West End.
The mid 13th-century le Rudyng, a
name which indicates a woodland clearing, was by
1534 called West End, (fn. 63) because of its position in
relation to the central demesne lands. West End was
then the name of a freehold estate, later called
Thorplands, belonging to Kilburn priory. There
was a house on the estate by 1646 and possibly by
1244 (fn. 64) and although none of the copyhold tenements
at West End can be traced back to 1312, the fact
that several were heriotable suggests their origin in
the Middle Ages. (fn. 65) The road junction at which West
End lies appears to be later than the hamlet but
West End Lane and Mill Lane (Shoot Up Hill Lane
and Cole Lane), although not named until later,
probably existed as access in the Middle Ages since
they formed the boundaries of several ancient
estates. (fn. 66) In 1644 Hillfield abutted on Northwood
apparently without Frognal Lane, called West End
Lane in the 18th century, separating them but presumably there was always a route from West End
hamlet to the parish church. (fn. 67)
Several houses in West End were mentioned in the
early 17th century (fn. 68) and by the mid century London
merchants were building larger ones. Richard Gibbs,
a goldsmith, acquired Hillfield on the east side of
West End (or Kilburn) Lane, north of Jacksfield,
together with two houses in 1644. (fn. 69) One may have
been the decayed brick house purchased from Gibbs
before 1663 by the father of Matthew Blueh, a
Chancery clerk. (fn. 70) The Hillfield estate was held by
another Londoner in 1685 (fn. 71) and the house was 'new
fronted and much beautified and another house
built' after 1703 by Henry Binfield. (fn. 72) Both houses,
with their coach houses, were owned by Mary
Binfield in 1762. (fn. 73) One was West End Hall and the
other possibly Treherne House. (fn. 74)
In 1655 William Hitchcock, merchant tailor, conveyed a new house, described in 1687 as a mansion
house on the west side of West End Lane, to
William Bennett, another London merchant, and
north of it another house was held by three generations of Wachters, London merchants, possibly
Jews, from c. 1649 to 1686. (fn. 75) Bennett's house was
probably the White House, which passed to Norwich
Salisbury by 1692 and to Richard Limbrey in 1743.
In 1762 Limbrey owned and occupied a brick house
and coach house opposite Jacksfield, the most
southerly house in West End. (fn. 76) The house and
stabling north of it, owned by Armine Snoxell in
1762, was probably Wachter's, later Sandwell
House. (fn. 77) There was a house at Colemead, north of
Shoot Up Hill Lane and west of Fortune Green
Lane, by 1707. (fn. 78) The Black Lion stood on the west
side of West End Lane by 1721 and the Cock and
Hoop almost opposite, north of the junction with
Frognal Lane, by 1723. (fn. 79) In 1710 West End had 14
rent-paying tenements and by 1762 there were 19
houses, 18 cottages, and 2 inns, in West End, mostly
on the west side of West End Lane and Fortune
Green Lane. (fn. 80)
By 1800 West End was a hamlet of cottages and
seats set in parkland. The White House had by 1774
been replaced by West End House, which, as a
result of the straightening of West End Lane, stood
back from the road. (fn. 81) The property, with other West
End estates, passed in 1796 to Maria Beckford, (fn. 82)
whose family, which included William Beckford
(1709-70), lord mayor of London, had occupied a
house nearby since 1762 or earlier. (fn. 83) The house was
occupied by Miss Beckford from c. 1807 to 1810, by
the marchioness of Headfort from c. 1815 to 1825, (fn. 84)
and by the Hon. Henry Frederick Compton Cavendish in 1842. (fn. 85) Another resident by 1800 was
Germain Lavie, J.P., (fn. 86) who was lessee of Lauriston
Lodge and some 11 a., part of Gilberts estate, from
1806. (fn. 87) The house, later occupied by Sir William
Woods, Garter King-at-Arms, was of red brick with
stained-glass windows and a fine entrance. (fn. 88) The
engraver Josiah Boydell (1752-1817) was lessee of
land in West End in 1783 (fn. 89) and by 1807 was occupying a house and coach house. Boydell was a tenant of
Jeremy Jepson Ripley, who built a house and coach
