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Michael StrachanDollis Hill to Neasden 1 Great Central Railway

Copyright © heritagewalks.london 2024 75 West Street, Harrow on the Hill, London HA1 3EL info@walkingthepast.co.uk First published in the UK in 2012 Text and images copyright © Michael Strachan Michael Strachan has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. (The cover illustration shows Railway Workmen from an original photograph and Gladstone Park Holocaust Memorial).Dollis Hill to Neasden 1 Grand Central Railway

INTRODUCTION Constructed in the late Nineteenth Century, the Grand Central Railway was originally conceived as part of an ambitious plan to connect the Midlands through London and a Channel Tunnel to the Continent, but was never completed. From Marylebone station there is no way to walk along the track, so we have included a nearby short section from Dollis Hill to Neasden through Gladstone Park as an introduction to the general area. Part 1 begins at Dollis Hill station and crosses the over-ground railway dividing Gladstone Park and up to Dollis Hill House. Built as a farmhouse in 1825 by the Finch family when Dollis Hill was still a largely rural area miles from London. Many famous people stayed here includ-ing Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone and the American author Mark Twain. Dollis Hill was the site of the Post Office Research Station where Tommy Flowers worked in the Second World War. His role in developing the computer technology to sup-port the codebreaking at Bletchley Park is now widely acknowledged. 1Full steam ahead on the GCRWembley viaduct and Tower

Part 2 begins at Wembley Stadium station. Wembley is the home of English football and the famous interna-tional stadium, but was first developed in the early twen-tieth century as an exhibition centre for the British Em-pire Exhibition of 1924/5. The GCR route continues on through Sudbury and South Harrow to Northolt. On this section it is possible to see the original bridges, viaducts and tunnels still used today. The photographs taken at the time of the GCR construction are, wherever possible, placed alongside our modern pictures. We have also included a link to a description written in the 1950’s of the main features of the GCR 1906 extension.. To hear this Introduction please click this icon To find out more about ‘What3Words’ please click this information icon 2If you would like to donate an amount which will help us cover our costs and continue to work on new publications please scan or tap the QR link below:

Planning Your Walk 1. If possible, walk with a friend. 2. Tel l s ome one wh ere you are g oin g. 3. Take ca re w hen wa lking at nigh t. 4. Wear sensible clothes and footwear. 5. Always take a bottle of water to avoid de-hydration. 6. Don't try to do too much in one visit. 7. Check the opening times of Museums and Galleries online. 8. Take yo ur cam era or c ame ra phone wi th batt eri es ful ly charged. 9. If you are printing out this do staple these!pages!together!. 10. Don’t forget to download your free Quiz and Plaque scoresheets by using the URL links on the next page… Part 1 Starts at Dollis Hill Underground station. (Jubilee line) Ends at Neasden Underground station. (Jubilee line) Part 2 Starts at Wembley Stadium station. (Chiltern line) Ends at Northolt Underground station (Central line) Use the Transport for London (TFL) planner to plan your journey. 3Part 1 3.6 km 1-2 hrs

To make your walk more interesting… …we have created an on-line, interactive map which you can find by clicking the link below, or by scanning the green QR code opposite. This will only work if you are reading this guide on a smart device like an iPad: Plot-a-Route map We have also added some fun challenges - the first is a picture quiz. So you need to look out for interesting ob-jects such as ‘street furniture’, statues and architectural features shown in the I-Spy Challenge scoresheet. Click the link below, or scan the pink QR code opposite, to access a download for this scoresheet. It can then be printed or saved: I-Spy Challenge The second challenge is to ‘bag’ all the plaques along this walk. These are listed on a ‘Pastwalkers’ scoresheet along with their ‘what3words’ locations. (Click the information icon opposite for more about how ‘What3Words’ works). The plaque scores are based on age and quality rather than the importance of the person or event commemor-ated. Download by clicking on the link below, or by scanning the blue QR code opposite: Plaque Challenge 4Tick them off when you find them

