Silk Stream - West Hendon

Silk Stream
The Silk Stream flows south and enters the Brent Reservoir

Post to the north Colindale



Post to the south Welsh Harp

Borthwick Road
Salvation Army Hall 1940s. Site probably previously marked as Christ Church
Slipper baths opened 1930

Crummock Gardens
Part of housing estate built by Laing

Edgware Road
Stretch of the A5 between West Hendon and Colindale. This was identified separately from Hendon in the 13th and by 1597 was a hamlet with a number of houses. By the 18th it had inns servicing the main road.
163 The Kings Arms, This is now Kings Garden Bar and King's Shisha Lounge including an Indian restaurant. There is a large yard area alongside and a ‘garden’ alongside the Edgware Road.
Turnpike marker. This was 20-25 metres north of the junction with Goldsmith Avenue and said ‘London 6, Watford 8’. This was On the Edgware - Kilburn Turnpike which opened in 1711. The marker was in early 19th cast iron, round headed and marked Hendon Parish
Duple Bodies & Motors Limited, they were a bus and coach body builder founded in 1919 came here from Hornsey in 1925. They made produced public service vehicles on a including the former Cowleaze farmhouse. The name 'Duple' means that a single vehicle is suitable for a dual role, an idea of the owner Mr. White. So military Ford Model Ts were converted to look like a small car, but could be turned into a van.  From 1928 they began to make coach/charabanc bodies and began to make these for bus and coach fleets – in 1931 for Green Line coaches, also with Bedford for Vauxhall Motors, and Post Office vans. They also began to export world wide. During the Second World War they built fuselages for the Halifax bomber. Post war they designed a range of coach bodies and also worked on double deckers and they began to acquire other coachbuilders outside London. However from the 1960s new regulations and bad decisions led to a loss of trade. In June 1983, Duple was sold to the Hestair Group and in 1988, along with Dennis, they went to a management buyout team, called Trinity Holdings. Sales continued to decline and in 1989, Duple was closed down.
29 Royal Mail Sorting and Delivery Office
63-65 Shesha Lounge. Previously called The Glen and before that The Surrey Arms which was bought by Crooke of the Hendon Brewery in the mid-19th and rebuilt
Cowleaze Farm. This was taken over by Duple and became part of their factory site.
Hendon Magistrates Court. Hendon Court House was built in 1913 to designs by Henry Wakelam.  There is a recent extension.
The Red Lion became Red Pepper, Indian Restaurant. The building probably dates from 1931 but the pub itself from the 1830s. Demolished.
Rookery Farm. This was on the east side of the road opposite the Red Lion and south of the brewery
Hendon Brewery was located on the Hendon side of the Edgware Road and was originally called Kingsbury and Hyde Brewery.   It was probably a domestic brewery for Kingsbury House. It was expanded by James Robb in 1855 when a well was dug. It was then purchased by Arthur Crooke, who expanded it with sales to railway and canal workers and in 1872 installed a steam engine. It was burnt down in 1878 and rebuilt to an expanded size. It burnt down again in 1894. It was taken over by Michell and Aldous and in 1920 by Truman’s. It closed in 1959.
Hyde House Offices. 18 storey office block built in the 1960s on the site of Hendon Brewery
Spurling Motor Bodies Ltd was on the corner of Rookery Way. They were previously in Old Oak Lane and were major contractor to General Motors and Vauxhall Motors for commercial and bus bodies. They had been founded in 1922 and made a wide range of specialist motor bodies as well as items like airport steps, aircraft seating
Romac House. Office block on the site of Romac Motor Accessories. Made a wide range of items most connected with motor vehicles. Electrical water conditioning plant 1937, puncture repair outfits. Radios and expanded into the television market in 1949.

Gadsbury Close
Site of West Hendon outdoor baths. This was opened in 1922 as the first pool of Hendon Council. It was designed by A.O. Knight and closed in 1980. The site now is housing

Garrick Road
Angels. In 1840 Morris Angel opened a second-hand clothed shop in Seven Dials and hired clothes to actors. They had a relationship with the film industry from 1913 and from the 1920s with Madame Tussauds. In 2002 they moved the Film and TV Stock to this purpose-built facility.

