Roll up, roll up - for 6 nights only...

A special treat here which is the programme from 14th April 1896 (the programme is dated by hand on the back - this is the second night of a 6 night run) of the Theatre Royal in Kilburn.

The Theatre Royal was in Belsize Road (opposite the Kilburn and Maida Vale station - the original railway house is still there in great external condition) and is essentially just opposite the Priory Pub.

More information on this music hall can be found here
http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/KilburnTheatres.htm

This programme refers to the 'New' Theatre Royal as the theatre was rebuilt in 1895 and therefore this is just a year old at this point.

The prize top billed act is William Bryer (by his stage name Willie Edouin) at this point quite late in his career - he's now about go freelance and passes away in 1908.

Mark Melford worked with Willie Edouin before not least on a very successful run on this performance "Turned Up" but also on "The Jerry Builder".

Much more on Edouin can be found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Edouin

NW6 Back in 1790

I thought this little map from my local history collection would be of interest to local officianado's. (To get a large image just click on it and it should open as a new window.)

It's essentially a travel map, a sort of gazeteer, of the route from London to Tring in the form of a hand drawn AA or RAC site - this is the section from London to Bushey Heath - the rest would have been on the next page as columns 21 and 22.

For local drinkers and supporters of ye olde public house you will see on the Kilbourn (sic) part the following hostelries:
The Red Lion
The Bell
The Black Lion
The Crown (now in Cricklewood)

All still there today (although the Red Lion is somewhat dreadfully renamed as The Westbury).

The map also throws into contention the claim of the Cock to be a medieval tavern, but I'll leave that claim to a later date of discussion.

The other bit on the name is the confirmation of the Kilburn Gate toll (from Kilburn Gate estate - top of Maida Vale and bottom of the High Road) through to Edware Gate - a length of some 7 miles.

Some things don't change in West End...

It's incredibly easy to miss Emmanuel Church if you walk down Fortune Green Road today...

Everyone knows it is there, lots of people as a result of the school have heard of it, but the mansions lfats next and around mean that the attractive Victorian build just melds into the local scenescape...

But this postcard, posted in 1906 (when the church is just 9 years old), shows the building off as being much more imposing as there are no surrounding buildings in the way there are today.

But, bar that overshadow of the buildings, little has changed outwardly today. The architect in 1897 was JA Thomas of Charing Cross and the foundations were laid on 19th June 1897 - I wonder if the poster of this postcard realised that they were at the anniversary of the foundation when they sent this card. In fact given it is posted in Highbury it is quite possible that this person attends this 'new' church as they are a donor/supporter and went to the foundation service in 1906.

In fact, the church authorities ran out of money during the work and in fact the work was not completed until 29th June 1903 so this card is almost certainly produced as a new card just after the building work was completed and sold for the next three or four or more years...

You might even notice that the noticeboard is even in the same place 104 years later...! In fact anyone standing at Chomley Garden on Fortune Green Road would see little different today.


Of course, the Rev'd Jonathan Kester will be delighted to read that the sender of this postcard liked the service (18th June 1906) - not much has changed in that respect I suspect!

The only other side issues from this card is that there was a post in Highbury at 9.15pm and you can be pretty confident that that was not the only post dispatch of the day.

But then again postcards are not much used for short day-today communications like this - I guess this is the 1906 equivalent of an email or facebook message.

So what did the Kilburn High Road look like from the inside...

It's relatively easy to track down early postcards and images of high streets or in this instance, High Roads, - more on this to follow.

But I have often wondered who the shop keepers were, the customers and the products.

So this little gem gives us one small insight - dated on the back 1897 it looks like an engagement or aniversary picture... but crucially for this blog is taken on the Kilburn High Road.

It's a studio piece on a card mount, nothing on the back - the sort of thing you would go in have the picture taken and call back a hour or so later and collect it for a shilling or so... It's nice to note the wooden fence prop - relatively common at this period to give it a setting.

The shop of photographer, Edward J Davison, was at 310 High Road, Kilburn.

Now it's Furnishing First - just before Brondesbury Station - opposite the Luminaire (as was) - but a small insight into ye olde Kilburn...

101 years ago just gone...

The idea os a fire on this scale here in Kilburn is pretty hard to imagine - but that's exactly what happened on January 13th 1910.

This Postcard made and published by the Watford Engraving Company captures the scale of the fire of Evans's Department store.

What is more fascinating is the back has a lovely edwardian handwriting and it reads:
"This is the photo of B.B.Evans fire, it was like this half an hour after it started. Caught the shop on the corner opposite and cracked all the plate glass down the row. This is the same shop we bought out needlework.
Glad Willie's eyes are better. I expect he caught a cold eating outside buses."

Posted in Cricklewood in the 12.15am Post on January 19th 2010 - just six days after the fire!

Kilburn - take another look...

I thought this was really good:
http://southkilburnspeaks.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/hello-world/

Peel Precinct
by Aoife Mannix
The woman in the bright pink scarf says the square
is empty now but back in the fifties this market
was buzzing with barrow boy bargains. Live eels
wriggling with soon to be jelly bravado. Stallions
shivering outside the horse butchers though she
never knew any but the French to eat such meat.
A string of pearl shops where people echoed
your name, your family, the county you came
from back in the old country. Cork, Kerry,
Kilkenny, Killarney, Kildare, Kilburn.
Their music transferred to an alien city,
proud to play more Irish than the Irish themselves.
They were poorer than those up on the high road
but they were never short of a helping hand.
The Paddies and the Blacks united in their reversal
of no dog signs as they mixed Donegal and Trinidad
into coffee children calling out for a chance to show
they are no mere statistics in a drawer, jokers
in a pack that keeps being reshuffled, but voices
of vision that leap across concrete divisions.
Street corner pioneers conquering vertigo
with a single bound. The richness of lyrical
answers sewn into the wings of their trainers.
Hip-hop sky diving acrobats who tumble and spin
across their own urban palaces that have
yet to be built. Angel rebels whose cloud souls
are not for sale, they rewrite the signs so they point
up into the sky. Dance their own invisible maps
through the rain forest of broken stones.

Slipped behind badly

But now with the new year it's time to crack back on with the blog and with so much going on with the history and the culture and pride of the local area there's no shortage of things to talk about on here...

Sorry for the delay in service

Ed