house after 1814, possibly that with a large garden
north of Lauriston Lodge. Admiral James Saumarez,
Baron de Saumarez (1757-1836), lived in one of the
West End houses. (fn. 90)
West End Hall was owned 1796-1807 by the
family of the Hon. Richard Walpole, M.P., in 1807
by Lord Walpole, and 1815-89 by John Miles and
his wife, benefactors of West End. (fn. 91) Two other substantial houses in 1807, occupied by Thomas
Kesteven and Mrs. Mears, (fn. 92) were probably Treherne House and Flitcroft's farmhouse. (fn. 93) There
were c. 16 houses and 9 cottages in 1810 and another
four modest houses by 1815. (fn. 94) Between 1762 and
1814 houses were built on Fortune Green and fronting Frognal Lane, Mill Lane, and Fortune Green
Lane, (fn. 95) the last being Cholmley Lodge, a twostoreyed stuccoed house. (fn. 96) At the southern end of
the hamlet, on the west side of West End Lane,
Charles Spain bought 5 a. of the Little estate (fn. 97) and
between 1829 and 1838 built York Villa. (fn. 98) That
house was renamed or replaced by Oaklands Hall,
an elaborate Gothic mansion, occupied in the 1860s
by Donald Nicoll, a merchant. (fn. 99) Two white Italianate houses were built in the 1860s by the Greenwood
brothers, contractors working on the Midland railway: Sandwell House near Lauriston Lodge and
Canterbury House opposite, on Jacksfield. (fn. 1)
In 1812 James Leigh Hunt moved to a cottage at
West End, attracted by a district so quiet that the
inhabitants of West End Hall claimed to have heard
the cannon at Waterloo. (fn. 2) A proposal to bring Finchley Road to West End Lane in 1824 failed and the
new road, east of the hamlet, had little immediate
effect. (fn. 3) The only building was of a few houses at
New West End, on the east side of Finchley Road,
in the 1840s. (fn. 4) A National school and cottage for the
schoolmistress was built on the north side of the
village, on part of the grounds of Cholmley Lodge,
in 1844. (fn. 5) In 1851 West End was a hamlet mainly of
agricultural labourers, gardeners, craftsmen, and
tradespeople for daily needs, with an innkeeper and
two beershop keepers and a schoolmistress; the few
gentry included Rear-Admiral Sir George Sartorius
(1790-1885) of West End House, a retired ironfounder, a surgeon, some civil servants, and a clergyman. (fn. 6) Industry, in the form of Thomas Potter's
foundry on the south-west side of West End Green,
arrived in the 1860s, followed by Potter's Buildings
or West Cottages for its workers. (fn. 7)
The transformation of West End came with the
building of three railway lines south of the village,
crossing West End Lane. Large sections of several
estates were sold to the railway companies: in addition to the lines themselves, sidings, yards, and
rubbish tips occupied much space and the remaining
farm- and parkland was cut into segments, determining the subsequent street pattern. The Hampstead
Junction Railway, built by 1857, ran along the
southern boundary of West End House. The Revd.
William Dunbar, who lived in Scotland, sold the
estate to a speculator, Charles Bischoff, the owner in
1863 when the second railway line, the Midland,
was proposed. The Midland line, opened in 1868,
passed along the northern boundary of West End
House, which in 1857 became a girls' laundry training school and later accommodated railway workers
before its demolition in the late 1890s. Before 1873
Bischoff sold the estate to the British Land Co.,
which constructed Iverson Road, where four cottages were built in the West End portion in 1872,
and developed the land to the west, in Kilburn, but
most of the West End section was occupied by railway land. (fn. 8) The Midland Railway bought the eastern
section of the estate and built coal offices in Iverson
Road in 1890-1 and Heysham Terrace (nos. 202-20)
on the site of West End House in 1897. (fn. 9)
Coincidentally the next estate to be developed, like
West End House, had belonged to the Beckfords,
although it had followed a different descent since the
1840s. Consisting of c. 15 a. north of Mill Lane and
west of Fortune Green Lane, it was sold in 1865 to
the Real Property Co. and in 1868 to the Land Co.