From Dollis Hill to Neasden Having arrived at Dollis Hill Underground station take the north exit and walk across Burnley Road into Hamilton Road and down to Kendal Road… For most of the nineteenth century this was an area of pleasant fields and woods as you can see from the old photo immediately below. The woods and fields were ob-literated by the suburban house building boom which took place just be-fore the first world war, as shown in the photo of Burnley Road shown above. Much of this decent quality housing remains today. 5Burnley Road c 1906From Dollis Hill to Neasden Having arrived at Dollis Hill Underground station take the north exit and walk across Burnley Road into Hamilton Road and down to Kendal Road… For most of the nineteenth century this was an area of pleasant fields and woods as you can see from the old photo immediately below. It was obliterated by suburban house building before the first world war, as shown in the photo of Burnley Road. Much of this housing remains. Cross over Kendal Road into Gladstone Park… In 1901, a new public park was created the 35 hectares (86 acres) Gladstone Park, named after the former Prime Minister. An underground station, Dollis Hill Underground station, was opened on 1 October 1909 as part of the Metropolitan line, now on the Jubilee line. Between the park and the underground station, Edwardian terraced houses were built at this time on a I-spy ObjectsAll images, photos and text © Michael Strachan 2016 Page 6Dollis Hill Underground Station Dollis Hill c 1900 Burnley Road c 1906///oldest.budget.zoomsDollis Hill c 1900

Cross over Kendal Road into Gladstone Park… In 1901, a new public park was created the 35 hectares (86 acres) Gladstone Park, named after the former Prime Minister. An underground station, Dollis Hill Under-ground station, was opened on 1 October 1909 as part of the Metropolitan line, now located on the Jubilee line. Between the park and the underground station, Edward-ian terraced houses were built at this time on a grid with names starting with letters in alphabetical order (with some letters missing) from Aberdeen to Normanby. Me-dium-sized, semi-detached houses were built to the east of this area between 1927 and 1935. As you enter this open space look to your left and com-pare the often empty playing field of today with the thriving open-air Lido that once existed here. According to the Willesden Guide 1905/6, the building cost was £2569 6s 5d. It was based on Harrow School swimming bath, which representatives of the Council had visited and approved. 6

All the construction work, which commenced on 2 March 1903, was carried out by the Engineer's Depart-ment to provide work for the local unemployed. The photo above shows how popular it was in its heyday. Walk to your right, parallel to Kendal Road, to reach the central pathway opposite Park Avenue North… Now turn left and walk uphill towards the small bridge over the Dudding Hill railway line… Looking to your right over the playing field you will see the Cricklewood Pumping Station built in 1905, after the Metropolit-an Water Board took over the supply to this area. Two huge steam engines pumped 72,000 m3 of water a day to North Lon-don. It was coal-fired until the 1950s and the distinctive chimney discharged smoke until the sta-tion converted to electric power. The interior of the Cricklewood Pumping Station, (shown on the next page), was used as a double for the Titanic's engine rooms in the film ‘A Night to Remember’, starring Kenneth More. As you reach the bridge over the railway line look down to the track where you will see the Dudding Hill Junction signal box… 7

Below you can see how visitors walked across the line in 1906 using this stairway level cross-ing. As you walk on, bear right towards the side of the Park where it runs alongside Park Side… 8The interior of the Cricklewood Pumping Station, (shown in the photo above), was used as a double for the Titanic's engine rooms in the film ‘A Night to Remember’, starring Kenneth More. As you reach the bridge over the railway line look down to the track where you will see the Dudding Hill Junction signal box shown in the photo opposite… Below you can see how visitors walked across the line in 1906 using this stairway level crossing. All images, photos and text © Michael Strachan 2016 Page 8This contemporary map shows the Dudding Hill Junction and the Metropolitan line from Baker Street to Wembley. The red circle shows where the GCR line from Marylebone split off towards Wembley and Northolt.Kenneth More///backed.retire.sailorThe interior of the Cricklewood Pumping Station, (shown in the photo above), was used as a double for the Titanic's engine rooms in the film ‘A Night to Remember’, starring Kenneth More. As you reach the bridge over the railway line look down to the track where you will see the Dudding Hill Junction signal box shown in the photo opposite… Below you can see how visitors walked across the line in 1906 using this stairway level crossing. All images, photos and text © Michael Strachan 2016 Page 8This contemporary map shows the Dudding Hill Junction and the Metropolitan line from Baker Street to Wembley. The red circle shows where the GCR line from Marylebone split off towards Wembley and Northolt.Kenneth More///backed.retire.sailorKenneth More

Many Jews from the East End of London settled in Dollis Hill building their dis-tinctive synagogues and schools. Some still survive includ-ing the Dollis Hill Synagogue. D e-signed by Sir Owen Williams, the com-pleted two-storey concrete structure was designed to accommodate 324 men at ground level and 316 women at gallery level. The two unusual window patterns were meant to suggest Jewish religious symbolism: a hexagon, to suggest the Star of David, and an inverted arch, which was inspired by the outline of a seven-candle menorah. In February 1995, the building was sold and be-came the Avigdor Hirsch Torah Temimah Primary School. The synagogue's congregation moved its reli-gious services to a smaller adjacent building, but, as the local Jewish population declined, the congregation was formally disbanded in 2011. 9Dollis Hill SynagogueOwen Williams

