History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

This story looks at two local clubs, before and after the War, where groups of amateur enthusiasts made short movie films.  Brondesbury Cine Society The Brondesbury Cine Society held their first meeting on 13 September 1932. It was originally called the Kilburn and Brondesbury Amateur Movie Society until the name was shortened in April 1933. They initially met in an empty floor above an engineering workshop (no address given). Then in October 1932 they rented St Anne’s Church Hall in Salusbury Road Willesden for weekly meetings and to show their silent films. Today the building has been replaced by a modern church.    1935 OS Map showing St Anne’s At the end of October 1932 an audience of 200 people came to see ‘Hemsby Holiday Camp’, a film made by Claude Dickins at the Norfolk camp that summer. Other films included ‘A Day at Bourneville’, ‘A Day at Port Sunlight’ and ‘The Mistake’ (no other information was given about this film). The Hampstead News reported that in addit...

These adjoining houses in West Hampstead, which were built in the 1890s, have an interesting history. The Caerthillian Nursing Home first opened in No.87 about 1925, and ten years later expanded into the premises next door. The principal, Edith Wyatt was the daughter of one of the first owners of the houses. This advert from 1938 mentions the recently introduced Minnittis Apparatus, which was a nitrous oxide gas and air mask to help the mother during delivery of the baby. Before the NHS, middle class parents paid to have their children born in a private maternity home.  The writer Jackie Collins, sister of Joan, was born there in 1937 while her parents were living in Hillcrest Court at the top of Shoot-Up Hill. Dusty Springfield (real name Mary O’Brien) was born at the nursing home in 1939. The O’Brien’s had lived locally in 104 Sumatra Road from about 1933 to 1938. Her birth certificate says Mary was born 16 April at 87 Fordwych Road. When her father registered the birth on 23 May...

In 1898, 51-years old Mrs Sands was living at 25 Anson Road Cricklewood. For some time she and her neighbours had been receiving nasty anonymous letters and parcels. This had been going on for several years but came to a head in January when she was sent a parcel containing live black beetles. She reported it to the Post Office who conducted an investigation.  Anson Road (Willesden Local History Society)     25 Anson Road, 2022   She was Elizabeth Frances Colechin, born about 1847 in Kingston Jamacia. At the time of the 1871 census, her father William was a surveyor in the War Department, living in Portsea. In 1876 Fanny had married William Gregory Sands a merchant, and they had two sons who were born in Japan. But he died four years later in Kobe , and Fanny and the boys returned to England where they first lived at 40 Perham Road in West Kensington. About 1894 she became friends with Josephine Chilcott who lived with her mother and stepfather in Fulham. Josephi...

Lena Connell was an important photographer of the women’s suffragette movement in the early 20th century. Her father Frederick Henry Connell (1839-1911) was a watchmaker specializing in high-class chronometers, before becoming a photographer. At the time of his marriage to Catherine Scrivener in July 1868 he was living at 17 Tavistock Street in Marylebone.  Lena was born as Adelin Beatrice Connell on 27 July 1875 at 29 Southampton Row where her father was working for Messrs Roblin and Sons, French Clock makers. By 1882 the family were at 41 Lorne Road in Finsbury Park. Two years later Connell had moved to 83 Kilburn High Road as a watchmaker and jeweller. He was still there in 1887.  Frederick took up photography, and in 1891 the family were living in 69 Abbey Road. The census that year shows Frederick as a photographer, with two daughters helping him: Dora, 17, was a photographic re-toucher and Adelin aged 15, was a photographic assistant.    69 Abbey Road (Dick Wei...

Today with the use of digital cameras and mobile phones, we take colour photography for granted. This is the story of how nearly a century ago, a pioneering invention, and a production plant in Willesden transformed photography.   The invention In 1928 at a meeting of the Professional Photographers Association, LW Oliver and WTL Becker demonstrated their new technique of making colour photographs. They said it had taken two years of research with more than 5,000 experiments. Although there was the French autochrome method which produced colour photos, it was not widely available. For over 30 years photographers had been trying without success to find a practical and simple way of reproducing colours. Oliver and Becker used a modified camera to simultaneously produce a negative using three thin films sensitive to red, blue and green. The films were superimposed and printed on white paper to produce a colour image. Importantly, multiple prints could be made of the image. It received ...

We have collected several odd stories from Kilburn which will intrigue and amuse you. Stealing a baby’s clothes In July 1867 Jane Cox, who lived at 15 Bridge Street in Kilburn (now demolished), left her two-year old child sitting on the step of nearby Number 7. But when she looked again the child had gone. Some time later a gentleman riding his horse found the baby, naked and crying beside a pond. He took the child to the police who returned it to a grateful Mrs Cox. But what had happened? Two children, Mary Anne Taylor aged 10, and Mary Rogers aged 9, were responsible for kidnapping the two-year old. In court, it was said both girls had respectable parents and lived at 3 Alpha Place, a section of Canterbury Road in Kilburn. After undressing the baby, the girls went to Charles Tilley, a marine store dealer at 2 Carlton Place, and threw the clothes they had stolen onto his scales. The girls told Tilley that their mothers had sent them to sell the clothes to buy soap, and he gave them a ...

In 1847, Thomas Hickman, his wife Harriet and their six children, aged from 16 months to 12 years old, were living in Penton Villas, a two-room cottage in Middle Row Kensal New Town.  The open countryside around Kensal Green began to change at the turn of the nineteenth century, with the building of the Grand Junction Canal to Paddington (1801) and two years later, the first burials at Kensal Green Cemetery. A large gas works opened south of the canal in 1845 while the Great Western Railway line started running trains from Paddington in 1848. Subsequent street and house building had to adapt itself to these early developments.   1870 OS Map An area of land sandwiched between the railway and canal was developed from the late 1830s onwards, with narrow streets lined with small houses. Named Kensal New Town, the properties soon became overcrowded and insanitary. The area was called ‘Chelsea in the Wilderness’ because it was distant from, but nonetheless under the local government...