The Way to Wembley ... from Kingsbury (4K)

so we are up in Kingsbury right up in North West London and I've got a fantastic walk for you today a real cracker even if I say so myself because this is one that I devised for the Brent biennial in 2020 2021 but it's a great walk the ancient manner of Kingsbury goes all the way back to the Anglo-Saxon era it's actually mentioned in the Doomsday Book and the name is said to me in King's stronghold I'm entirely sure which king there are a number of quite amazing features about Kingsbury the first one is going to be more more contemporary shall we say and the tube station here on the Jubilee line opened in the 1930s 1932 so it obviously it wasn't on the Jubilee line then I guess it must have been on the Metropolitan line right but it's said to be built in the Suburban style and it looks basically like a house there are a couple like that in this neck of the woods it's got a really interesting kind of a barrel vaulted ceiling in the ticket Hall so Brent 2020 or the Brent biennial I think as it was by that point commissioned me to devise a series of walks uh I did three I did three walks devised three walks and uh linking together the commissioned artworks for the Brent viennial one of them was my own down at Kenzo rice and I shared a video of that um a couple of weeks ago the first one at Kingsbury is up here it's a brilliant um it's a brilliant mural I hope it's still here and it relates to an important bit of the kind of cultural history of Kingsbury oh by the way there's these little booklets they've produced I wrote some text and did a map and you could print the booklet out and fold it up and make a little booklet which is great I'd never done that before today so the information I'll be giving you today is from my own little booklet and I'll put a link down below to hopefully where you can still download these from if not I'll make them available somewhere else but let's go and find this great murals just along the parade here and we'll also be using this great map that was made by the brilliant designer Joe Hales who I worked with on my on my cancer rise project and he managed to create this wonderful map from my kind of garbled description and a Google map as well so this is our map for today again you can download these hopefully somewhere you can at least download them from my blog this is great I'm so glad it's here and it's not been damaged this is Dawn Miller's wonderful mural depicting The Life of George Michael The Great singer-songwriter George Michael who grew up in Kingsbury and went to school here and and this was commissioned for the Brent biennial 2020 2021 sort of like portraits of George Michael and key moments in his life isn't it wonderful [Music] Drew's old church is said to be medieval but they found um Roman building materials actually somewhere within the fabric of the church suggesting that there must have been a much earlier settlement we aren't actually going that side of Kingsbury that sort of more down towards the Welsh harp it's a fascinating uh feature of the area isn't it it shows you how ancient this place really is and one of the lovely little factoids about Kingsbury this is where John Logie Baird made an experimental television broadcast to Berlin in Germany from the stables at Kingsbury Manor and this really is a very fine 1930s shopping parade isn't it you find these kind of parades all around the sort of outer suburbs of London I really love them I really love them it's such a beautiful day isn't it it's like was it today is the 10th of October 9th of October I'm overdressed in this just this light shirt it's incredible yes soak it up before the Grim days of winter are on us there's a couple of places up here I want to have a look at actually and then we're gonna oh there's so many points on this walk so many beautiful I love this walk I can't believe it's taking me this long to make a video of it I devised this in what December 2020. we end up at Wembley I'll tell you now we end up at Wembley that's taking a bit maybe not the aspects of Wembley you might be thinking though and this uh branch of Aldi Supermarket here was the Odeon Cinema from 1934 to 1972. now it has a new life so you can see that the the Audi is bookended by these two quite lovely sort of Art Deco buildings there I wonder if that's what the facade of the of the old Odeon was like I imagine there are pictures online good to see they've got our spoons here JJ moons it's called that name sounds familiar but maybe that's because I was here what 18 months ago two years ago they clearly have a lot of respect for the Psychopaths here in Kingsbury you can see look it's just used as a car park that's quite funny in my recent q a video I was talking about the way that the outer suburbs are still very car Centric there's a long way to go before people really adopt cycling as a sort of primary mode of Transport in these areas and that you really see it here don't you even though there's well served by buses there are so many cars here on this Sunday afternoon everyone's out in their Motors aren't they and look all the cars parked up at the shops here there's a tube station there's lots of buses there's a cycle path but still everyone seems to want to come here in their car [Music] foreign Oliver Goldsmith here he lived at Kingsbury I'll put his dates up on the screen in Kingsbury also had a notable Aerodrome in the early days of the of the aviation industry and I don't think it lasted that long but there was a like an aircraft manufacturing place here plant here for a number of years afterwards I'm