Avenue Lodge Avenue Lodge is a block of flats with two entrances, situated near the junction of Avenue Road, St. John’s Wood Park and Adelaide Road at Swiss Cottage. It once had distinctive white globes on the gateposts that were lit at night but I believe these have now gone. It stands back-to-back to an identical block, Park Lodge, the frontage of which is on St. John’s Wood Park, on land that was once part of the Eyre Estate. One of the first ...
On the 1st February 2017 we travelled to the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) with Michelle Cook to find and research songs and music that from the time of the Napoleonic wars and the Battle of Waterloo. This is a part of the Saving Samuel Godley Project at the archive, where we have focused on telling the story of his life (from 1778 to 1832) as part of a school-level outreach programme in which we hope to teach them a little more abo...
These playbills are for two performances of the show John Bull, performed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. It was a long running show, performed alongside a changing array of secondary acts. The cast included Mrs Gibbs as Mary Thornbury (the female lead), William Elliston as Peregrine (the male lead) and Charles Mathews as Sir Simon Rochdale (the main antagonist). They have been preserved in our collection in the Broadley Haymarket collection, Vol...
In January 2017 the Saving Samuel Godley project was already well underway and a great team of volunteers was scouring the archive for documentary evidence relating to Godley’s great story. These prints are from the Gardner Collection, and are some of many in Westminster Archives’ collection showing the funeral procession of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and is particularly special as it shows the Chelsea Pensioners joining the process...
The City of Westminster Archives received £82,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for an exciting project titled “Saving Samuel Godley”. The City Archives is leading this project in association with the National Army Museum, Cartoon Museum, Household Cavalry Museum, Lord’s Cricket Ground, and Digital Works. This new project tells the story of Samuel Godley, a soldier in the Life Guards who fought at the Battle of Waterloo, and will culminate...
Villas on the Finchley Road Devonshire Villa (28 Finchley Road) was built by John Wright Treeby , a builder from Dorset Street whose first lease was for a house on the Finchley Road in 1839. He lived there for three years and then moved into a new house, Elizabethan Villa, which he had built just to the north. The use of the word Villa illustrates the conflict at the time between calling the houses on the Eyre Estate Cottage or Villa – villa wa...
... Jeanne Strang Under Musicians can be found Harold Craxton, John's father and also Janet, his sister. ...
Many local residents may be surprised to learn that the Second World War left several bomb sites in this area of London. My family arrived in Queen’s Grove in 1947. We had been evacuated to a small village in Kent for the duration of the war: there we had become used to playing outside, and we were delighted to be able to do so on the local bomb sites. Just around the corner in St John’s Wood Park were several bombed and unoccupied houses in the ...
Jean Reddaway Jean Reddaway nee Brett studied at the Slade followed by an art teachers Diploma and taught at Impington Village college. She married Norman Reddaway, who after an exciting war joined the Foreign Office, and was Ambassador in Poland 1974 -78. Jean was awarded the OBE and the Polish Order of Merit for her contribution to Anglo Polish relations and the painting of Polish subjects In their retirement the Reddaways lived in Carlton Hill...
Bharat Patel took over Leamys News in the early 1980s. He came from Kenya in 1966 like many others at the time. Before Nugent Terrace he had managed post offices in other parts of London, including in Blenheim Terrace with his brother-in-law. The premises were bought and sold through estate agents. The goodwill was important. Security was crucial, to the premises and for the safes which were needed. You were given training in the work – and had t...
The Close runs south to north off St John’s Wood Road, to the east of Hamilton Terrace. It was part of an old track dating from Elizabethan times which had run from Lisson Grove along Hamilton Close and northwards to Kilburn Priory. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it formed the boundary between the Eyre Estate to the east and the Lyon or Harrow School Estate to the west. Parts of this boundary wall still exist. The mews appears on th...
St Marylebone Almshouses: their origins The history of almshouses and the provision they have made for the elderly poor goes back to the Middle Ages. In the early nineteenth century, a number of enlightened and philanthropic people, who opposed the harsh new Poor Laws, were responsible for founding many new institutions to ease the lives of the ‘better class’ of the elderly poor. St Marylebone Almshouses, in St John’s Wood Terrace, was an early e...
This February we went to the Cartoon Museum on Little Russell Street to research historical cartoons and caricatures, to better contextualise the political satire of the time in terms of the broader history of visual and print culture. It was particularly interesting to learn that the prints of Gillray, Cruikshank and many other artists associated with The Golden Age of Caricature would be published in large folders that could be rented for the w...
Standing proudly over looking Regent’s Park on Prince Albert Road at the foot of St John’s Wood High Street, North Gate is an elegant Edwardian mansion block built circa 1907 on the site of Portland Terrace. At the turn of the 20th century it became popular for wealthy families to live in mansion blocks, largely due to the invention of the hydraulic lift. Architecture The style copied trends in fashionable European cities and the architect was ...
Bertram Mackennal 1863 – 1931 Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1863, Bertram Mackennal’s parents were both Scottish and his father was a sculptor. He encouraged Bertram and after studies at the Melbourne National Gallery, he was advised by a visiting English sculptor to go to Europe. He left for London in 1882 to study at the National Gallery Schools and in 1884 visited Paris for further study where he married a fellow student, Agnes Spooner. He...
... William Davies. When Louis MacNeice was working for the BBC he engaged John Arlott as a poetry producer in the then Empire Service,later World Service.John Arlott became more famous as a cricket broadcaster and Lords in St.Johns Wood was a venue well known to him throughout his subsequent career....
A number of local street names are decidedly sylvan – such as Acacia and Elm Tree. Others have a Scottish bias whilst some others are intended to suggest a high class of development – like Clifton who was a first class cricketer associated with the MCC around 1817 or Carlton after the Prince Regent’s residence Carlton House.. But a number of streets have more specific origins. Abbey Road: nearby Kilburn Priory was attached to the Abbey of Westmin...
My name is Tony Bird and my wife’s name was Sue and we worked for Ron Reader in 1972. We joined Ron and his family in October, we took 4 days off, got married in November and worked for approx 6 months before shipping off to South Africa aboard the Edinburgh Castle of the Union Castle Line. I was very young having just finished catering college in Exeter To this day i remember how thorough Ron was in his dedication to the Knights of St John. I ne...
The famous nineteenth century writer was a journalist, translator, poet and novelist and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She was the author of seven novels, published under the pseudonym of George Eliot as she believed that at that time women novelists were not considered to be serious writers. She chose George because of her relationship with G H Lewes and Eliot because it was, she said, a “good, mouth-filling” word. Mary Ann (c...
... Terry Verney Allen Lydon, still in the pavilion I hope? It would be lovely to share some memories with you. Terry Verney Tavern Upper and East Clock Tower....
Percy Morley Horder (1870-1944) was the architect who designed Nottingham University, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,and even a house for the then PM Lloyd George. Barbara Morley Horder (1898 – 1986) was his elder daughter and was to become an actress, director and artist. In 1916, at the age of 18 she founded an experimental theatre in the converted stables and coach house of her parents’ home at 6 (now 18) Hamilton Terrace...
James Dark was involved with Lord’s for 59 years. He was born on 24 May 1795, the son of a saddler and lived close by the ground in St John’s Wood. He was a professional cricketer of some success, appearing for the Players in the match versus the Gentlemen in 1835. He was a good batsman and fielder, acting intermittently as a wicket keeper, and later an umpire. Heused his earnings as a cricketer to become a property developer. Thomas Lord ope...