Background to St Catherine's.
The previous, temporary, St Catherine's Church
In 1901 a temporary church was built on the corner of Prout Grove and Neasden Lane. Following further building developments in the parish, in 1910 an appeal was launched for funds to build a permanent St Catherine's Church in Neasden. Mr and Mrs Nicol provided the site required, on the corner of Dollis Hill Lane, which was part of the grounds of Neasden House, which was situated where Clifford Court in Tanfield Avenue now stands.
The new church
Possession of the site for the new church was taken in September 1914. Building operations commenced with a ceremony on 20th February 1915; it is this event that we are commemorating today. The ceremony in February 1915 began with a procession from the temporary church, and culminated in Dorothy Nicol turning the first sod on the site of the altar for the new church.
The previous, temporary, St Catherine's Church
In 1901 a temporary church was built on the corner of Prout Grove and Neasden Lane. Following further building developments in the parish, in 1910 an appeal was launched for funds to build a permanent St Catherine's Church in Neasden. Mr and Mrs Nicol provided the site required, on the corner of Dollis Hill Lane, which was part of the grounds of Neasden House, which was situated where Clifford Court in Tanfield Avenue now stands.
The new church
Possession of the site for the new church was taken in September 1914. Building operations commenced with a ceremony on 20th February 1915; it is this event that we are commemorating today. The ceremony in February 1915 began with a procession from the temporary church, and culminated in Dorothy Nicol turning the first sod on the site of the altar for the new church.
History of Neasden
In ancient times
At the time that Jesus Christ walked on the Earth the area that is now Neasden and Willesden was a wild place. Very few people lived here. There was swampland along the valley of the River Brent, and thick forest covered most of the rest of the district. There were just a few tracks through the forest which had been created by drovers and peddlers. There may have been some open grassland on the top of the high ground such as Dollis Hill and Mount Pleasant, but trees and shrubs covered most of the land which was not swamp.
The Romans
Things began to change after the Romans invaded England for the second time in AD43. They built London and they built major roads, one of which was Watling Street. One stretch of this road was what is now the Edgware Road which runs through Kilburn and Cricklewood. Before the end of the first century there was a large Roman farm and sandpits at Brook Road on the summit of Dollis Hill.
The Anglo-Saxons
In AD410 the Romans left England and the Anglo-Saxons took over. There was an Anglo-Saxon settlement on the well-drained and well-watered site on the western end of the Dollis Hill ridge overlooking the River Brent. It was in Anglo-Saxon times that Neasden acquired its name, which means “the nose-shaped hill” in Anglo-Saxon.
The Middle Ages
By the Middle Ages the village of Neasden comprised a number of small buildings, and it had a green near the site of what is now the roundabout opposite St Catherine’s Church. Land at the eastern end of Dog Lane belonged to Westminster Abbey by 1454. St Paul’s Cathedral had already acquired land in Neasden by 1000.
Neasden House
The first record of a person living in Neasden concerns one John Attewoode who in 1403 lived in a house named Catswoods which occupied the site in Tanfield Avenue where Clifford Court now stands. During the 15th century a family named Roberts became the most important landowners in Neasden, with John Roberts purchasing Catswoods House. In the reign of Henry VIII, Thomas Roberts built Neasden House on that site.
The Nicoll family
During the 18th century the Nicoll family replaced the Roberts as the dominant family in Neasden. Most of the Nicolls were farmers; some were moneyers at the Royal Mint. By 1818 the Nicolls owned Neasden House and much of the old Roberts estates. They married into the Prout family, of whom James Prout was a significant landowner.
The 19th century
In the early 1850s Neasden had a population of about 110. Most of these were farmers, labourers and servants. There were also three lawyers and a stockbroker. In the second half of the century agriculture in the area consisted mainly of rearing and pasturing horses, producing hay to feed them, and dairy farming.
Neasden Village
In 1880 the Metropolitan Railway extended its line from Willesden Green to Harrow and opened a station on Neasden Lane. This station is now Neasden Station; it was then named Kingsbury-and-Neasden. The Metropolitan also purchased land to build workshops and engine sheds and labourers’ cottages.
In 1882 the Metropolitan built an estate of 112 houses to accommodate its workers. The estate, which was called Neasden Village, was based on the two streets which are now called Quainton Street and Verney Street. Between these streets, on what is now Neasden Lane North, a row of ten shops was built with two storeys of living accommodation above.
St Saviour’s Church
In early 1883 the London Diocesan Home Mission appointed the Reverend James Robert Mills as the missioner for this outlying part of the parish of Willesden. The Metropolitan Railway generously donated a site at the corner of Quainton Street and Neasden Lane for the construction of a mission building. The Mission Church of St Saviour’s was duly constructed on designs by the architect Edward J Tarver. It was was opened on Christmas Day 1883.