not sure what the pampus grass outside the king's Linda hotel is telling us over there that's a fine 30s building as well isn't it [Music] so we're turning off Kingsbury parade down the mall or the mall the mall however you want to pronounce it and down here we're going to encounter a stream with a great story and then we're going to climb on the highest points in this part of North West London so Ethel red Court here so I wonder if that indicates the fact that the king's stronghold the king in King's stronghold in Kingsbury the king's Berry I wonder if that King is ethered King ether red the unready could it would make sense wouldn't it you can see the autumn colors breaking out on the far side of Lindsay Park here hopefully we're going to see some wonderful autumn colors on the top of oxendine hill oh [Music] foreign this area here around Preston Hill was Rural right into the early years of the 20th century there are photos from the 1930s that show really sort of rustic scene here 's Preston farm that occupied some of the land and there were also a number of other Farms dotted around Preston Hill some of which had farm houses that dated all the way back to the Tudor period I think they're all gone now which is a real shame you have to Imagine The Rustic scene that was once here under a hundred years ago it's and here's the delightful little wheeled Stone Brook which was once described as one of the most perfect little streams anywhere abounding in Dace and roach swimming among the water lilies it's not a wonderful kind of image to to kind of invoke in your mind apparently the name comes from the sarson Stone near its source the Wheeled Stone which sits in a prehistoric trackway feels like we have to go to the source of the worldstone brook it'd be great to walk it at some point wouldn't it I think it's going to be a very zigzaggy walk but even so what a wonderful little wonderful little stream so we're going to turn off Preston Hill along this delightful little lane in May Lane which will take us up onto oxendine Hill one of the great viewpoints of North West London this is a great temple-like electricity substation isn't it what a beauty amazing to think that this was all still rural less than a hundred years ago I feel like May Lane is one of the survivors of the old country lanes that would have cut through the Open Fields here all of this would have been Open Fields think about it it's kind of amazing imagine living through that level of change seeing all the fields and farmland with the Tudor Farmhouse is being covered in housing Estates it's quite a thought we now go up and over the tube tracks that will take us on to oxendine hill or barn hill you take your pick I'm not entirely sure which is the name in current use foreign Hill it is Mark's Barnhill on the map on Joe's map so is the Contemporary name is Barnhill this is Barnhill open space but the historic name is oxendon Hill which goes back I believe into the Anglo-Saxon period I'll be able to look in my own notes there on my little fold-out map when I get to the top of accident Barnhill have only been to oxendine Hill twice before and both times are almost on the identical day of the year right near the winter solstice in fact actually the first time was exactly on the winter solstice because they did it for my book this other London and I did it with Mel maintenance Papi dimitrio and we came from Child's Hill from Nick's neck of the woods through cricklewood Dulles Hill and then we came up here went through Gladstone Park Etc and we crossed here uh over oxendine Hill after going through the Welsh harp Reservoir and we finished at Wembley Town Hall I'll link to a video below actually I did video that walk it was a fantastic day and then when I was commissioned to create these walks for the Brent biennial actually just sort of by coincidence through to other things falling through I ended up doing the walk I think it was on the 20th of December I think or around that time so it's great to see it in the Autumn it's such a magical location foreign [Music] it's absolutely stunning and wow what a great view looking back where is that well that's looking out towards stanmore which is Nick papad dimitrio's scarp just there amazing into the woods for the steepest part of the climb 282 feet above sea level see at the top [Music] ah Humphrey repton's Pond marks the summit this Pond was part of the Landscaping that reps in carried out here in the in the 18th century [Music] I think I'm going to have a little rest on that bench there have a little look at my notes and then we can talk about this magnificent location here which as you can already see as a quite incredible View [Music] yes that is Wembley Stadium down there [Music] so the name of oxendine Hill is recorded as far back as the 1250s but there it's uh it's Watson dun I think they think that the name derived from a clearing in the woods of a Farmstead named AXA done meaning hill ox's hill like horses here horsing done here horses done ax has done access Hill it's an ancient place this was once where oxendon Hall stood in these fields here it was where the babington plotters were arrested in the 1580s for their plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth the first I was drawn out here to write about it for my book this other London by The View you can see behind me some of you are going well get out of the way so we can see the view don't worry I will put in cutaways of that view but this was described by Gordon S Maxwell who'd come out here at the time of the building of the great Empire exhibition in the 1920s when