North London Railway - Brondesbury Park
North London Line
The North London Line from Brondesbury Station runs south westwards
TQ 24231 84000
Residential area around and including Queens Park. The area also includes some interesting industrial sites. Churches and buildings used for religious purposes demonstrate how faiths change as populations change.
Post to the north Brondesbury
Post to the west Brondesbury Park
This posting covers only the north west corner of this square
Brondesbury Park Road
This is still marked as parkland on the Ordnance Survey map of 1904. The road is said to have been built as a spine road through the area but on some older maps it is called ‘Brand’s Causeway’
Brondesbury Park Station. Opened in 1908 as the ‘youngest’ station on the line it now lies between Brondesbury and Kensal Rise stations on the North London Railway. The platforms were rebuilt in 1996.
Chevening Road
The road was built by the Church Commissioners in the mid 1880s as one of the approach roads to Queens Park
Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Centre. This was previously Brondesbury Synagogue. It is now the Iman Al-Khoei Foundation, the premier Shia mosque in London. The centre serves a sizable community of Iranian, Iraqi and Afghani Shias, with the emphasis on Ahl al-Bayt (Ahlul Bayt) doctrine, which holds Muhammad’s immediate household members to be ‘infallible Imams’. They also use old school buildings to the north.
Brondesbury Synagogue. This building dates from 1904-5 the land having been sold cheaply to the congregation by Solomon Barnett who became its first warden. It was destroyed by arson in 1965 and rebuilt. It was sold in 1974 with most of its members joining either the Willesden or the Cricklewood Synagogue. It was Ashkenazi Orthodox Ritual and a constituent synagogue of the United Synagogue from 1905 until its closure.
Winkworth Hall. This was built as a hall of residence for students at the Maria Grey Teacher Training College. There is a plaque on the building – Emma Winkworth was the first woman to climb the Jungfrau and was also known as a women’s suffrage supporter. The building is now owned by London Borough of Brent and occupied by the Islamia School and by Hopscotch nursery. It was also used by Brondesbury and Kilburn School
Kimberley Road
Welbeck Works – this may originally have been a cutlery works but it was taken on by early motor enthusiast and inventor Frederick Sims who moved his Simms Manufacturing Co from Bermondsey to here in 1902. Here they made Simms-Welbeck cars, lorries and marine engines, fire engines, agricultural vehicles, military vehicles and guns, and aeronautical devices. The works was burnt down in 1920. In 1908 he works was taken over by Grosvenor, Rolls Royce and Daimler agents. Hooper’s moved their Rolls and Daimler servicing unit to what was then called the Claborn Works in 1959. Hoopers were long established coachbuilders working at the extreme top end of the market and based in Westminster and Park Royal. In 1991 Hooper bought Metrocab out of receivership and repaired taxis on the site, but by 2002, when Metrocab moved out, were no longer involved. The site is now flats named after Hoopers.
Magneto Works – shown on a map as a different site to Welbeck Works, the magneto was another of Simms’ enterprises
Albion Works. Various companies making specialist art papers.
Legion Works. Marwick and Pauling paper board
Kingswood Avenue
One of the roads around the park which was built up with houses as part of the deal when Queen’s Park was opened.
Queens Park
This square includes only the extreme north east corner of the park and the area adjacent to Chevening Road. The park opened in 1887. It was initially called Kilburn Recreation Ground, and has been known as Queen’s Park since the Jubilee year of 1887. It comprises 30 acres of the site of the Royal Agricultural Show held in 1879 and was acquired in 1886 by the Corporation of London from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 1940 a bomb fell in the middle of the north field and another by temporary wooden fencing along Chevening Road.
Bandstand, The Bandstand was erected in 1889. It is in cast iron by Macfarlane and Co. of Glasgow. It remains in the park despite some wartime alterations.
A line of trees running north west from the bandstand are likely to be remnants from a field boundary
Woodland walk
Petanique rink
Trim trail
Salusbury Road
Built as an extension to Brondesbury Park as a spine road.