Goldsmiths Avenue
Hendon Isolation Hospital. The fever hospital on Renters Lane, was replaced by Hendon Isolation Hospital in 1929 but by 1970 it was a geriatric hospital which closed in 1984. The Hospital was and the site is now housing.
West Hendon Playing Fields. Public park which is a large grassed area and scattered mature trees. There are tennis courts, football pitches, children's playground, a private bowls club. This was the area of Reets Farm and sold to Hendon Council in 1919 as Kingsbury Lane Playing Fields.
Anti Aircraft Battery in West Hendon Playing Fields. . This probably dated from 1940 to 1960

Hyde Crescent
Hyde School Primary School

Kingsbury Road
Manor House, first recorded as Kingsbury Manor in l3l7. In 1426 the building was known as Lorchons and by 1574 as Hyde Farm. In 1597 the building was a typical late Tudor home. It was rebuilt in the late 19th and demolished in 1932. Hyde Farm was said to be the lodgings of poet Oliver Goldsmith.
Hyde Lodge
British School This was an 1870 replacement of an infants' school in Edgware Road. It was itself replaced in 1876
Mills – in 1597 two Mill fields are shown on a map standing west of the Red Lion.
44 Shell Cottage. The remaining house of a group built in the 17th and 18th

Marsh Drive
West Hendon Community Centre

Northgate Drive
The Northgate Clinic was built in 1968 in the isolation Hospital grounds by the North West Metropolitan Regional Health Board to treat 25 psychopaths. It closed in the late 1990s and there are now flats on the site

Pendragon Walk
Housing on the Hendon Isolation Hospital site.

Rookery Way
West Heath Works. Fractional HP Motors. Making small power drives, there and in Hastings since the 1930s. They made the Sylentflo hairdryer.
Aristocrat Works.
Hyde Plastics. 1960s making moulded bottle closers
Nufix Works. Advertised as making hair cream in 1942
Drill Hall

Rushgrove Avenue
St. Matthias. New church built in 1971 stands behind the church hall. It is by R. W. Hurst in brick and slate, but it is an impressive space within
Hall – this is the original church of 1934 in red brick
28 Bath store. In the 1950s this was the Cherry Tree Machine Co founded in 1884 in Blackburn, Lancashire. They made domestic and commercial laundry equipment and remain in business in Lancashire.

Silk Stream
Bridge on the Welsh Harp, Arm of the reservoir has been filled in 
Brent reservoir. Constructed from an existing River Brent tributary when the Regents Canal Co. built a dam at Kingsbury in 1835. The reservoir was then enlarged in 1854. The canal was much larger than it is currently, but was cut back to the line of Edgware Road in 1940

The Hyde
The Hyde was first mentioned in 1281 and takes its name from a medieval measure of land. The Hyde is situated along the Edgware Road to the east of the Roman road, opposite the Red Lion Public House and was a small hamlet by the middle of the 16“‘ century

West Hendon Broadway
Toyota Jemca Garage. South of silk bridge – site of garden with a fountain which was the frontage to the Schweppes site
Schweppes. Jacob Schweppes had come to England in the 1790s with a new process for making mineral water and opened works which prospered.  After his retirement the firm passed through various hands and became very large. In the 1880s they set up a plant in Hendon on a site with an artesian well. This grew to include both a new bottling plant and research facilities.  The factory’s size and the number employed there led to a great expansion of social facilities in the area.  Closed in 1980
239 West Hendon Ex-Service Mens’ clubs. Truman’s outlet in a 1930s block with some art deco additions.

Wilberforce road
West Hendon Baptist Church dates from the 1890s. The church itself was built in 1930 in a mix of brick and mock Tudor timber work. The inter-timber sections are pebble-dashed.  
Deerfield Cottages Athletic ground – the cottages once were in the north and east of it in the 1950s,
Deerfield Cottages built for workers at the Hendon Schweppes factory

Sources
Angels. Web site
British History. Hendon. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
Duple. Wikipedia Web site
Field. London place names,
GLIAS Newsletter,
Graces Guide. Web site
Hendon Brewery. Wikipedia web site
Kings Garden Bar. Web site.
Lidos in London. Web site
London Borough of Barnet. Web site
London Borough of Brent. Web site
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex
Petrie. Hendon and Golders Green Past
Pevsner and Cherry, London North
Walford. Village London,

Comments

Unknown said…
I grew up in Wilberforce Road Hendon in the late fifties and sixties. Went to Algernon Road infant and junior school, then onto St. David's secondary modern school. Anyone else got memories of that. The good old days!
Unknown said…
West Hendon in the 60's? I was a kid then. Great times!
Anonymous said…
I grew up in Hendon during 50 and 60 went to Algernon road infant and junior school. Left there in 1965 went onto Whitefields . Recently visited the old school which is a Muslim hall. Sad that the school closed. Remember mr springall and other teachers there. There's no information available about the school or who teachers were. Lost history.

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