you look down into that view you can imagine the transformation of open land with what became the Wembley estate and it's been transformed once again even since I came here in 2012. that view down there looked very different then it really is an astonishing view isn't it you can see well out Beyond well certainly to the southern Fringe of London to those Hills over there [Music] I love this view across to Harrow on the hill there standing up majestically isn't it it's 408 feet above sea level so much higher than the point we're out here [Music] and now we we descend back down into the valley of the wildstone brook such a tremendous dramatic landscape around here isn't it wow this Mighty Oak tree has been here quite some time in the foot of oxendine Hill would have been here when this was all open land and wooded all the way around and down to the river wow it's kind of a real relic of the past Gordon S Maxwell would have possibly sat under this tree so we're going to slightly adapt the route that's on the the Brent biennial map simply because it went via Preston Road Library to Loop here one of the artworks that was there it's a really big detour to take in that just that one location so I mean there were a couple of others as a view of the wildstone brook I include Preston Road station there but seeing as I've never actually done this part of the Walk The Wembley part of the walk in the light and there's about an hour of good daylight I thought I would slightly take a slightly more direct route to Wembley not completely direct we're still going to get to see the wildstone brook again but um actually already I can see the benefit of coming up over this Ridge now wow another magnificent View so the world Stonebrook is just over here where you can see that little stone bridge and actually I think we can observe it here just near the Railway Bridge where the tube line goes over this little Valley here she is in a concrete culvert trickling away and on the other side of the road here it is looks very dramatic doesn't it through this heavily wooded little Glade here with the river trickling through although there are clear similarities between outer London suburbs tend to find like those station parades that we saw up at Kingsbury you obviously see those all points of the compass really don't you around London but then again on the other hand oh sorry look at this beautiful tree dressing here isn't that lovely but on the other hand I feel that they all have their own feel and the feel of this North West London territory for me is very much defined by these Hills that West Hill behind me up there to oxendine Hill and Harrow on the hill and the topography with the river valleys it's really a very strong feature out here I love it I also always seem to be out here in autumn and winter I have no idea what that is although the very first walk I did in around this area it wasn't around here it was more down towards uh cricklewood Charles Hill was mid-summer with Nick Pap dimitro and Peter Knapp in 2005. and oddly enough for a little walk that some people that had only just met did one evening it's been written about so many times it's a it's quite strange in some ways look at this glorious lump of Art Deco just lying here in the Wembley suburbs absolute gem [Music] there's a number of them it goes all the way around this little crescent here aren't they um are they magnificent I bet they're I bet they're noted Art Deco buildings Suburban masterpieces what's that modernism in Metro land that's a Blog and a book I believe I bet it's I bet they're all over this [Music] look you can see the uh the less glamorous version on the other side of the road but the same curve to the stairs here really really beautiful apparently it's called Mason Court it says welcome to Mason court and look there's more of them up here this is clearly something which demands further investigation [Music] that's interesting number 10 what Kim road because we're going looking for Watkins Folly it's why we're here forget Wembley Stadium and all that jazz it's Watkins Folly that this is all about [Music] what's interesting is when they first formed Wembley District Council the Forerunner to the borough of Brent they had just like a handful of employees I think it was something like 20 25 people worked for Wembley Council and they were in some offices above a parade of shops I'm wondering whether it's the pro I think it might be the Proto shops here actually because it was near where they built the Majestic Wembley Town Hall the big building just along the way which I think is up there but we are actually Bound for new Wembley down here this Brave New World that sprung up on Watkins pleasure Garden From the Ashes of the Empire exhibition and from the old Wembley Stadium this whatever this is Wembley said to drive its name from wambers Lee wumbas pasture a bloke called womb I had a pasture here which is a very oddly similar to the old football track isn't it so Wembley Wembley Connecticut Wombles Lee Wombles Lee [Music] this is interesting we've got a load of information here which is great so come to Emily and read this because I'm about to do my own thing and it will uh it'll probably be I don't know maybe wrong there you go it does say Wembley there you go look so it does say here talks about Repton laying out the grounds here but here we have is the most important guy sir Edward Watkin and he basically created the idea that you could build grand projects here at Wembley and here is his most notable achievement or non-achievement really Watkins Tower later known as Watkins Folly it's