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The two photo's below that I found on the internet, were taken in the late 1880's or early 1900's , a long time before the Townsend family setled there. The photo is of Caired street,on the Queens Park Estate' London NW. My parents with three children lived in the the Flat above the shop when we first arrived in Queens Park, and then moved to the house next door at #4 Caird street. Close examination of the above photo shows a vegetable pedler further down the street selling fresh vegatables ironically just as my Father did many yeras later, |
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MEMOIRS THE TOWNSEND FAMILY THE QUEENS PARK ESTATE ERA BACKGROUND. Before World War II most of my Fathers family lived in and around an area in Paddington, NW London, called the Queens Park Estate. I have copied a brief history of the area at the end of this section that was passed on to me by a former resident. The estate was built in the late 1870s because of the appalling living conditions that existed in London during that period. The houses were built by an organisation called the “Artizans’, Labourers’ and General Dwelling Company” . From what I have read , they were working men who had improved their lot and aspired to help other working class people have somewhere decent to live. They also built another estate in London known as the Shaftesbury Park Estate. During the time we lived there I guess you could say it was considered a desirable area to live in, however there are no members of the Townsend family living there now. It has since become a very multi cultural area with a mix of immigrants from other countries now making up the majority of the residents.. For all the time that I can remember my grandparents lived at 95 Third Avenue, although I now know that my Grandfather came from the Derry Hill Area.. A photograph of the family home is shown above and was taken in 1995 and as can be seen it is still in very good condition .I have been told that it sold for close to two hundred thousand pounds in the year 2000, prices have increased considerably since then.! I will note at this point that Third Avenue became quite famous in the mid 70s when several Irish immigrants were arrested at number 43 Third Ave. and were charged with the Guildford pub bombings. This court case was to make International headlines and later was made into a movie starring Daniel Day Lewis called “ In The Name Of The Father” . They were subsequently released because the police botched the evidence . I believe one of the five later married into the Kennedy family. William and Sarah Ann Townsend lived at 95 Third Ave, until they passed away during World War II.. For the latter part of their lives they shared the house [shown above] with their son George, his wife Win and son Stan. Prior to George, Win and Stan living at 95 , Lilly and husband Son Morris and their son John lived there from the time of their marriage. Son had been an 'extra' member of the family since his parents and his sister died in the 'Spanish Flu' epedemic. His brother lived in the house behind 95 in Marne street. It was a similar situation with Aunt 'Flo' whose parents died when she was very young, she was also taken in by my Grandparents, her sister Kitty we believe was taken in by our Grandmothers sister a member of the Holtom family. Neither Flo or Kitty ever married and they worked for Davis ,Dyers and cleaners as did other members of the family. John Morris was seven years old when they moved across the road to 168 Third Ave. Lilly and Son then moved to 1 Marne Street just before WWII and stayed there for the remainder of their lives. Unfortunately I do not remember too much about the character and nature of my grandparents. However as stated above, considering they took in two extra members into their family when they already had eight children says a lot about their characters !! My grandmother was in her sick bed for her last few years of her life suffering with a chest complaint . Most of the male members of that generation suffered from Bronchial problems known outside England as the ‘ English sickness’. The method of construction of many early English houses left a lot to be desired and allowed dampness to seep into the homes and the resulting spores etc. which are now known to cause chest problems. I discovered this by first hand experience and suffered from this problem until I moved into a house with central heating and managed to finally stop periodic Asthma and Bronchitis attacks that had plagued me since childhood . My Grandmother died at age 74 on 29 th Sept 1939 just a few days after WWII was declared. The cause of death according to the family Doctor, Dr. Wright was Myocardial Degeneration of the heart. I understand that my Grandfather died in 1942 of natural causes. One thing that I do remember was that my grandparents had a Parrot and I recall that it was in the same room that my grandmother had her sick bed. My Father was always trying to teach it to swear!! and I believe he was successful some of the time , much to the disgust of my grandmother. They had eight children, four boys and four girls, they all married but two of the daughters Emm and Tilly did not have any children. Memoir by PeterT |