of London, which laid out Hillfield Road and
Aldred Street in building plots. (fn. 10) Development was
slow. Two houses and a temporary church were
built in Mill Lane, east of the junction with Aldred
Road, in 1874 and one plot fronting Mill Lane, sold
in 1875, was built on by 1878. (fn. 11) Premises for Field
Lane boys' industrial school were built on the north
side of Hillfield Road in 1877. (fn. 12) Sustained building
began in 1878 and by 1890 some 88 houses, by
various builders, had been erected in Hillfield Road;
16 were built in 1888 in Aldred Road by Cossens,
who lived there, and the Pavement, nos. 41-83 (odd),
was built in Mill Lane. In 1908 Berridge House
opened next to the industrial school, at the junction
of Hillfield Road and Fortune Green Lane, as the
National Society's training college for teachers of
domestic subjects. (fn. 13)
Most of the land north of West End Green and
around Fortune Green belonged to the Flitcroft
estate, 20 a. of which were sold to the parish in 1875
for a cemetery, thereby holding back housing in the
area for a decade. (fn. 14) Apart from the Hillfield Road
estate, the only building was on a small estate west
of Finchley Road, owned in 1841 by Francis Lovel,
where between 1870 and 1878 Charles Cannon, a
dye merchant who lived at Kidderpore Hall, converted an old footpath into Cannon Hill, and West
House and Wellesley House were built west of the
junction of Finchley Road and West End Lane. (fn. 15)
The period of greatest development was in the 15
years from 1879, beginning with the opening of the
third railway, the Metropolitan & St. John's Wood,
with a station in West End Lane (West Hampstead).
Stations on the other two lines opened in 1880 and
1888. (fn. 16) The first to exploit the railway was Donald
Nicoll, M.P. and owner of a gentlemen's outfitter's
in Regent Street, who leased Oaklands Hall from
Charles Spain from 1861 to 1872 and owned portions of the Little estate to the north and west, together forming a 23-a. estate which he called West
End Park. Nicoll was a director of the Metropolitan
and St. John's Wood railway from 1864 to 1872 and,
in anticipation of its plans, laid out a road (Sherriff,
then called Nicoll, Road) on the line later taken by
the railway, for which he received substantial compensation. He then sold West End Park to the
London Permanent Building Society, which was
connected with Alexander Sherriff, a fellow M.P.
and railway director, who gave his name to the
northernmost road on the estate. (fn. 17)
Forty-two houses were built between 1877 and
1879 in Lowfield Road, adjoining Nicoll's development in Palmerston Road in Kilburn. Building
began in West End Park itself in 1879, when houses
were under construction in all the roads (Sherriff,
Hemstal, Kylemore, and Gladys roads) except Hilltop Road, where they were not begun until 1883.
Various builders, mostly local and including James
Tavener, Reeder of Maygrove Road, and Haines of
Sherriff Road, were working on c. 186 houses and
3 studios in 1893. Some houses at the eastern end of
the estate were detached but most were terraced and
cramped. St. James's church was built in 1887 and
the Beacon, 'the exact representation of a ruin on
the coast of England', at the junction of West End
Lane with Hemstal Road about the same time. It
was itself replaced by St. James's Mansions in 1894.
