The image is captioned “Fortune Green, 1887” but it is otherwise unclear if this encampment was on the Green itself or in the area. Some Facebook users have suggested this was on the Hampstead Cemetery grounds before that burial ground was established.
Kilburn was once a very rural spot. It was in Kilburn Meadows one evening that Keats recited his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ to a companion ‘in a low, tremulous undertone’. Keats had a friend in the area, the poet Leigh Hunt who once lived at West End, ‘out of the stir and smoke of this …
Black Path joined Billy Fury Way in 2011 as an official name for an unnamed footpath. It was an initiative driven by the police. One of the imperatives for naming paths such as this one and the Black Path was so the police could identify their location when chasing wrong-uns down these network of alleyways. …
During the final decade of the nineteenth century, a series of “secret gardens” were built behind the uniform façades of West Hampstead. Broadhurst Gardens Meadow is the largest and lies to the rear of Broadhurst Gardens and Fairhazel Gardens. Like the others, it was established as the surrounding streets were built. It is carefully managed for …
Designed by George Coles and opened in 1937, the Gaumont State was one of the biggest auditoria in Europe, with seating for 4004 people. The name “State” is said to come from the 37 metre tower, inspired by the Empire State Building in New York City. It can be seen for miles around, and bears …
Eresby Road ran from Kingsgate Road to Kilburn High Road with a turning for Kingsgate Place about halfway down.
Watling Street has long been running through Kilburn. The road stretched in Roman times from Dover to Wroxeter in Shropshire. Kilburn was a stopping point on the way to Willesden’s ‘Black Madonna’ shrine, and in turn a destination in itself to take the waters at the Kilburn Wells. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, …
Kilburn Park station was opened on 31 January 1915 as the temporary terminus of the Bakerloo line’s extension from Paddington.
Cannon Hill is a road in Fortune Green, NW6
Broadhurst Gardens may not be a household name, but back in the day it was the home of Decca Recording Studios which rivalled EMI’s Abbey Road Studios as the country’s leading recording facility. Many popular songs and albums were recorded at Decca Studios (for example, John Mayall’s 1968 Blues from Laurel Canyon and five albums …