From around the 1750, The Elms was under the ownership of a number of people. Mr and Mrs Pickersgill were in occupation between 1829 and 1832. The husband, Henry William Pickersgill, was an eminent portrait painter. Mrs Pickersgill ran a school for ‘female education’.
From 1832 John Ebers, a widowed theatre manager with two daughters moved into The Elms. He moved into the world of publishing.
Next, the writer William Harrison Ainsworth lived in the house (his wife was Fanny Ebers, daughter of John). Here he began writing his novel ’Rookwood’, about the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin. John Ebers published the book. Although the inn where Dick Turpin met his accomplices is based on The Cock in Kilburn, the story is fictitious and there’s no historical evidence to link Turpin to Kilburn.
The Elms stood on the site of the later Gaumont State Cinema.