Oaklands Hall was occupied by Sir Charles Murray
until 1878, when it was offered for sale, and in 1883
houses were built in Dynham and Cotleigh roads on
its site. Mostly local builders, including A. Rathbone
of Mill Lane and Julia Bursill, had erected 123 terraced houses there by 1893, in addition to completing the frontage on West End Lane. (fn. 18) A library was
built in Cotleigh Road in 1901. (fn. 19)
On the west side of West End Lane, north of
Nicoll's estates, the land between the three railway
lines was still largely untouched but beyond them
building spread during the 1880s. Thomas Potter,
owner of Thorplands, 13 a. south of Mill Lane,
stretching westward from the junction with West
End Lane, where he lived in Poplar House, (fn. 20) built
c. 15 houses fronting Mill Lane between 1873 and
1877 and the Elms and the Cedars next to the green
by 1878. (fn. 21) New roads were constructed in the late
1870s and 346 houses were built between 1882 and
1894 in Sumatra, Solent, Holmdale, Glenbrook,
Pandora, and Narcissus roads, mostly by J. I. Chapman of Solent Road, G. W. Cossens of Mill Lane,
Jabez Reynolds of Holmdale Road, and James Gibb
of Dennington Park Road. Another 28 houses and a
Methodist church were built on the estate fronting
Mill Lane in 1886-7 and seven blocks of flats in
West End Lane on what was called the Cedars
estate in 1894. Some 49 houses were built, mostly by
Reynolds, in the last road on the estate, Inglewood
Road on the site of Poplar House, in 1893-4. Welbeck Mansions, flats notable for their ironwork
balconies, were built north of Inglewood Road, on
the site of Potter's foundry, in 1897. (fn. 22) The London
General Omnibus Co. built stables and a depot c.
1901 on ground previously used for tennis at the
north-eastern corner of the estate, which later became a post office garage. A fire brigade station, by
'O. Fleming and/or C. C. Winmill ... in Voysey
manner', was built c. 1901 at the northern end of
West End Lane. (fn. 23) Holmdale Mansions were built
in Holmdale Road in 1904 and Cavendish Mansions
at the east end of Mill Lane about the same time,
when the Cedars, which had become a school, was
demolished. (fn. 24)
South of Potter's estate was the Ripley estate,
originally part of Gilberts, with its house at West
End Lane still occupied in 1874 by Thomas Ripley,
and Lauriston Lodge, which survived until the late
1890s. (fn. 25) About 1881 Dennington Park Road was
constructed on the line of Sweetbriar Walk, the old
path to Lauriston Lodge, and 58 houses were built
there and in Kingdon Road, possibly named after a
speculator Emmeline Kingdon, between 1883 and
1888, mostly by James Gibb. A synagogue was built
at the eastern end of Dennington Park Road in 1891.
Three blocks of flats, named Dene Mansions after
Little Dene, home of the Ripley family, replaced
Lauriston Lodge in 1904. (fn. 26) Farther east, fronting
West End Lane, was the Sandwell House or Park
estate, where in 1893-4 the last big house on the
western side of West End Lane made way for flats
(Sandwell and Victoria mansions) along West End
Lane and Sumatra Road and for 10 houses in a new
road, Sandwell Crescent. (fn. 27)
Fronting Mill Lane west of Potter's estate was the
Earlsfields estate, reduced by the Midland railway
to a triangle of land which was sold to the Land
Building Investment and Cottage Improvement Co.