Continue along the path uphill and left towards the site of Dollis Hill House… The photo shows how the house looked in its heyday, and the seated figure is possibly Mark Twain, the Amer-ican writer. You will also find two plaques nearby. In front of you is the site of Dollis Hill House - an early 19th-century farmhouse and the remains of the stable block. Noteworthy guests such as William Ewart Glad-stone and Mark Twain were once entertained there. By the 21st century, the house was derelict, having been all but destroyed by fire in the 1990s; the building was finally demolished in 2012. Once you have located the two plaques nearby and looked at the lovely gardens take the nearest exit onto Dollis Hill Lane… 10In front of you is the site of Dollis Hill House - an early 19th-century farmhouse and the remains of the stable block. Noteworthy guests such as William Ewart Gladstone and Mark Twain were once entertained there. By the 21st century, the house was derelict, having been all but destroyed by fire in the 1990s; the building was finally demolished in 2012. Once you have located the two plaques and looked at the lovely gardens take the nearby exit onto Dollis Hill Lane… Turn right and cross the road to enter Brook Road… On your left you will come to Flowers Close… This road encircles what used to be the Post Office research Station, established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. The main permanent buildings you can still see here at Dollis Hill were opened in 1933 by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Thomas Harold Flowers, BSc, DSc, MBE (1905 – 1998) was an engineer with the British General Post Office. During World War II, Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. Flowers, the son of a bricklayer, took evening classes at the University of London to earn a degree in electrical engineering and joined the telecommunications branch of the General Post Office (GPO), moving to work at the research station at Dollis Hill in north-west London in 1930. (See photo below…) All images, photos and text © Michael Strachan 2016 Page 10Wm Ewart Gladstone///vets.local.vocalRamsay MacDonaldTommy FlowersW. E. GladstoneMark Twain

Turn right and cross the road to enter Brook Road… On your left you will come to Flowers Close… This road encircles what used to be the Post Of-fice research Station, established as a separate section of the General Post Office in 1909. The main permanent buildings you can still see here at Dollis Hill were opened in 1933 by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Thomas Harold Flowers, BSc, DSc, MBE (1905 – 1998) was an engineer with the British General Post Office. During World War II, Flowers de-signed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. Flowers, the son of a bricklayer, took evening classes at the University of London to earn a degree in electrical engineering and joined the telecommunications branch of the General Post Office (GPO), moving to work at the 11Ramsey MacDonald

research station at Dollis Hill in north-west London in 1930. (See photo on previous page…) From 1935 onward, he explored the use of elec-tronics for telephone exchanges and by 1939, he was convinced that an all-electronic system was possible. In 1941 he began working with Alan Turing, the Bletchley Park codebreaking genius. Turing was so impressed with Flowers's work, that he was brought in to automate part of the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Flowers then proposed a sophisticated alternat-ive, using an electronic system, which his staff called Co-lossus, using perhaps 1,800 thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) instead of 150 and having only one paper tape instead of two (which required synchronisation) by gen-erating the wheel patterns electronically. The Bletchley management were sceptical about the system's reliability and merely encouraged Flowers to proceed on his own. He did so here at the Post Office Research Labs, using some of his own funds to build it. 12Tommy Flowers

Despite being treated with disdain by Gordon Welchman, one of the leading Bletchley Park math-ematicians, because of his advocacy of valves rather than mechanical relays, Flowers and his team at Dollis Hill went on to create the world's first programmable computer. This speeded up the decryption process so much that messages could almost be read in real time. Flowers later described a crucial meeting between Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff on 5 June, during which a courier entered and handed Eisenhower a note summar-ising a Colossus decrypt. This confirmed that Adolf Hitler wanted no additional troops moved to Normandy, as he was still convinced that the prepara-tions for the Normandy landings were a feint. Handing back the decrypt, Eisenhower announced to his staff, "We go tomorrow". There is no blue plaque at Dollis Hill to com-memorate Tommy Flowers or his collaboration with Alan Turing and Bletchley Park - something we hope will be rectified. Heritagewalks.london has proposed plaque to English Heritage and we un-derstand that it is currently under con-sideration. In 1968 it was announced that the station would be relocated to a new centre to be built at Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. This was formally opened on 21 November 1975 by Queen Elizabeth and is today known as Adastral Park. 13Gordon WelchmanAlan Turing