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A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE DEVELOPMENT
OF THE QUEENS PARK ESTATE The following summary of how the area evolved was taken from a publication called a “A History of the Queens Park Estate” and may be of interest to anybody that may wish to visit the area sometime in the future. One thousand years ago the Charter of Edward the Confessor described the land on which the Queen's Park Estate now stands as forest, providing wood for the abbey of Westminster and acorns for its pigs. Its subsequent history is unclear but the London Encyclopaedia describes: "..in the 15th century Henry VI granted part of it to All Souls' College, Oxford... After changing hands again the land passed to Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VIII ... Subsequently Henry VIII gave it to Catherine Parr on their marriage, and Queen Mary in 1557 sold it to Thomas Hues, one of her physicians, who founded scholarships at Merton College, Oxford." Together with the area known as Kensal Town it was believed to be part of the manor of Malorces, and belonged to All Souls College, Oxford. Until 1900 it was administered by the Chelsea Vestry, despite being geographically separate from it, and was thus known as 'Chelsea detached'. By the mid-eighteenth century the forest had been replaced by pasture on the stiff London clay. The area was bounded on the south by the main thoroughfare of the Harrow Road, and on the west and north by the 'dog-leg' of Kilbum Lane. It covered half-a-dozen fields with what is now Third Avenue following an old field boundary. A small tributary of the River Westboume rose under the northern end of Sixth Avenue near Oliphant Street, continued under the Beethoven Street School site, eventually joining the Westbourne under the Chippenham pub. In 1801 the Grand junction Canal opened, cutting through the area parallel with the Harrow Road, so that the carriages of the rich were flanked by narrow boats bringing goods into the growing capital. In 1833 All Souls' Cemetery, Kensal Green was opened on Harrow Road, just west of the estate. Thompson's Map of 1836 shows a few buildings on the narrow triangle between the canal and the Harrow Road where the Flora now stands - Agnes' Cottage, two or three houses called Sanders Place and a tea garden. The beautiful, Italianate villa known as Kensal House was occupied in 1841 by Alfred Haines, but the rest of the land was still pasture. The Great Western Railway line followed next, Paddington Station opening in 1838, and the housing of Kensal Town developed south of the canal. Development spread over the canal between Kensal Flouse and what is now Ladbroke Grove. St john's Church, on the Kilburn Lane/ Harrow Road junction, was built in 1843-4. In 1865 it was accompanied by a National School, (now the Modern Tutorial College) and two houses. To the east, housing around Bravington Road, then known as St Peter's Park, had developed but between them still lay open pasture. It was these fields that were noticed by the Artizans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Company (ALGDC) in the 1870s. THE ARTIZANS' COMPANY The industrial revolution had resulted in appalling housing conditions in many English cities. Philanthropists, such as Octavia Hill, Edwin Chadwick and the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury worked to improve the conditions but the physical condition of the housing, damp, overcrowded and insanitary, was not helped by what the journal, The Architect, described, on Feb 7th, 1874, as: ..the volatile abominations of our manufactures, the foetid vapours of organic decomposition, and the thick smoke of thousands of coal fires, intercepted and mingled in a pestiferous mist ... with these inhospitable conditions, and ... the crowding of the houses, not to say the overcrowding of the very rooms, it becomes almost hopeless to seek a remedy. William Austin, born in 1804, had started work as a bird scarer on a farm for a penny a day. Coming to London he worked as a Labourer, experiencing first hand, no doubt, similar living conditions. He gradually progressed as a contractor laying drains and, despite the fact that he could neither read nor write, determined to form a company to raise money and build decent housing for the industrial working classes. With John Shaw Lowe as deputy chair and William Swindlchurst as secretary he formed the Artizans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Company in 1867. In the Artizans centenary book the Company is recorded as building