Blechynden Street, W10

The stump that remains of Blechynden Street belies its story as one of the main streets of the area.

Blechynden Street crossed a 50-acre estate that a barrister, James Whitchurch, purchased for £10 an acre in the early 19th century. He left his home in Blechynden in Southampton and built himself a house in Lancaster Road, North Kensington, now situated at No. 133.

Streets were built on the estate in 1846, and the first were named Aldermaston, Silchester, Bramley and Pamber after four neighbouring villages near Basingstoke, which was where James Whitchurch’s daughter Florence Blechynden Whitchurch was living.

After dividing the land into plots, he leased them to builders such as John Calverley, a Notting Hill builder who named a street after himself.

Other developers involved were Joseph Job Martin, the landlord of The Lancaster Tavern in Walmer Road, as well as the developer of Martin Street. Stephen Hurst, a builder from Kentish Town, was responsible for Hurstway Street and James Fowell of Gray’s Inn Road, who moved to Ponders End with the profits from Fowell Street.

Blechynden Street took a zig zag east-west route over a part of North Kensington on the W10 side of the railway and connected roads of the area together.

Urban plans in the 1960s needed to cater for the changes wrought by the new Westway urban motorway which cut a swathe through the urban landscape. Through roads such as this turned into cul-de-sacs and stumps whereas other roads were promoted in importance. There days Blechynden Street is so short that it is almost unknown to many locals.





Leave a Reply