EPW030078 ENGLAND (1929). Hendon Isolation Hospital, West Hendon, 1929

I think that this must be Reets Farm. Until I looked closely at this photograph, I thought that the Hendon Isolation Hospital, which first appears on the 1935 O.S. map, had been built on the site of Reets Farm, which is shown on the 1920 edition of the O.S. 6" map, but is gone by 1935. So, Reets Farm was still here in 1929, but losing its land to development by Hendon U.D.C., and soon to disappear! Luckily I have one view of it (courtesy of Barnet Archives), a postcard from the early 1900's, looking towards West Hendon and the Welsh Harp Reservoir which I can share with you.

On the night of 24 September 1940, three high explosive bombs hit Hendon Isolation Hospital. Five children died and several members of staff were injured in one of two wards badly damaged by the attack.

Hyde House Farm had been on this site since at least the reign of Elizabeth I, but by the time of this aerial view in 1929 it had almost reached the end of its life. The farm is probably most famous for Oliver Goldsmith, the writer who lived in rented rooms here between 1771 and 1774, producing one of his most famous plays, "She Stoops to Conquer", and enjoying his walks beside the hedgerows so much that he also wrote a "History of Animated Nature". By 1929, the fields around the farm on the north side of Kingsbury Road had been sold to the construction firm, John Laing, and Kingsbury UDC had approved an outline planning application for its Springfield Estate (see aerial photos showing the building of this). The photograph attached, taken in 1931 by local historian Stanley Holliday, shows a view from this developing estate down towards Hyde House Farm, with the stacks from its last crop of hay in evidence. The farm buildings were demolished in 1932, and the land was built over, apart from part of the farmhouse garden which remains as a small area of open space at the junction of Springfield Gardens with Kingsbury Road.

This row of tall tenement flats was built for the landowners, All Souls'College, Oxford, in the 1870's. The last property on the left was also the location of the Board School for Kingsbury Parish, which opened in 1876, with classrooms on the lower two floors and a flat for the headmaster at the top. When Kingsbury Urban District Council was set up in 1900, one of the classrooms on the first floor was taken over and divided in two to provide an office and Council chamber, which was used until the Council moved to larger premises at Kingsbury Green in 1929. In the 1930's, these tenement flats were described as 'the ugliest thing in rural Middlesex'. The school was replaced by Oliver Goldsmith School, further up Kingsbury Road, at the top of the hill next door to Holy Innocents' Church, in 1937. The buildings are thought to have been damaged by bombing during World War II, and were demolished by 1950, when a row of new Wembley Borough Council flats was built on the site.

Hyde Crescent

Goldsmith Avenue

Kingsbury Road