Mitchell Brook Willesden
Mitchell Brook
Mitchell Brook rises in this area and flows south west towards the Brent. It is joined by the Harlesden Brook from the east
Mitchell Brook rises in this area and flows south west towards the Brent. It is joined by the Harlesden Brook from the east
Post to the north Neasden Station
Post to the west Stonebridge
Bridge Road
38 Harmony Children’s Centre. Four pavilions with offices and a nursery. By Greenhill Jenner 1955. Sure Start Centre, likely to close.
Rail Bridge
Mitchell Brook Primary School. The school was built during the Great War but has been added to over the years.
Church End
An old name for part of what was Willesden village. The church was in a dead end lane near the manor and a farm. Recorded as the ‘Church end’ in 1593. It was also known as as Crouch (Cross) End, and was on the edge of marshland. In the middle ages Willesden was owns by St. Paul's Cathedral and later by All Souls' College, Oxford, Westminster Abbey and St. Bartholomew's Hospital
Church Road
Church End and Roundwood Unity Centre built 2007 and provides recreational, educational and cultural activities
Beulah Apostolic Church
212-214 Afghan Islamic Cultural Centre
226 Granada Cinema. This opened as the Empire Kinema in 1920 built by Cecil Masey for Alexander Bernstein. It closed in 1927 when a balcony was added and Theodore Komisarjevsky was employed as interior designer. It also had a Christie 2Manual/7Rank Christie organ. It was then sold to Gaumont British Theatres, and closed in 1936 for alterations and re-opened as the Granada Theatre. It closed in 1962 and was converted into a Granada Bingo Club which closed in the 1990s. In 1994 it re-opened as a live comedy theatre and in 1995 began screening Asian films. This closed in 1997 and it was converted into a church for the Miracle Signs and Wonders Ministries who want to demolish and convert to housing.
Restoration Revival Fellowship Apostolic Church. This was a Congregational church foundation here in 1899. It is in Red brick with an asymmetrical. Tower, designed by Spalding and Spalding with an adjoining lecture hall. In 1962 it was leased to a film company.
Cobbald Estate
Industrial and trading units
Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories. Site of celebrated strike in the late 1970s which the Tories won out on. The laboratory had been founded by George Ward in the 1960s and processed colour film using low paid female labour.
Energen Close
Energen Foods Ltd. Had a works in Bridge Road from before 1929. They made starch reduced bread for slimmers
Franklin Road
Trojan Works. A firm there in the 1950s which specialised in hospital furniture
Adelphi Works. Heaton and Tabb. Designers who had worked with Morris became specialist liner decorators. Founded by A. Heaton they were taken over by Harland and Woolfe when decorations were required for the Titanic and Olympic. They were sold off in 1963.
Willesden New Cemetery. Opened in 1891 when the names of the Burial Board were buried in bottles. It includes the Willesden Civilian war memorial, a tribute to local civilians who died in the Second World War but the lime walk to it has gone. There are 130 graves from the Great War and 121 from the Second World War - 29 of which h form an informal group. A Screen Wall bears the names of those casualties from both wars buried in the cemetery whose graves could not be individually marked. The chapels were in 'unique Pont Street Dutch' designed by Mr C H Worley, but now demolished. The layout of paths is simple and straight, but there is a lot of deciduous planting - horse chestnut, Lombardy and hybrid poplar, willow and a circus of horse chestnut.
Garnet Road
St Marys Church of England Primary School. This is the oldest school in Brent, founded in 1777 when Richard Freelove gave £200 towards building a Charity School in Willesden. In 1809 a Sunday school was founded and this was extended to a day school in 1818. A new school was built on the site 1853 and again in Pound Lane and following various reorganisations a new school was built here in 1972
Hawkshead Road
Leopold Primary School. Opened in Leopold Road in 1897 and later moved here.
High Road
Willesden Magistrates Court
White Hart Inn. The pub was here in 1749. In the late 19th it was known for its pleasure gardens. It is now closed and the site used for housing
J. H. Dallmeyer Ltd. Church End Works, he was the son if an Anglo-German apprenticed as an optician in1846. He came to London and worked for a telescope manufacturer. Amend later took over the works. He made lens to international success and his son took over the business developing telephoto lenses.
