Tudor Allen - Relics of Old Kilburn

Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre
Libraries





cover of the book The Story of Kilburn,
by Dr. Arthur Latimer.

KILBOURN, Middlesex, two miles and a half N.W. from London, a hamlet in the parish of Hampstead, is famed for a fine spring of mineral water, belonging to a tea-drinking-house called Kilbourn Wells. Near this was once a hermitage, converted afterwards into a nunnery; of which there are not any remains. This place has been rapidly increasing in extent and population for some years past. The stream (Cold-bourne) from which it derives its name, rises near West End,Hampstead, and passes through Kilbourn to Bayswater; and, after supplying the Serpentine reservoir in Hyde Park, it flows into the Thames at Ranelagh.
(Original text that accompanies the image)

Today the river which once ran through the Kilburn area is no longer visible – it was channelled underground in the mid nineteenth century. But the whole locality takes its name from that of the river, which is thought to derive from the Old English “Cuneburna” meaning cow’s stream.

Following their conquest of Britain, the Romans built a great road linking the south east coast with their settlements at what are today London, St Albans and Chester. Part of that road ran through the Kilburn area. It survives to this day in the modern form of Kilburn High Road.

For four centuries – from the 1130s to the 1530s – a small convent of Benedictine nuns was sited a little to the east of the south end of today’s Kilburn Road. It had several buildings including a church, a house, a brewery and a bakehouse, as well as a farm and land. All the buildings had been demolished by 1800 but you can still see, in St Mary’s Church, Priory Road, a relic of the former priory – a small brass head of a nun, dating from around 1400, thought to represent one of the prioresses. In time, a number of inns were established on the high road at Kilburn, catering for travellers – the Bell (there by 1600), the Black Lion (dating from the 17th century), the Cock and the Red Lion (both first mentioned in the 1720s).

The modern versions of these taverns can still be seen today on the site of their predecessors and all – excepting the Red Lion – are still functioning pubs. Through most of the eighteenth century and well in to the nineteenth, a spa called Kilburn Wells was based by the Old Bell tavern on the high road. Nothing remains of it today, but a plaque on 42 Kilburn High Road, at its junction with Belsize Road, marks the approximate site of the well where the spring water was accessed. The well was discovered in 1714 and the spa set up soon after to sell its water, considered to be healthgiving. The establishment grew to include tea gardens and a Great Room for music, dancing and entertainment.

The name of a block of flats on Shoot Up Hill recalls a building which one stood on its site. Windmill Court on the Brent side of the road stands where from the late 18th century a windmill stood until it burned down in 1863. It is also recalled in the name of the road which once led up to it from West End Green – Mill Lane.

The Grange was a mansion which stood midway up Kilburn High Road on its east side from the early 1830s until Edwardian times. For most of this period, it was owned by the coachbuilder, Thomas Peters, and his family. The mansion was demolished in 1910. But its former grounds opened in 1913 as Kilburn Grange Park, a public space we can still enjoy today.

Branching off the west side of Kilburn High Road there is today a street called Victoria Road. This recalls the rifle range that was sited here before the street was built. It was the rifle range of the Victoria Rifles, based in Kilburn from 1849 to 1867. Queen Victoria would come to review the troops, as did the Duke of Wellington.

Today’s Kilburn High Road station entrance is on the high road. But when the station first opened in 1852 its entrance was in Belsize Road. You can still see part of that original building at Number 221. 

B. B. Evans, opened in 1897, was gutted by fire in 1910 but rebuilt and thrived, with, at one time, over forty different departments.

A shop at the junction of the High Road and West End Lane is adorned with four medallions of composers’ heads – Beethoven, Mozart, Handel and Bach. This is because it originated – in 1891 – as a music store, Philips. And, though Kilburn’s famous department store, B. B. Evans, closed in 1970, you can still see its former premises on the High Road – numbers 142 to 162. Opened in 1897, the store was gutted by fire in 1910 but rebuilt and thrived, with, at one time, over forty different departments.