The old Dollis Hill site was released for housing, with the main building converted into a block of luxury flats and an access road named Flowers Close, in honour of Tommy Flowers. Return to Brook Road and look for number 107… ‘Paddock’ is the codeword for an alternative Cabinet War Room bunker for Winston Churchill's World War II government located next door to 107 Brook Road, NW2 7DZ, opposite the Thames Water reservoir. The name derives from the nearby Paddock Road NW2, in 14

turn named for a nineteenth-century stud farm, the Willesden Paddocks, situated nearby. The bunker was constructed in total secrecy in 1939 but only rarely used during the war, with only two meetings of the War Cabinet being held there, one chaired by Winston Churchill and the other by Clement Attlee. It was abandoned in 1944. It comprises some forty rooms on two floors, and is semi-derelict with original equipment abandoned and rusted. Incoming water is only kept at bay by an electric extraction pump. The photo above shows the concealed doorway and entrance. Return to Dollis Hill Lane and turn right … 15

Look for the entrance back into Gladstone Park by the car park - you will need to cross over and walk through this car park along the path… …to view the Memorial sculpture group dedicated ‘to the memory of prisoners of war and victims of concen-tration camps 1914–1945’ by Fred Kormis. Sculptor Fritz (Fred) Kormis was born into a Jewish family to an Austrian father and German mother in Frankfurt, Germany in 1897. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a sculpture workshop but was drafted into the Austri-an army in World War 1. He was wounded, captured, and imprisoned for five years in Siberia, an experience which profoundly shaped the rest of his life and career. After escaping in 1920 and procuring a Swiss passport in Vladivostok, he returned to Frankfurt, where he re-sumed his career, married, and held solo exhibitions in Berlin and Frankfurt. Following Hitler's rise to power in 1933, he moved first to Holland, where he held solo ex-hibitions in Amsterdam and the Hague and taught refugee children, then, in 1934 to England, where he held his first solo exhibition the same year at the Bloomsbury Gallery. He also exhibited (once) with the progressive London Group in 1936 and participated in the 1938 Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries in London. He settled in North London's 'Finch-leystrasse' (later gaining British citizenship in 1947) and worked for the potteries during the war. Much of his ma-jor work was lost after his studio was bombed in 1940 but he also earned a living as a leading portrait medallist 16

This grade 2 listed group comprises five fibreglass resin sculptures with bronze powder. Four male seated figures occupy a series of stepped platforms, with a fifth stand-ing at the margin of the group. The group is set against a sloping wall of shuttered reinforced concrete, painted white. You’ll find the last score plaque on the retaining wall behind the sculpture.. Return to Dollis Hill Lane and turn left walking down to the end of this road where you’ll find St Cather-ine’s church… …! It dates from 1915 and was built on half an acre of land from the grounds of Neasden House at the corner of Dollis Hill and Dudden Hill lanes.! The architect was J S Alder. As you can see from the original design shown above, it was intended to be more ornate and traditional with a handsome tower and turret. 17St Catherine’s Church original design

A century or more later and this once quiet corner of North London now has to accommodate huge volumes of traffic that thunder through and under the Neasden roundabout. As you look across this busy roundabout you’ll see a vehicle entrance into the central ‘island’… You can either brave the traffic here, taking the greatest of care, or cross via the safer footbridge crossing to your right where the Neasden shopping parade starts… This ‘island’ in a sea of traffic contains the Grange - a Grade II listed building, and last of a group of large houses and farms that once made up ‘Neasden Green’. It stands next to a small Nature Reserve and has a beauti-ful garden. It was originally an outbuilding of an early-eighteenth century farm later converted into a cottage in the nine- 18The Grange 19th century

teenth century. In 1962 it was purchased by the then Willesden Borough Council and threatened with demoli-tion when the Neasden Underpass scheme was pro-posed in the early sixties, and the house was almost abandoned. In 1970 it was saved following a public enquiry. In 1975 it was renovated for use as a local history resource and registered in 1993 as ‘The Grange Museum’, the local community history museum for Brent. The museum had a small area of enclosed garden at the rear including an old well from the original farm. The Museum was closed down in 2004 and is now a business and community hub for small start-up compan-ies, local and charitable organisations. Return to Neasden Parade… Walk back to the entrance to Dollis Hill Lane and cross over the main road using the pedestrian cross-ing… Walk around the roundabout, keeping left, to the en-trance to Neasden Lane on your left… Carry on down this road until you reach Neasden Station where this walk ends… Shortly beyond this station the site opens up to where the old railway sidings were and so we have arrived at the official beginning of the Grand Central Railway ex-tension from Neasden to Northolt. This is explored more fully in Part 2 which begins at Marylebone Station and Wembley Stadium station. 19

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