great we've got a picture of it here and here it is the planned Watkins Tower next to the actual Eiffel Tower I've got my little booklet out so Wembley Park Station back there was built to service Watkins pleasure Garden that he that he built here on on wumba's pasture wonders leave and it was meant to be a great pleasure Garden as a resort for London it's a great day out and the centerpiece was going to be this great iron tower that would dwarf the Eiffel Tower I don't think it dwarf it but it was going to be 366 meters high they only managed to build the first 47 meters of it before opening in 1896 and then pretty quickly it started to tilt and lean and not long after that it was decided that it was unsafe very few people that came out here to the pleasure Garden actually went up the tower but a hundred thousand people did visit in that first year which I think means it wasn't a complete disaster but the tower was considered a failure they never got Beyond 47 meters and in 1907 it was decided to demolish it and they had to get rid of the base with dynamite and blow up the base it left four enormous holes in the ground and on where those four enormous holes in the ground were they built Wembley Stadium which was then the centerpiece of the Empire exhibition which happened near 1924 1925 a time when Britain was sort of a bit concerned that it had now Imperial Rivals so I thought let's get everyone together in one place and sort of show all the wonders of the British Empire and of the how many territories were there our credits on the screen for memory I'm going to make it I'm going to try and remember there's 58 territories in the British Empire at the time in the early 1920s of which 56 created either exhibitions or Pavilions here just kind of amazing if you think about it but what I found kind of amazing when I was researching for the the Brent walks I thought there's got to be some bits of that left I don't think there is I think some bits of it were in the some of the old Pavilions did survive in the old Wembley industrial park but I think my I don't know if there's any of that left now because you can see all around me I mean this is what's here now I mean even Wembley Stadium it's not you know it's a new stadium but there wouldn't have been an Empire exhibition there hadn't been for Watkins pleasure Garden about Watkins pleasure Garden they wouldn't have been a Wembley Stadium and without Wembley Stadium no one would talk about Wembley Wembley wouldn't have become the world famous location that it is today I'm starting with this kind of very eccentric dreamer who'd made his money in the Railway business and tried to build a channel tunnel I mean he failed at that as well and once again Wembley is now a focus of major development as you can see all around all these tower blocks that have risen on the old Wembley Park massive massive development one of the biggest in London this really is one of the areas of New London that can't be Wormley Arena can it God I saw loads of gigs there used to be so exciting when I come up here from from Wickham and not even from Wickham where I grew up in a village just outside how Wickham as soon as I see here I saw Frankie Goes to Hollywood here Duran Duran David Lee Roth I bet you're thinking what a list of terrible bands I'm trying to think of someone who wasn't a so in excess here this this is all in the 80s in fact I'm not entirely sure I've seen anybody there since the 1980s but uh what an iconic venue that is is that really Wembley Arena I guess it is it just looks so different because of everything that's changed around it I mean what is this well thank you for joining me on that magnificent walk from Kingsbury down here to Wembley I've really enjoyed I've been wanting to put this down on video for you for well since I did it in December 2020 it's taking me that long to October 2022 but I'm so glad I finally did it such a lovely walk not an epic walk by any means but it just goes to show how much you can be packed into quite a short space of North West London where a lot of people wouldn't think it was a maybe a place for a Heritage Trail and I've only just skimmed across the surface there's so much more beneath the ground here I bet if you go in the comments they'll be full of stuff I've left out about Wembley like the Olympics the 48 Olympics the 78 European Cup Final that all their various other what is it Live Aid was there was that 1985 Live Aid hello Wembley as people play Wembley UC I saw U2 there in 1987 on the Joshua Tree tour became a big kind of rock venue didn't it in in those days in the 80s I mean I know bands still play there but it doesn't really have the same resonance does it as it did then there's all sorts of things about what went on inside Wembley state medium now it's just England mostly performing very disappointingly the men I should say the lady seem to be doing quite well so as always like to say thank you for coming on that walk and I look forward to seeing the next walk wherever that may be and uh oh yeah try and find a link to those maps for you there'll be some sort of link to the maps in some sort of form somewhere on the internet [Music] thank you

Channel: John Rogers

Views: 25,246

Keywords: London, This Other London, psychogeography, london walks, london travel, John Rogers, John Rogers walks, 4K video, London travel guide, London walking tour, London walk, London walking tour 4K, Olympus OM-D EM-1 mark 2, london walk, london vlog, london tour, Wembley, Brent

Id: oY0RyXr-N1s

Length: 27min 5sec (1625 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2022