St. John's Wood - Abbey Road

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Post to the west Kilburn

Abbey Road

1863, early track road from Lisson Village to Kilburn Priory, Westminster Abbey owned the whole area, tried to keep it, lane going to Kilburn Priory villas from 1830.  Little now to be seen of the Victorian tradition of studios and artists' houses and of a 'faint impropriety' (Elizabeth Bowen), although the atmosphere can perhaps be sensed round the Onslow Ford monument

Abbey Estate 1965.  Long swathe of concrete terraces.  Comprehensive rebuilding of this northern fringe of the Eyre Estate was discussed from 1959.  The next stage was the estate was planned in the early 1960s with the Austin-Smith, Salmon, Lord Partnership for Hampstead Borough Council, but not built until 1965.  Bridges link them across Abbey Road and Belsize Park a half-hearted demonstration of the 1960s concern with pedestrian segregation, for the convenience of the traffic clearly comes later.  Shops, a health centre and community centre (refurbished 1991 by Neil Thomson Associates 

2 EMI studios

39 Marlborough

44 Lockhart

83 Victoria

Baptist church

Zebra crossing  as used by the Beatles. 

Onslow Ford monument.  Obelisk with seated bronze women by Sir J. W. Simpson. At the Grove End corner Onslow Ford with a wide moustache and beard by A.C.Lacchesi. On the other side semi-nude girl with lyre from the Shelley memorial.  1903 erected by friends and admirers.

Alma Tadema's house

Grove Hall Court, 1936, 200 flats

J.MacWhirter painter

Flats of between the wars.  More recent the vast block for Rosehaugh by D. Y. Dam 1990.  

Abercorn Place

Line of old track way.  On the Harrow School estate named after the Duke of Abercorn who was the school governor.  Building in the 1830s.  

26 is a late c 19 red brick villa, home of the artist J.J. O'Connor.  Also T.H.Huxley

Acacia Road

Site of St.Joseph's Road.  A farm there in the 1870s.  Other tree names for roads in the area.  Commemorates a giant acacia which was on the corner of Finchley Road

5 Mansfield and Murray

Cabmen's Shelter at the end on the crossroad facing Grove End Road.  The site of first one which was opened by Kinnard MP, 1875

Alexandra Road

Manhole at the west end, streamlet feeding into the Westbourne

Development of Abbey Road by LB Camden 1977.  Hilled area behind cemetery was a response to site restraints, 

Children’s Reception Home, Staff accommodation 1976 

Estate of 2 terraces of flats and one terrace of houses.  The last large social housing scheme which is claimed to be the longest terrace in Europe and it shields the railway.  Built 1972-8 Neave Brown for London Borough of Camden.  

13b Rowley Way. Flat as originally built.

Barrier  block of six storeys alongside the railway and cantilevered out over the tracks.

hostels

Park

Alma Square

Avenue Road

29 an early Neo-Grecian villa, recalls the earlier phase of development here, related to the growth of St John's Wood

100 instead of public buildings.  1981 offices.  By Architectural Design Associates formerly Ted Levy, Benjamin & Partners, 

St.Paul, severe and sensational crude and impressive. By S.S.Teulon. Bombed and demolished.

Swiss Cottage Library.  First phase of civic centre which was never built.  Basil Spence.

Swiss cottage baths.  Spence.  Fashionable and distinguished geometric concepts

Statue of Sigmund Freud

John Keats School, special school LCC

Blenheim Passage

Walls on line of old track

Blenheim Road

13 Sir Charles Santley

28 The use of Gothic houses to add interest strategic points is especially characteristic of these streets

Blenheim Street

Blenheim Terrace

Carlton Hill

1 curiously echoes 72 with a c19 Romanesque brick version.  Formerly a Presbyterian church. 

Clifton Hill

42 Plaque to Melanie Klein, 1882-1960 ‘‘psychoanalyst and pioneer of child analysis, lived here' 

62-64, 68 the use of Gothic houses to add interest at strategic points is especially characteristic of these streets

Cochrane Street

T.Cochrane, 10th Earl, Admiral Lord Cochrane - Napoleon called him 'le loup de mer'.  Compromised with the French in 1814 cleared in 1832.  Lived in Regent's Park.

Eton Villas

Eyre Estate

Transformation of urban into suburban form complete.

Finchley Road

137 Centre Heights.  

167-173 shopping parade.  

28 Hood

College Crescent after the Nonconformist college once there.  The crescent is a prelude to the mid-Victorian development of Belsize to the east 

Drinking fountain to Samuel Palmer biscuit manufacturer.  Octagonal granite Gothic 1904

Castle Pub,

Child's Hill toll house site, blue plaque

St Saviour's church

Apsley House flats 1935

Marlborough Road Station. 13th April 1868. Built by the Metropolitan and St.John's Wood Railway.  the building was at the corner of Finchley and Queen’s Roads. Closed in 1939 and the building became a Chinese restaurant and painted black.

Grove End

Hamilton Terrace

Garden walls as early track way.

St.Mark's church Early English style 1847

28 Poet Thomas Hood lived

King Harry’s Road

St.Mary, 1833.  

Lanark Road

Langtry Way

Housing was built as a children's reception centre but functioned as such only briefly

Langford Place

Manor held in 1330 by William Langford.  Lilestone Manor in the 16th century was held by Portman family.  This was a lane going to Kilburn Priory villas from 1830

12 house and studio of John Adams Acton, sculptor 1910, probably built to his own design, 

Lords Tavern. Victorian building, 'oval and green like a pearl in an oyster'. Most poetic, most English in transformation

16 Plaque to Dame Laura Knight 1877-1970 and Harold Knight 1874-1961, ‘painters lived here'. 

Loudon Road

Marlborough Hill

Quintin Kynaston School

33 Aumonier

Marlborough Place

A good sample of mid c 19 styles:

20 Gomme

38, Thomas Henry Huxley 1825-1895. Plaque saying 'biologist lived here' Huxley was born in Ealing, Middlesex. 