St Anne. The church began as a mission church established by the London Diocesan Home Mission in 1899. A parish was formed in 1905 and Bishop of London was patron. The church building, by the Cutts Brothers was in brick with stone dressings, was completed in 1905. It was rebuilt in 1998 and is linked with St. Andrew’s United Reform Church
Queens Studios
Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls opened in 1892 and was a private school until the county council took it over in 1938. It merged with Kilburn Grammar in 1972 and closed in 1987. The school was damaged in 1944 by a flying bomb. It also served as a Synagogue for a time, during the construction of the Synagogue in Chevening Road. It was later sold to the Islamia Trust.
Islamia Primary School was founded by Yusuf Islam, singer/songwriter, 'Cat Stevens'. The School opened in 1983 in Brondesbury Park bur has since moved to what was the Kilburn & Brondesbury Secondary School. In 1998, the government granted it state funding.
Maria Grey Training College for Women Teachers. Came here in 1892 and shared premises with the girls grammar school but later moved to Twickenham
Kilburn Grammar School founded by Dr.Bonavia Hunt in 1898 as a choir school. At first it was on Willesden Lane but moved in 1900 to Salusbury Road, opposite the Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls as a became a grammar school for boys. It was taken over by Middlesex County Council in 1908 and enlarged in 1927. It was damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt in 1951-1952. It amalgamated with Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls in 1967 as Brondesbury and Kilburn High. It is now used by the Islamia School.
131 Willesden Borough Electricity Offices. The council had their own generating station in Taylors Lane and this was the payment office. The showroom was next door on the two storey single gabled building and there was a depot beyond that in the building now used by the Yoga Centre.
Sources
Brondesbury Synagogue. Web site
City Corporation. London City and People
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. London Place Names
Frederick Simms. Wikipedia. Web site
GLIAS Newsletter
Grace’s Guide
London Encyclopaedia
Middlesex Churches
Mitchell and Smith. North London Line
Pevsner and Cherry. North West London
Snow. Queens Park
Stevenson. Middlesex
Walford. Village London
Willesden History Society. Newsletter
The North London Line from Brondesbury Station runs south westwards
TQ 24231 84000
Residential area around and including Queens Park. The area also includes some interesting industrial sites. Churches and buildings used for religious purposes demonstrate how faiths change as populations change.
Post to the north Brondesbury
Post to the west Brondesbury Park
This posting covers only the north west corner of this square
Brondesbury Park Road
This is still marked as parkland on the Ordnance Survey map of 1904. The road is said to have been built as a spine road through the area but on some older maps it is called ‘Brand’s Causeway’
Brondesbury Park Station. Opened in 1908 as the ‘youngest’ station on the line it now lies between Brondesbury and Kensal Rise stations on the North London Railway. The platforms were rebuilt in 1996.
Chevening Road
The road was built by the Church Commissioners in the mid 1880s as one of the approach roads to Queens Park
Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Centre. This was previously Brondesbury Synagogue. It is now the Iman Al-Khoei Foundation, the premier Shia mosque in London. The centre serves a sizable community of Iranian, Iraqi and Afghani Shias, with the emphasis on Ahl al-Bayt (Ahlul Bayt) doctrine, which holds Muhammad’s immediate household members to be ‘infallible Imams’. They also use old school buildings to the north.
Brondesbury Synagogue. This building dates from 1904-5 the land having been sold cheaply to the congregation by Solomon Barnett who became its first warden. It was destroyed by arson in 1965 and rebuilt. It was sold in 1974 with most of its members joining either the Willesden or the Cricklewood Synagogue. It was Ashkenazi Orthodox Ritual and a constituent synagogue of the United Synagogue from 1905 until its closure.
