monkeys gave themselves up and returned to the Bull and Bush, ‘forlorn, dirty-looking, and evidently very miserable’. But within days they not only escaped again but took two more monkeys with them. The four e...

While West Hampstead had far fewer public houses than Kilburn and they were generally well run, there was always the potential for alcohol to cause trouble. The Railway Hotel on the corner of Broadhurst Gardens and West End Lane was owned and opened in 1881 by Richard Pincham. It was a large and popular venue offering accommodation as well as food and drink.  Around 10.30pm on 8 September 1897, James William Woledge and Henry Hiscocks were in the pub. It appeared the two men knew each other and began to argue, which prompted the barman to leap over the bar and eject them. Outside a fight erupted and Woledge fell to the ground, hitting his head hard on the pavement. Descriptions of what led up to the fight outside the Railway Hotel differ between witnesses. 33-year-old plumber James Woledge had lived with his wife Mary near Camden Town, before moving to 73 Broomsleigh Street off Mill Lane. At the inquest, his friend John Cook said he’d gone to the pub with James and no sooner had th...