Terraced houses in varied styles presumably indicating the builders, E. Garrett and William Brown,
both of Ravenshaw Street, J. C. Wallas of Belsize
Road, and Rathbone of Croydon, were crammed
into Ravenshaw and Glastonbury streets and
Broomsleigh and Dornfell roads between 1883 and
1887. Another 10 were built in Broomsleigh Road in
1890 and two in Ravenshaw Street in 1894. (fn. 28)
Land companies were probably responsible for
similar activity on the Flitcroft estate. Although the
name Parsifal Road was approved in 1883, (fn. 29) no
houses went up there until the 1890s but Hackney
or New College, a brick building with majolica
dressings designed by W. P. Manning, was built at
the eastern end in 1887. (fn. 30) The National Standard
Land Mortgage and Investment Co. constructed
Ingham and Burrard roads between Fortune Green
Road and Finchley Road in 1885 and 64 small terraced houses were constructed there between 1886
and 1892 by Rathbone, Gray, Pulling, Brown, and
other builders, while much of the frontage on Fortune Green Road and Finchley Road was covered
with houses and shops. A Congregational church
was built at the junction of Burrard and Finchley
roads in 1894. Between 1890 and 1897 c. 13 larger
detached or semi-detached houses were built in
Parsifal Road. (fn. 31) A land company was probably also
involved in building lower middle-class terraces on
the rest of the Flitcroft estate south of the cemetery
and west of Fortune Green, where fear of the
cemetery outweighed the advantage of adjacent open
space. W. H. Suttle, of Agamemnon Road, was the
main builder of 155 houses in Agamemnon, Ajax,
Ulysses, and Achilles roads between 1886 and
1896. (fn. 32) In 1895 Lyncroft Gardens was constructed
through the site of Woodbine Cottage, former home
of the Eleys and later of the society beauty, Mrs.
Laura Thistlethwayte, at the south-eastern corner
of the Flitcroft estate. E. J. Cave, one of the district's most prominent builders, built 21 houses and
four blocks of flats there in 1896-7. In 1898
Emmanuel church moved from its mission church
in Aldred Road to the corner of Lyncroft Gardens
and West End Green, next to the recently closed
Cock and Hoop. The site was sold to Cave, who became bankrupt in 1900, whereupon H. A. Rayner, a
speculative builder from Croydon, acquired it,
demolished the inn, and in 1902 built Alexandra
Mansions on the site. Cave had been involved in
work on the neighbouring Cannon Hill estate where
Marlborough, Buckingham, and Avenue mansions
were built in the triangle formed by Cannon Hill,
Finchley Road, and West End Lane in 1896-
1900. (fn. 33)
The eastern side of West End Lane, with its three
large houses, remained unchanged almost until 1900.
There was one road, Blackburn Road, named after a
local builder, by 1869, where Joseph Sloper's
engineering works were established in 1872, but
Sloper failed to exploit it and the works remained
isolated between the railway lines. (fn. 34) Maj.-Gen. Sir
C. Crauford Fraser, who had entertained the prince
of Wales at West End Hall, died in 1896 and the
house and 12 a. were sold for development in 1897.
The adjacent Treherne and Canterbury houses were
evidently disposed of at the same time and apparently Honeybourne, Fawley, and Lymington roads
and Crediton Hill (originally Road) were laid out on
the combined estates about 1897. (fn. 35) Building began
in 1897 with two large blocks of flats, presumably
Canterbury and Lymington mansions, on the site of
Canterbury House. In 1899 houses were built in
Lymington and Crediton roads and two blocks were
erected at 'the corner of West End Lane and Crediton Road', probably Fawley and Crediton mansions
on each side of Fawley Road. One builder, A. Davis,
applied to build 21 houses in Honeybourne, Crediton, and Fawley roads in 1900 and by 1913 building
on the combined estate was complete, mostly fairsized semi-detached houses but including shops
fronting West End Lane and Yale and Harvard
courts, built c. 1903 in Honeybourne Road. (fn. 36) To the
south, offices were built at the junction of West End
Lane and Blackburn Road in 1905. (fn. 37)
In the period from the late 1870s to the 1890s
West End, hitherto a village with grand houses, became increasingly working-class. At the end of the
1880s some big houses remained, classified as
wealthy, upper middle-, and middle-class, but on
the western side of West End Lane a 'fair proportion' of people with good, ordinary earnings was
mixed with the middle class and residents in the
West End Park estate were only 'fairly comfortable'.
Most houses in West Hampstead, where building
was 'still fast increasing', were for the 'better class of
artisans, clerks, railway men, policemen, travellers
and a few professional men'. (fn. 38) Railways influenced
the timing and character of West End's growth but
probably more important was the fact that West
End Lane formed a boundary between large estates
on the east and small and fragmented ones to the
west. (fn. 39) The few sizeable estates to the west had
tended to break up before the railway lines divided
them and reduced them still further, the owners
being content to take the immediate profit of selling
to a land company or speculative builder.