Marloes

Lang

Norfolk Road

New street 1840s house Norfolk House in Arena Road

Ordnance Hill,

Means artillery area first rated in the 1840s

Barracks built alongside St. John's Farm owned by Willans in 1700s.  1832, Military Riding Establishment.  Became Royal Horse Artillery after Crimea.  Rebuilt

29 Ordnance Arms

Queen's Grove

Victorian description of gentleman entering the old Tyburn here and sailing down it called King's Pond Main Sewer and entrance was then a shaft by the cab stand

Rossetti, gone – more like an Italian restaurant than a pub

32 George Frampton sculptor

Queen's Terrace

2 Richardson

7 Knights of St. John became a garage

Regent Mews

Behind 5-7 Langford Place, a small tactful piece of infilling by Barton, Willmore Partnership, 1988

Rowley Way

Lower terrace of maisonettes.  

The array of concrete cells, community buildings.  The play centre is a concrete bunker hidden among trees, two buildings by Evans & Shaley, 

St. John’s Wood

The area north of St John's Wood Road, owes its name to the Knights Hospitallers, who held land here from 13th .  St John's Wood Westminster. Recorded as ‘Seynt Johns Woode’  earlier as ‘Boscum Prioris Sanctijohannis’ ‘'wood of the Priory of St.John’ in a Latin document of 1294.  The area remained wooded throughout the medieval period, and was still essentially rural until development began in the early 19th.  From 1732 the area belonged to the Eyre family, for whom a development plan was drawn up in 1794.  The buildings that eventually went up in the 1820s and 1830s were a mixture of villas and terraces in generous gardens.  the area had until the early 20th  a comfortable, verdant, early Victorian character, never showy and never mean.  the old atmosphere can now best be recaptured around the High Street and in the streets of the end of Abbey Road.

St John's Wood High Street

Used to be called Portland Town.  A disorganized and somewhat slummy development of the early c 19 on land belonging to the Portland estate.  The area was a much-criticized eyesore beside the respectable villas of the Eyre estate until it was entirely rebuilt from the end of the c 19.  

10 Shepard

13 Roja 

15 Café Josephine. Features 

35 Pereira

134 St. John's Wood Newsagents

Kent Terrace

Further 01

Sir Isaac Newton brick and terracotta-faced pub of 1892; intricate glazing to the ground floor windows.

St. John's Wood Gardens

Monument to Joanna Southcott

St.Anne's Terrace

4 Spencer

The Marlowes

Built on from Hemel Hempstead then this is the name of the shopping centre there.

Tyburn manor in 16th century was owned by Defoe family, taken by Henry VIII for a hunting ground.  Became Marylebone Park.  Portland family held for 5 generations.  Tyburn is the historic boundary between the old manors of Tyburn and Lileston.

Upper York Place?

4 Huxley

Violet Hill

Middle ages lane from Lisson village to Kilburn Priory - boundary between Eyre Estate and Harrow School estate

Abbey Tavern

St. Mark's Parochial Schools 1879-1950s

Violet Hill Gardens. garden, tended by local residents.park attendant's shed, with its pitched roof and net curtains.

Waverley Place

14 Huxley

Wellington Road

Named for the Eyre Family.  Balloon ascents. Eyre lived and left property to Kingsmead.  Other lease to Bolton.  Road personal to the Norwich Union Life Assurance Co. Norwich/Norfolk place names

Pre Second World Ward consisted entirely of Early Victorian villas in a largely unbroken line concealed behind brick walls extending 'from St. John's Wood Road to Swiss Cottage Station.  Since then several great blocks of flats have been erected on the west side forming a continuous range from

Eyre Court flats, with private carriageway.  Pattern set before the Second World War .  T P. Bennett & Son, 1930 long frontage to Finchley Road extending from Grove End Road to the neighbouring Apsley House.  It stands on the site of the former Eyre Arms Hotel the adjoining Wellington Hall and a number of private houses.  Plaque to Oscar Kokoschka, 1886-1980. 'painter lived here' . Plaque erected 1986.

Hotel 1816 Assembly Rooms and Gardens

Stephens Railway Office 1830.  Drawing office HQ of Belsize Boxing Club.  Wellington Hall part of it and used for functions.  Demolished 1928

Wellington Court flats

St John's Wood station. 13th April 1868. Between Swiss Cottage and Baker Street on the Jubilee Line. Built by the Metropolitan Railway and opened as ‘St. John’s Wood Road’ . In 1879 it was opened between Baker Street and Swiss Cottage and in April 1868 Metropolitan ran it up to West Hampstead. In  1925 the name changed to ‘St.John’s Wood’ and in  1939 renamed ‘Lords’. It became part of the Bakerloo Line in 1939. The present day station is between the old St John's Wood Metropolitan Line and Marlborough Road Station. The original Metropolitan Line station nearby was closed on 20th November 1939 when the present station was opened. There is a portrait of Thomas Lord who founded Lord's Cricket I Ground in the tiles under the archways leading from the platform. This is one of the few tube stations that still has its bronze escalator lamps. Acacia Road and Wellington Road. In 1979 it became part of the Jubilee Line

Play up!  Play up! And Play the Game. Bayes sculpture in bas relief of athletes of 1934. Tennis, golf, cricketers, footballers, swimmers and oarsmen.  Presented by Alderman Isaacs

Winchester Road

Sheltered housing

Woronzow Road

Russian ambassador who lived in Rey Lodge.  In 1700 left £500 for the parish poor - almshouses in St.John's Wood Terrace rebuilt 1965.


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