393 Peradon & Co. made billiard cues here from the 1880s
473 Park Ward Motor body works – built Rolls Royce bodies. They had moved here in 1919 into what had been the London General Horse Bus Stables – Church End Paddocks. Taken over by Rolls Royce in 1939. The works were demolished in 1982. Now Homebase
356-360 Tony’s Pub.
449 The Elms, would become part of Beckets Coal yard
Leopold Road
St Joseph’s Roman Catholic primary school. Built by the Willesden School Board in 1897 as Leopold School for junior and infants. It eventually became a Secondary Modern and closed 1966. It was then used as an annexe for St. Joseph’s, Harlesden
Longstone Avenue
Roundwood Gospel Assembly. This opened in 1971 in the old Roundwood Mission
Newfield Primary School
Neasden Lane
St Mary Church. The church is first mentioned in 1181 and first recorded as St. Mary's around 1280. The font is mid-12th century, and a 12th century window is said to have been destroyed in 1872. By the early 16th the church was known for its spring credited with healing powers and a shrine to the Virgin Mary, sometimes called the Black Virgin. In 1538 the image was burnt at Chelsea. There is currently an early 20th image in the church. The church is in Kentish ragstone with Victorian ‘restorations’. The holy water of Willesden flows underneath it.
A rectory and vicarage stood next to the churchyard by the mid- 13th. The rectory was probably the chief manor for the parish
Saint Mary’s Parish Centre
Old Burial Ground. It is said there were burials here from the 10th and definitely from the C13th – there were wooden headstones here. By the 19th the churchyard was full and in 1865 Willesden Burial Board bought a site between Church Path and the railway. Near the south-east exit is a War Memorial in remembrance of workers from the British Thomas Houston Factory who died in the two world wars. The churchyard is walled with horse chestnuts and limes. A wildlife area has been developed as a natural woodland area in conjunction with the London Wildlife Trust. Said to be haunted by a hooded white monk and also said to be the site of a plaque pit.
Church Cottages
Church End Estate. Taken over in 1998 by Fortunegate from Brent Council
Chancel House. Job Centre
Taylor’s Lane
Acorn Boys Club, redeveloped as housing.
Sources
Cinema Treasures, Web site
Clunn. The Face of London.
GLIAS Newsletter
London Borough of Brent. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Gardens Online. Web site
London’s Industrial Archaeology
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex
Pevsner and Cherry, London North West
Stevenson. Middlesex
Walford. Village London
Willesden Historical Society newsletter
Post to the west Stonebridge
Bridge Road
38 Harmony Children’s Centre. Four pavilions with offices and a nursery. By Greenhill Jenner 1955. Sure Start Centre, likely to close.
Rail Bridge
Mitchell Brook Primary School. The school was built during the Great War but has been added to over the years.
Church End
An old name for part of what was Willesden village. The church was in a dead end lane near the manor and a farm. Recorded as the ‘Church end’ in 1593. It was also known as as Crouch (Cross) End, and was on the edge of marshland. In the middle ages Willesden was owns by St. Paul's Cathedral and later by All Souls' College, Oxford, Westminster Abbey and St. Bartholomew's Hospital
Church Road
Church End and Roundwood Unity Centre built 2007 and provides recreational, educational and cultural activities
Beulah Apostolic Church
212-214 Afghan Islamic Cultural Centre
226 Granada Cinema. This opened as the Empire Kinema in 1920 built by Cecil Masey for Alexander Bernstein. It closed in 1927 when a balcony was added and Theodore Komisarjevsky was employed as interior designer. It also had a Christie 2Manual/7Rank Christie organ. It was then sold to Gaumont British Theatres, and closed in 1936 for alterations and re-opened as the Granada Theatre. It closed in 1962 and was converted into a Granada Bingo Club which closed in the 1990s. In 1994 it re-opened as a live comedy theatre and in 1995 began screening Asian films. This closed in 1997 and it was converted into a church for the Miracle Signs and Wonders Ministries who want to demolish and convert to housing.
Restoration Revival Fellowship Apostolic Church. This was a Congregational church foundation here in 1899. It is in Red brick with an asymmetrical. Tower, designed by Spalding and Spalding with an adjoining lecture hall. In 1962 it was leased to a film company.
Cobbald Estate
Industrial and trading units
Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories. Site of celebrated strike in the late 1970s which the Tories won out on. The laboratory had been founded by George Ward in the 1960s and processed colour film using low paid female labour.
