Messina Avenue, NW6
West End Lane, West Hampstead
Credit: Glenn h
Messina Avenue stretches from West End Lane over to Kilburn High Road.

On the western side of West End Lane, on the Powell-Cotton (Liddell) estate north of Quex Road, the Chimes, a large house built in the 1860s by E. W. Pugin for the painter John Rogers Herbert (1810-90), for some time insulated the area from further building.

Building spread northward from Quex Road west of the Chimes. Kingsgate Road, named after another place in Kent, stretched northward to the estate border by 1875 and 77 houses were built there between 1878 and 1888.

A road, Eresby Road, was planned across the southern part of the Little estate between Edgware Road and Kingsgate Road in 1879. In 1883 and two roads to the north, Gascony and Messina avenues, were constructed across both estates; 130 houses were built there between 1881 and 1887.

When the Grange house was demolished just before the First World War, Kilburn Grange Park was laid out at the western end and the domed Grange Cinema opened in 1914 on the High Road corner of Messina Avenue.

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