epw062760 ENGLAND (1939). Northwick Park Golf Course, North Wembley, 1939

Footbridge across LNWR/LMS connecting Northwick Avenue with The Ridgeway. The footbridge pre-dates the existence of either of these roads and was probably built to honour an existing right of way connecting Sheepcote Farm and Woodcock Hill Farm.

Northwick Park Golf Club House. Quite a prestigious golf club in its day. The land on which it was built would originally have formed part of Sheepcote Farm, which was rented from the Northwick Estate. It was acquired by Harrow School in 1905 in order to limit the encroachment of residential development. This suggests that by this time Sheepcote Farm had ceased to be a working farm and the landlord was happy to dispose of it. The golf club appeared in 1908, but ceased to exist at about the start of WW2. During WW2, temporary buildings were erected near to the old farm buildings on what is now the site of original Harrow Technical College building (now absorbed into the University of Westminster campus.) These hutment buildings were used as an Admiralty records depository and naval accounts office. The huts remained until Harrow Tech was built and it is believed that they were latterly used by the Inland Revenue and as a temporary Royal Mail sorting office when the Harrow sorting office was being redeveloped.

Draycott Avenue

Northwick Park railway station The track arrangement was somewhat different then. The up and down Met local lines were nearest the camera and the up and down fast lines were both situated further away. This arrangement was to change when the up and down fast lines were sited outside of the respective local lines, as is the arrangement today. The GCR/LNER lines are nearest to the golf course.

A row of tents? There was a Church Lads Brigade hall at one end of this field. Perhaps the tents are something to do with them.

Herga Court.

Convent of the Order of the Visitation, Sudbury Hill The order of nuns moved here in 1896. It was more recently redeveloped into luxury apartments called Chasewood Park. Only the chapel of 1905 by Giles Gilbert Scott remains.

'Ducker' - Harrow School open air bathing place. The name is believed to be a schoolboy corruption of 'duck pond', so called because it was developed from an old farm pond previously belonging to the nearby Sheepcote Farm.

Churchill Avenue Named not for Winston Churchill but for a cousin of his, Captain Edward George Spencer-Churchill, the landowner who had previously owned much of the local area and who had sold it off for development.

Rushout Avenue Named for the Rushout family, who were the original Barons Northwick. When the widow of the last Baron Northwick died in 1912, the Harrow estate came into the hands of Captain Edward George Spencer-Churchill, her grandson. Due probably to the death duties liable on the estate, he sold it off for development, most of which started after WW1.

Remaining abutment of old footbridge crossing Met Railway from Sheepcote Farm to Kenton Road. Why it existed is something of a mystery as there were railway crossing points at Northwick Park Station (pedestrian subway) and the Watford Road bridge. Perhaps it honoured some ancient right of way.

Harrow School CCF rifle range. This was certainly still active during the 1960s as rifle fire could clearly be heard.

The John Lyon public house would be built here during the 1950s.

Harrow School Farm

Yard belonging to Costin, the local building company that built much of Kenton

Northwick Avenue

Sheepcote Farm