April 2015 archive

Adela Street, W10

Thanks to a feature about the movie Steptoe and Son (1972) on the ReelStreets website, we are taking a small trip both down memory lane and indeed Adela Street in Kensal Town. Adela Street is a tiny, otherwise inconsequential cul-de-sac off of Kensal Road. It might have remained that way had not location scouts discovered …

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Western Arms

The Western Arms was a pub situated on the corner of Ladbroke Grove and Kensal Road.

Cobden Club

The Cobden Working Men’s Club and Institute was sitauated at 170-172 Kensal Road. Lord William Cobden, the Fabian philanthropist, established the club in 1882 It remained a social centre for the neighbourhood for more than 100 years. Amongst its cultural contributions was its hosting of Christmas kids’ parties – a big feature of many of …

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A rural Chamberlayne Road

If you know contemporary Kensal Rise, this is a quite astounding photograph. The title found elsewhere on the web labels it as “Footpath off Chamberlayne Road leading to Kensal Green (1910)”. But looking at a 1900 map, there’s no place for a rural footpath from Chamberlayne Road towards Kensal Green. The footpath in question. I …

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West End Lane, NW6

West End Lane is one of West Hampstead’s oldest roads. It was already named West End Lane by 1644. West End Lane and Mill Lane (Shoot Up Hill Lane and Cole Lane), probably existed as access in the Middle Ages since they formed the boundaries of several ancient estates. It is bent at a right-angle …

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Rillington Place, W11

The macabre story of the post-war Rillington Place murders by John Christie are all over the internet. A film with Richard Attenborough in the leading role was made in 1970. But, first built in 1869, the street spent nigh on one hundred years out of the limelight. A small cul-de-sac of tightly-packed houses with a …

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A lost W10 map

This is an “a propos to nothing” post, as the old Danny Baker Radio London show used to say. Here is a mystery map of the estate in North Kensington which was redeveloped after 1950 – the area has been extensively bombed by the Luftwaffe. It seems to be based on the 1897 Ordnance Survey …

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The West Cross Route

The West Cross Route (WCR) and the other roads planned in the 1960s for central London had developed from early schemes prior to the Second World War through Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s County of London Plan, 1943 and Greater London Plan, 1944 to a 1960s Greater London Council (GLC) scheme that would have involved the construction …

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Finchley Road

Finchley Road is on the Jubilee line, between West Hampstead and Swiss Cottage and on the Metropolitan line between Baker Street and Wembley Park.

Wood Lane, W12

In the 1780s, Wood Lane was known as Turvens Lane after Turvens House located a short distance north of Shepherd’s Bush Green. By the 1830s it had received its current name. In the 1860s the railway arrived with a line running parallel with Wood Lane but the area was still rural in character with the …

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