EPW024254 ENGLAND (1928). Vanden Plas coachbuilders and houses under construction on Burgess Avenue, Kingsbury, 1928

Burgess Avenue

Church Lane

This is Kingsbury Green, a small open space which had been at the heart of the hamlet of that name within Kingsbury Parish since at least the time of Elizabeth I. Just about the time this photograph was taken, Kingsbury U.D.C. had finally realised that this land was their responsibility, and decided to tidy it up. The results can be seen in the attached photograph of 1930, from the Wembley History Society Collection at Brent Archives.

The Vanden Plas coachbuilding workshops here at "Kingsbury Works" were actually constructed in 1917 as hangers for building aircraft by the Kingsbury Aviation Co Ltd. You can read their story in an article, "Kingsbury Works: Wings and Wheels", in the Brent Archives online Local History Resources collection at: http://www.brent.gov.uk/media/387489/Philip%20Grant,%20Kingsbury%20Works%20wings%20and%20wheels%20article.pdf The attached photograph, from that article, is a detailed view of the coachbuilding process inside the hangar around 1930, showing the work of the skilled craftsmen, each with their own work bench, as they created a quality motor car body on a chassis supplied by whichever car maker each individual customer chose. You can see three finished cars, outside the works, in the aerial photograph. When the aerial photograph was taken in 1928, part of the works was used by Bentley Motors, for whom Vanden Plas built car bodies, for preparing their racing cars, including those which won the Le Mans 24 hour race from 1927 to 1930 inclusive. During the Second World War, Vanden Plas's woodworking skills were use by De Havilland to construct wings for its Mosquito aircraft. In 1946, the company was taken over by the motor manufacturer, Austin, who from the 1950's used the works to build their "Princess" model, later branded the Vanden Plas Princess. The works closed in 1979, and were demolished around 1980 to make way for the modern Kingsbury Trading Estate.