successfully in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and elsewhere but in 1870 Austin was outmanoeuvered and forced to quit the company. "I was too honest for them," he claimed. Dr J Baxter Langley became chairman and the company purchased land in Battersea. Here they started building the highly successful Shaftesbury Park Estate in 1873, the architectural cousin of Queen's Park. William Austin on June 3rd, 1874, the 67 acres of land next to Harrow Road were purchased at 685 pounds per acre, with a further 'key' plot purchased in August, on which the company was to build a second 'workman's city', to be named the Queen's Park Estate, presumably after Queen Victoria. Queen's Park station, named after the estate, was opened for the agricultural exhibition of 1879. The park called Queen's Park was laid out on the exhibition site in 1887. T'he Times of September 16th, 1874 reported The directors of the Artizans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Company have obtained a site of 80 acres in the West of the metropolis, on which the work of erection of a new city to accommodate no less than 16,000 persons is about to be commenced ... on the same principles as those which have been carried out on the Shaftesbury Park Estate ... Four out of the 80 acres will be appropriated in the centre to a garden and recreation ground; the roads and streets will be planted throughout their entire length with trees, and special inducements will be offered to the inhabitants to lay out their gardens both front and back in as tasteful a manner as their time and money will permit...The lecture hall and institute will be a large and imposing building, and there will be co-operative stores, coal depot, dairy farm, baths, washhouses and other buildings... There is to be no public house on the property, and, like the estate at Shaftesbury Park, every opportunity will be taken to promote and develop temperance principles. Reading rooms, discussion clubs, Iibraries and other substitutes for the public house will be a marked feature. The company directors approached Queen Victoria to lay the memorial stone but were unsuccessful. They then tried Disraeli, Gladstone and various notable lords, but the grand opening was eventually overtaken by events involving a major financial scandal. Fafne and notoriety Some small claims to fame began to emerge. Queen's Park Rangers football team had been formed in 1882 by some of the old boys of Queen's Park School who, using St Jude's Institute as their headquarters, called themselves St Jude's. In 1886 they merged with Christchurch Rangers, taking their current name as most of the players came from the estate. The team's first pitch was on a piece of wasteground near Kensal Rise athletic ground. Until 1904 they used local grounds at Kensal Rise, Brondesbury, Wormwood Scrubs and Kilburn. Moving subsequently to Park Royal and Shepherd's Bush, the geographical connection to the area was severed, although support is still strong on the estate and major fixtures see a blossoming of blue and white in the Avenues. In March 1976 a Queen's Park family hit the headlines when the Maguires of Third Avenue were convicted of possessing explosives. Anne and Patrick Maguire from Northern Ireland and their two sons, Vincent and Patrick, had moved to 43, Third Avenue in 1971. In the house at the time, and arrested with them, were Patrick O'Nefll, a friend, William Smyth, Anne's brother and Patrick Conlon, her brother-in-law and father of Gerry Conlon who had recently been charged in connection with the Guildford pub bombings. Gerry Conlon, along with the three other people convicted for the Guildford bombings, was declared innocent and released in 1989. Evidence against the Maguires was based on tests, purporting to show traces of nitro lycerine on their hands. They served their sentences, although Patrick Conlon died in prison, but in July 1990 the "unsatisfactory" convictions were referred back to the Appeal Court. Roots Residents today can claim up to five generations of their family on the estate, some recall grandparents, or great grandparents coming from the West Country or the Shires. By the 1920s and 30s many had cousins and siblings living in nearby streets with their own families. The community became close-knit and friendly, doors could be left unlocked, people knew all their neighbours, children played safely in the street and there was always a neighbour at home for refuge if your parents were out and the'Kensal Townies'gangs appeared on the street. The 1881 census showed a sprinkling of people from Ireland. After World War 2 larger numbers of Irish people came to London in search of work, mainly to the Kilburn area because of the high number of construction companies and light industry in the area. Some came to live on the estate and stayed to raise families so that there are now second and third generation Irish Queen's Park residents. |