EPW034472 ENGLAND (1930). Holy Innocents' Church and housing under construction around Springfield Mount, Kingsbury, from the south-west, 1930

Hyde Farm

Springfield House

Sheaveshill Avenue

Parade at the junction of Edgware Road and Sheaveshill Avenue 11.3.2014

Looking east down Wakemans Hill Avenue towards the Edgware Road 11/3/2014

The Ridgeway

Hyde House. I've flagged it up in the hope that the extremely knowledgeable PhilWHS can tell us more about. His informative contributions just to this image alone make the site so much more enjoyable. Is there any possibility that Springfield House could have been the Ariel House used by Aerofilms in the 1920's that Katy Whitticker is seeking?

The road shown here had existed for hundreds of years, but had only been known as Kingsbury Road since 1900, when Kingsbury Urban District Council was formed. Previous names had been London Lane, Hyde Lane and Kingsbury Lane. When the UDC first took charge of it, it was a narrow track kept passable by depositing fresh gravel onto the underlying clay each year. It first received a tarmac surface in 1912, after the UDC persuaded Middlesex County Council to adopt it as a "B" road, and pay half the costs of its upkeep. The road suffered badly during the First World War, because of heavy traffic generated by local aircraft factories and a lack of money or men to look after them. Proposals for improvements to Kingsbury Road were turned down by central government in 1919. When proposals were made by the London General Omnibus Co for a motor omnibus route along the road in December 1920, the Council recorded its opinion that: ‘…insofar as the proposed route affects this District the nature and construction of the roads in question render such service extremely dangerous and very undesirable, and that this Council regrets it must withhold the consent required….’ One of the reasons was that this section of Kingsbury Road, from The Hyde up the hill to the church, was very steep, with high banks and sharp bends. However, by the beginning of 1922 there was government money available for unemployment relief schemes. Kingsbury UDC was able to persuade the County Council to go ahead with widening Kingsbury Road from Edgware Road to Church Lane under one of these schemes, with the road becoming a main "A" road under Middlesex's control on completion of the work in 1923. The effects of straightening and widening the road can be seen in the aerial photograph, with some of the new banking and old hedgerows clearly visible. Some of the former bends became spare land, and for one piece, outside Holy Innocents’, the County Engineer agreed to the ‘… laying a greensward fronting the Church.’ This grassy area was subsequently handed over to the Church to maintain. Another result of the improvements was that Kingsbury UDC asked the London General Omnibus Co for better bus services in its area. The company agreed: ‘… to commence a service of ‘buses from Golders Green to Pinner Green passing through Kingsbury Road….’ On 9 February 1927, the 183 route began, which still runs along this stretch of Kingsbury Road today.

This field, to the west of Holy Innocents' church, was part of the land purchased by J. Laing & Son in 1929 for their Springfield Estate. Many of the roads on the estate are named after places in the Lake District, because John Laing grew up in Cumbria. The original plans for the estate show Coniston Gardens along the upper part of the field, and Eskdale Drive curving down from it across the lower half, to join Kingsbury Road near the church. However, Middlesex County Council wanted to replace its ageing "Board School" further down Kingsbury Road near The Hyde, and persuaded Laings to sell them part of the field for a modern junior school. Coniston Gardens was completed by 1935, but Eskdale Drive was never built. Instead, the first pupils started at Oliver Goldsmith School (named after the 18th century author who had lived nearby for a time at Hyde House Farm) in the autumn of 1937.

Since around the year 1100, Kingsbury's parish church had been St Andrew's, in the south of the parish. By the 19th century, most of the population of the parish was now in the north of its area, around Kingsbury Green and The Hyde, and in 1883 the incoming vicar of Kingsbury (Rev. Lambart Edwards) proposed building a church there. He raised funds by subscription, and All Souls’ College donated a site on the brow of the hill in Kingsbury Road. In April 1884 Holy Innocents’ was consecrated as Kingsbury’s new parish church. Around ten years later a bell tower was added, and this can be seen in the attached photograph, taken around 1900, along with the vicarage (see separate note) and one of the gas street lights which had recently been installed.

The new Holy Innocents' Church (see note) opened in 1884. The Rev. Lambart Edwards needed a home for his wife and five children, and built a large vicarage on the hillside above the church, as he could not wait for the grant of £1,500 which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had promised him by 1886. As the Springfield Estate gradually enclosed the church, the then vicar of Holy Innocents' moved to a new, smaller house at Roe Green in 1931. The old vicarage was sold to the estate's developer, Laings, who let it to the Church of England Adoption Society as a babies’ home. By 1939, the former vicarage was being used as a home for Jewish refugee children from Germany. After the war, it became a girls’ home run by the Dr Barnardo’s charity. In 1958 it was acquired by Middlesex County Council, who demolished it in order to extend the playing fields of the neighbouring Oliver Goldsmith School.

Townsend Lane, then just a farm track.