Although West End was said to be within the area
where old families made way for Jews and a
'Bohemian element', (fn. 40) it housed few artists and
writers. Alfred Harmsworth, later Viscount Northcliffe, came to no. 31 Pandora Road in 1888 and in
1890 founded the Pandora Publishing Co. Another
publisher, Arthur Waugh, lived at no. 11 Hillfield
Road, where his author sons Alec and Evelyn were
born in 1898 and 1903 respectively. (fn. 41) Sir Henry
Walford Davies, the composer, lived at no. 21
Fawley Road from 1901 to 1911. (fn. 42)
Almost all the building in the period between the
two world wars was in the north. Cholmley Lodge
was demolished in 1921, and 17 blocks of flats were
built fronting Mill Lane, Aldred, Hillfield, and
Fortune Green roads between 1922 and 1927. (fn. 43) The
industrial school in Hillfield Road closed in 1932
and its building was taken over by the adjacent
Domestic Science College in 1934, (fn. 44) while in 1938
a new building by Lawrence of Bristol west of
Hackney College in Finchley Road was opened for
the New College displaced from Swiss Cottage. (fn. 45)
The only other building was of small blocks of shops
and flats (Queen's Mansions) north of no. 222 West
End Lane and at the junctions of Finchley Road
with West End Lane in 1927 and with Burrard Road
in 1932, of flats in Sherriff Road and Holmdale Road
in 1936, and of an office block at nos. 158-60 West
End Lane in 1938. (fn. 46)
In 1930 all the area east of West End Lane and
Fortune Green Road was classified as middle-class
and wealthy, as was most of the area on the west
side north of the railway lines and the eastern part of
West End Park. The rest of West End Park, however, and most of the land companies' estates were
inhabited by skilled workers and the like and were
overcrowded. (fn. 47) Inhabitants included E. C. Bentley
(1875-1956), the novelist, at no. 28 Lymington Road
in the 1920s and Naum Gabo, the sculptor, at no.
101 Cholmley Gardens from 1938 to 1946. Nigel
Balchin, the novelist, died in 1970 in Marlborough
Mansions, Cannon Hill. (fn. 48)
West End suffered during the Second World War,
although not so badly as to necessitate large-scale
rebuilding. Bombed sites included nos. 76-86
Sumatra Road and nos. 9-17 Solent Road, which
were replaced by an open space and clinic, and on
the corner of Dennington Park Road where a library
was built in 1954. (fn. 49) The council opened a terrace of
eight three-storeyed houses on one bombed site in
Agamemnon Road in 1952 and completed four flats
in Gladys Road in 1953, when it started on eight
dwellings in Broomsleigh Street and 18 fronting
Dennington Park Road and West End Lane. (fn. 50) The
demolition of Broomsleigh and Ravenshaw streets
and Sumatra Road was urged c. 1955, because of
bad drainage and neglected houses. (fn. 51) They had been
overcrowded in the 1930s but survived in the 1980s.
An ambitious scheme of 1963 for wholesale redevelopment along the three railway lines from
Finchley Road to West End Lane had not been
effected near West End by 1987. (fn. 52) The Kingsgate
general improvement area, planned in 1969, included the sites south of the railway and west of
West End Lane, originally Nicoll's estate, but there
had been little rebuilding in the West End section
by 1984. As in many areas the main post-war trend
was towards the refurbishing and conversion of old
houses to flats, with young, single people replacing
families. (fn. 53) Other changes included the conversion of
the Congregational church at the corner of Finchley
and Burrard roads to a synagogue in 1947 and the
building of a community centre by Seifert in Dennington Park Road for the synagogue there in 1964. (fn. 54)
In 1966 the Domestic Science college moved to
Tottenham and Berridge House was demolished, to
be replaced in 1972 by a police station. (fn. 55)