Energen Close
Energen Foods Ltd. Had a works in Bridge Road from before 1929. They made starch reduced bread for slimmers
Franklin Road
Trojan Works. A firm there in the 1950s which specialised in hospital furniture
Adelphi Works. Heaton and Tabb. Designers who had worked with Morris became specialist liner decorators. Founded by A. Heaton they were taken over by Harland and Woolfe when decorations were required for the Titanic and Olympic. They were sold off in 1963.
Willesden New Cemetery. Opened in 1891 when the names of the Burial Board were buried in bottles. It includes the Willesden Civilian war memorial, a tribute to local civilians who died in the Second World War but the lime walk to it has gone. There are 130 graves from the Great War and 121 from the Second World War - 29 of which h form an informal group. A Screen Wall bears the names of those casualties from both wars buried in the cemetery whose graves could not be individually marked. The chapels were in 'unique Pont Street Dutch' designed by Mr C H Worley, but now demolished. The layout of paths is simple and straight, but there is a lot of deciduous planting - horse chestnut, Lombardy and hybrid poplar, willow and a circus of horse chestnut.
Garnet Road
St Marys Church of England Primary School. This is the oldest school in Brent, founded in 1777 when Richard Freelove gave £200 towards building a Charity School in Willesden. In 1809 a Sunday school was founded and this was extended to a day school in 1818. A new school was built on the site 1853 and again in Pound Lane and following various reorganisations a new school was built here in 1972
Hawkshead Road
Leopold Primary School. Opened in Leopold Road in 1897 and later moved here.
High Road
Willesden Magistrates Court
White Hart Inn. The pub was here in 1749. In the late 19th it was known for its pleasure gardens. It is now closed and the site used for housing
J. H. Dallmeyer Ltd. Church End Works, he was the son if an Anglo-German apprenticed as an optician in1846. He came to London and worked for a telescope manufacturer. Amend later took over the works. He made lens to international success and his son took over the business developing telephoto lenses.
393 Peradon & Co. made billiard cues here from the 1880s
473 Park Ward Motor body works – built Rolls Royce bodies. They had moved here in 1919 into what had been the London General Horse Bus Stables – Church End Paddocks. Taken over by Rolls Royce in 1939. The works were demolished in 1982. Now Homebase
356-360 Tony’s Pub.
449 The Elms, would become part of Beckets Coal yard
Leopold Road
St Joseph’s Roman Catholic primary school. Built by the Willesden School Board in 1897 as Leopold School for junior and infants. It eventually became a Secondary Modern and closed 1966. It was then used as an annexe for St. Joseph’s, Harlesden
Longstone Avenue
Roundwood Gospel Assembly. This opened in 1971 in the old Roundwood Mission
Newfield Primary School
Neasden Lane
St Mary Church. The church is first mentioned in 1181 and first recorded as St. Mary's around 1280. The font is mid-12th century, and a 12th century window is said to have been destroyed in 1872. By the early 16th the church was known for its spring credited with healing powers and a shrine to the Virgin Mary, sometimes called the Black Virgin. In 1538 the image was burnt at Chelsea. There is currently an early 20th image in the church. The church is in Kentish ragstone with Victorian ‘restorations’. The holy water of Willesden flows underneath it.
A rectory and vicarage stood next to the churchyard by the mid- 13th. The rectory was probably the chief manor for the parish
Saint Mary’s Parish Centre
Old Burial Ground. It is said there were burials here from the 10th and definitely from the C13th – there were wooden headstones here. By the 19th the churchyard was full and in 1865 Willesden Burial Board bought a site between Church Path and the railway. Near the south-east exit is a War Memorial in remembrance of workers from the British Thomas Houston Factory who died in the two world wars. The churchyard is walled with horse chestnuts and limes. A wildlife area has been developed as a natural woodland area in conjunction with the London Wildlife Trust. Said to be haunted by a hooded white monk and also said to be the site of a plaque pit.
Church Cottages
Church End Estate. Taken over in 1998 by Fortunegate from Brent Council
Chancel House. Job Centre
Taylor’s Lane
Acorn Boys Club, redeveloped as housing.
Sources
Cinema Treasures, Web site
Clunn. The Face of London.
GLIAS Newsletter
London Borough of Brent. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Gardens Online. Web site
London’s Industrial Archaeology
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex
Pevsner and Cherry, London North West
Stevenson. Middlesex
Walford. Village London
Willesden Historical Society newsletter
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