A new Parish of Neasden-cum-Kingsbury
It was planned to create a new parish of Neasden out of the parish of Willesden and build a large church and vicarage in Neasden, but events up the road in Kingsbury led to things taking a slightly different course.
In April 1884 Old St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury was closed following the building and opening of Holy Innocents Church near Kingsbury Green. Consequent upon the great indignation which this caused in the parish and outside it at Neasden, a suggestion was made that Old St Andrew’s and its surrounding area be merged with the proposed new parish for Neasden. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners were petitioned to this effect, and in July 1885 an Order-in-Council was made which created a new parish of Neasden-cum-Kingsbury. Rev Mills was its first Vicar. Old St Andrew’s was the parish church.
A new Vicarage in Neasden
Plans had already been approved to build a large new church and vicarage in Neasden on an acre of land which had been purchased from the Metropolitan Railway. This is the site on which the Neasden Methodist Church would later be built. It was decided to build the vicarage before the church. The vicarage was completed by July 1887, and a vicarage house-warming party was held that month which was attended by the great statesman William E Gladstone, who had been residing at Dollis Hill House while Lord and Lady Aberdeen were travelling abroad.
The Temporary St Catherine’s Church
In the 1890s the London end of Neasden grew faster than the Village end. It was therefore decided that the planned new church for Neasden needed to be sited nearer the former end of the parish. Accordingly, a temporary iron church was erected in 1901 on the corner of Prout Grove and Neasden Lane as a chapel-of-ease to Old St Andrew’s, Kingsbury. Mr William E Nicol and his wife Catherine, who lived at Neasden House, had donated the land and £500 to build the church. The church was dedicated to St Catherine of Alexandria after Catherine Nicol (nee Prout). It was dedicated on 16 October 1901. Neasden’s population rose from 1,040 in 1901 to 2,074 in 1911.
The Parish Room
In 1907 a parish room was built in Neasden Lane just below the forge, about where the Tesco Express now stands. This made things easier for people at the London end of the parish who belonged to the many flourishing societies which it now had, such as branches of the Mothers’ Union and the Girls’ Friendly Society and a company of the church lads’ brigade.
The new St Catherine’s Church
In 1910, following further building developments in the parish, an appeal was launched for funds for a new permanent St Catherine’s church in Neasden. Again Mr and Mrs Nicol generously provided the site required: half an acre of land from the grounds of Neasden House at the corner of Dollis Hill and Dudden Hill lanes. Building operations for the new church, whose architect was J S Alder, commenced in February 1915. When all but the western section of the building had been completed, the church was consecrated by the Bishop of London at a service on 4 March 1916.
The First World War
The First World War broke out in August 1914. Large numbers of men joined the Colours and went to the trenches of France and Belgium. In February 1916 Dollis Hill House was converted into an auxiliary military hospital attached to the Endell Street military hospital near Covent Garden. The hospital’s Red Cross flag is now here in St Catherine’s Church. War casualties were also cared for in St Andrew’s Hospital which had been built in 1912 on the crest of the Dollis Hill ridge by the Roman Catholic diocese of Westminster, using money donated by an anonymous Frenchwoman.
Between the Wars
In the 1920s and 30s new housing estates sprang up in Neasden and Oxgate, which brought thousands more people into the area. In the early 20s the North Circular Road was cut through the middle of the parish, and towards the end of that decade the Nicol Estate was built on its north side, and the Brentwater Estate on its other side. Braintcroft School was opened in 1928, and Wykeham School in 1930.
Neasden Golf Course began to be eaten away in 1926, and in 1929 the contents of the clubhouse were auctioned off. Within a year the golf course was covered by the houses of the “Dollis park” estate to its eastern boundary at Vincent Gardens. The last country landmark in Neasden Lane, Jackman’s Forge, disappeared to make room for the new shopping parade. A new church hall for St Catherine’s Church was opened in 1928, and the old parish room which had been built in 1907 was demolished.
At the turn of the decade Neasden Recreation Ground was formed, then Neasden Library was built on the corner of Aboyne Road and the North Circular Road, opening in 1931. In 1930 the rear part of Neasden House was demolished to make way for Cairnfield Avenue, and the front part was converted into flats. In the early 1930s Neasden Shopping Centre was completed after Elmsted park estate, which lay between Neasden Lane, Dog Lane and the North Circular Road, was built on. At the junction of Neasden Lane and Dudden Hill Lane, Neasden Green, which had been getting smaller and smaller as the roads were widened, disappeared when Neasden Lane was bent back to meet Dudden Hill Lane at right angles opposite the new Tanfield Avenue. The playing fields south of Dollis Hill Lane was sold in the early 1930s to builders, including one called Lennox after whose family at least one and possibly three of the roads were named.