Winkworth Hall. This was built as a hall of residence for students at the Maria Grey Teacher Training College. There is a plaque on the building – Emma Winkworth was the first woman to climb the Jungfrau and was also known as a women’s suffrage supporter. The building is now owned by London Borough of Brent and occupied by the Islamia School and by Hopscotch nursery. It was also used by Brondesbury and Kilburn School
Kimberley Road
Welbeck Works – this may originally have been a cutlery works but it was taken on by early motor enthusiast and inventor Frederick Sims who moved his Simms Manufacturing Co from Bermondsey to here in 1902. Here they made Simms-Welbeck cars, lorries and marine engines, fire engines, agricultural vehicles, military vehicles and guns, and aeronautical devices. The works was burnt down in 1920. In 1908 he works was taken over by Grosvenor, Rolls Royce and Daimler agents. Hooper’s moved their Rolls and Daimler servicing unit to what was then called the Claborn Works in 1959. Hoopers were long established coachbuilders working at the extreme top end of the market and based in Westminster and Park Royal. In 1991 Hooper bought Metrocab out of receivership and repaired taxis on the site, but by 2002, when Metrocab moved out, were no longer involved. The site is now flats named after Hoopers.
Magneto Works – shown on a map as a different site to Welbeck Works, the magneto was another of Simms’ enterprises
Albion Works. Various companies making specialist art papers.
Legion Works. Marwick and Pauling paper board
Kingswood Avenue
One of the roads around the park which was built up with houses as part of the deal when Queen’s Park was opened.
Queens Park
This square includes only the extreme north east corner of the park and the area adjacent to Chevening Road. The park opened in 1887. It was initially called Kilburn Recreation Ground, and has been known as Queen’s Park since the Jubilee year of 1887. It comprises 30 acres of the site of the Royal Agricultural Show held in 1879 and was acquired in 1886 by the Corporation of London from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 1940 a bomb fell in the middle of the north field and another by temporary wooden fencing along Chevening Road.
Bandstand, The Bandstand was erected in 1889. It is in cast iron by Macfarlane and Co. of Glasgow. It remains in the park despite some wartime alterations.
A line of trees running north west from the bandstand are likely to be remnants from a field boundary
Woodland walk
Petanique rink
Trim trail
Salusbury Road
Built as an extension to Brondesbury Park as a spine road.
St Anne. The church began as a mission church established by the London Diocesan Home Mission in 1899. A parish was formed in 1905 and Bishop of London was patron. The church building, by the Cutts Brothers was in brick with stone dressings, was completed in 1905. It was rebuilt in 1998 and is linked with St. Andrew’s United Reform Church
Queens Studios
Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls opened in 1892 and was a private school until the county council took it over in 1938. It merged with Kilburn Grammar in 1972 and closed in 1987. The school was damaged in 1944 by a flying bomb. It also served as a Synagogue for a time, during the construction of the Synagogue in Chevening Road. It was later sold to the Islamia Trust.
Islamia Primary School was founded by Yusuf Islam, singer/songwriter, 'Cat Stevens'. The School opened in 1983 in Brondesbury Park bur has since moved to what was the Kilburn & Brondesbury Secondary School. In 1998, the government granted it state funding.
Maria Grey Training College for Women Teachers. Came here in 1892 and shared premises with the girls grammar school but later moved to Twickenham
Kilburn Grammar School founded by Dr.Bonavia Hunt in 1898 as a choir school. At first it was on Willesden Lane but moved in 1900 to Salusbury Road, opposite the Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls as a became a grammar school for boys. It was taken over by Middlesex County Council in 1908 and enlarged in 1927. It was damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt in 1951-1952. It amalgamated with Brondesbury and Kilburn High School for Girls in 1967 as Brondesbury and Kilburn High. It is now used by the Islamia School.
131 Willesden Borough Electricity Offices. The council had their own generating station in Taylors Lane and this was the payment office. The showroom was next door on the two storey single gabled building and there was a depot beyond that in the building now used by the Yoga Centre.
Sources
Brondesbury Synagogue. Web site
City Corporation. London City and People
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. London Place Names
Frederick Simms. Wikipedia. Web site
GLIAS Newsletter
Grace’s Guide
London Encyclopaedia
Middlesex Churches
Mitchell and Smith. North London Line
Pevsner and Cherry. North West London
Snow. Queens Park
Stevenson. Middlesex
Walford. Village London
Willesden History Society. Newsletter
Comments