Yeading Brook - Headstone Lane

Yeading Brook

The Brook rises in Pinner Park and flows southwards

Post to the south Pinner Park
Post to the north Hatch End
Post to th west Pinner

Bridleway
Harrow Garden Centre. This was farm land and During World War II it allotments which remained until the late 1960s, when it became a nursery and then a garden centre.
Harrow St. Marys Cricket Club. The club was founded in 1881 and originally played on Harrow Hill as the cricket team of St Mary's Church on Harrow on the Hill. In 1901 the club was re-launched.  They played in Harrow, suffering a fire in which they lost all past memorabilia, until 2009 when they moved here onto the Old Millhillians Ground.
Old Millhillians Rugby Club. The club dates from 1878
Raguvanshi Charitable Trust Hall. Opened in 1975 as a centre for religious and social activities for the Lohanna community.

Broadfields
Parkfield House. Care home run by Willow Housing and Care Housing Association
Broadfields Sports & Social Club. This is on the old British Rail Sports Ground.
Broadfields Community Sports Ground
Broadfields Country Club

Chantry Place
Hatch – the entry into Pinner Park in the middle ages. The hatch entrance was at the entry to the footbridge over the railway.
Site of a Chantry is marked on many maps – however it seems that this refers to a house here owned by a Chantry which was sited in Harrow. This area is sometimes called ‘Old Hatch End’
Site of Pinner Sidings. Trading and light industrial area
APT Controls. The Power House. The firm was founded in 1961 by E.K. Bloom and car park ticket dispensers, vehicle detectors and rising arm barriers from America. They then began to design and manufacture a barrier range for car parks and for vehicle entrance/exits. In the 1970s parking meters were added and other systems for car parks. Following a number of take overs in 2008, they began work on electric vehicle charging and more web based parking management

Headstone Lane
Letchford Arms. Said to be named after a Pinner doctor who died in the 17th
Letchford House. A timber-framed farm-house of the mid-17th, with later brick additions, inserted sash windows, and a Georgian porch. Converted to offices 1975. Said to be the farm house of Hatch End Farm dating from 1670.
Headstone Lane Station. Built in 1917 it now lies between Hatch End and Harrow and Wealdstone stations on the London and Birmingham main line, which opened in 1838, into Euston. The Bakerloo Line was opened here in 1917 when the line extended from Willesden Junction to Watford Junction. The Bakerloo service was withdrawn in 1982.
Blackwell County School. 'Blackwell' was a mixed, County Secondary School. The name seems to have come from the local Blackwell family of Crosse and Blackwell.  The school was built in from 1948 and the first pupils moved in in 1950. The Main School Building was originally for 900 pupils and the Architect was Cecil Stallman. It has a pitched roof, a covered walk-way, and corrugated aluminium cladding. In 1953 the Great Hall, was completed by Architects. In 1958 the swimming pool was opened built by pupils and parents and in 1960s the school got a dismantled, Compton organ. In 1974 Blackwell became comprehensive as Hatch End High School.
Hatch End High School was previously Blackwell County School. Now an ‘Academy’.
Shaftesbury School. The Chantry Junior School opened here in 1951 and the school was to serve traveller families. But with a small intake in 1961 the juniors moved into the Infants School. Then Shaftesbury Special School relocated into the junior school site. The school had been Harrow Special School for the Educationally Sub-Normal, which in 1954 was Shaftesbury Special School in recognition of the 7th Lord Shaftesbury’s connection with Harrow and for his work for children.  In 1993 Shaftesbury School became a secondary focused school for pupils with a range of needs and in 1997 it was renamed Shaftesbury High School.

Long Elmes
Shaftesbury School. The development of the site began as part of the setup of a new LCC estate in the 1940s. This was the site of Chantry Infants and Junior School. The large tree in the centre of the playground is a remaining boundary trees.  In 1961 the juniors joined the infants in this site. However the school roll kept falling and the school closed in 1978, The infants site was then used as a council storage area until In 1989 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster took over the site and relocated St. Teresa’s Primary School there,

Pinner Park Farm
Pinner Park Farm. A moated house had stood on the site since the middle ages and was probably the lodge for the deer park administration.  The farm belonged to St Thomas’ Hospital in Southwark from 1731 and was then run by a farm manager, their ex-gatekeeper primarily as a dairy farm.  They rebuilt the farm house, which remains on site and they filled in the moat. Some farm land was lost when the 1837 London to Birmingham line came through the area. In the 1840s new buildings were erected and the farm renovated. One barn from the 1840s was burnt down in 1980 and another which has been built over the old moat was re-erected at Headstone Manor in 1992. Some land was sold for sports fields and houses in the 1930s but Hendon Rural District Council declared it as open space. The farm with 18th and 19th buildings, survives in a pocket of unbuilt open country. It is owned by the London Borough of Harrow and leased as a dairy farm.
Pinner Park Farmhouse. Built around 1750. Two-storey house
Granary. Built around 1700. Timber framed and weather boarded

Pinner Park
One source of the Yeading Brook is in Pinner Park.
The park in the middle ages was a 250 acre reservation for deer owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury.  The park was enclosed by a bank with gated paths across it so it could not be accessed. The Keeper of the Park was a sinecure for the Abbot of Westminster.  It had ceased to be a deer park by the mid-16^th and was leased by the Archbishops as a farm, probably to the park managers.  They quickly felled most of the timber. It was subsequently purchased by Anthony Bacon in 1578 and continued with a series of owners until purchased by St. Thomas Hospital in 1731,

Winston Court
On the site of The Orchard

Sources
Blackwell History. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Clarke. A History of Pinner
Field. London Place Names
Middlesex County Council. History of Middlesex.
Pastscape. Web site
Shaftesbury School, web site
Walford. Village London