A new vicarage was built for St Catherine’s Church in Tanfield Avenue when it became the parish church of Neasden-cum-Kingsbury in 1932 in place of Old St Andrew’s, Kingsbury. A new parish for Kingsbury was created when the new St Andrew’s Church was transplanted stone by stone from Wells Street near Oxford Circus. The land north of West Way, Aboyne Road and the North Circular Road was incorporated in the new parish. The Ritz Cinema was built on the site of Neasden Cricket Club, opening in 1935. The cricket club moved to new land in Kingsbury. In 1938 the remainder of Neasden House was demolished and replaced by four blocks of flats named Clifford Court.
The Second World War
At the beginning of the war an Emergency War Headquarters was set up at the General Post Office’s research station at Dollis Hill, where the War Cabinet could meet. And a citadel was built for the Admiralty on the corner of Oxgate Lane and the Edgware Road. The nearby block of flats called Neville Court was requisitioned to provide accommodation for Admiralty staff and Government officials. Two flats in it were knocked together for the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and his secretaries.
The Neasden Underpass
At the end of the 1960s the Ministry of Transport began building an underpass to divert the Neasden Lane traffic and carry it under the North Circular Road. This traffic had hitherto gone through the Neasden Shopping Centre and there were traffic lights where Neasden Lane met the North Circular Road. This project was completed in 1973. Around 100 homes were demolished to make way for the underpass, and the shopping centre became a shopping precinct. The shopping centre became even quieter when a TESCO superstore was built at Brent Park in 1982 and an out-of-town shopping centre was created at Brent Cross.
Sources: Places in Brent - Neasden and Dudden Hill by Brent Archive
1,000 Years of St Mary, Willesden by Cliff Wadsworth
St Catherine’s Church Golden Jubilee Celebrations
Neasden: A Historical Study by K J Valentine
In ancient times
At the time that Jesus Christ walked on the Earth the area that is now Neasden and Willesden was a wild place. Very few people lived here. There was swampland along the valley of the River Brent, and thick forest covered most of the rest of the district. There were just a few tracks through the forest which had been created by drovers and peddlers. There may have been some open grassland on the top of the high ground such as Dollis Hill and Mount Pleasant, but trees and shrubs covered most of the land which was not swamp.
The Romans
Things began to change after the Romans invaded England for the second time in AD43. They built London and they built major roads, one of which was Watling Street. One stretch of this road was what is now the Edgware Road which runs through Kilburn and Cricklewood. Before the end of the first century there was a large Roman farm and sandpits at Brook Road on the summit of Dollis Hill.
The Anglo-Saxons
In AD410 the Romans left England and the Anglo-Saxons took over. There was an Anglo-Saxon settlement on the well-drained and well-watered site on the western end of the Dollis Hill ridge overlooking the River Brent. It was in Anglo-Saxon times that Neasden acquired its name, which means “the nose-shaped hill” in Anglo-Saxon.
The Middle Ages
By the Middle Ages the village of Neasden comprised a number of small buildings, and it had a green near the site of what is now the roundabout opposite St Catherine’s Church. Land at the eastern end of Dog Lane belonged to Westminster Abbey by 1454. St Paul’s Cathedral had already acquired land in Neasden by 1000.
Neasden House
The first record of a person living in Neasden concerns one John Attewoode who in 1403 lived in a house named Catswoods which occupied the site in Tanfield Avenue where Clifford Court now stands. During the 15th century a family named Roberts became the most important landowners in Neasden, with John Roberts purchasing Catswoods House. In the reign of Henry VIII, Thomas Roberts built Neasden House on that site.
The Nicoll family
During the 18th century the Nicoll family replaced the Roberts as the dominant family in Neasden. Most of the Nicolls were farmers; some were moneyers at the Royal Mint. By 1818 the Nicolls owned Neasden House and much of the old Roberts estates. They married into the Prout family, of whom James Prout was a significant landowner.
The 19th century
In the early 1850s Neasden had a population of about 110. Most of these were farmers, labourers and servants. There were also three lawyers and a stockbroker. In the second half of the century agriculture in the area consisted mainly of rearing and pasturing horses, producing hay to feed them, and dairy farming.
Neasden Village
In 1880 the Metropolitan Railway extended its line from Willesden Green to Harrow and opened a station on Neasden Lane. This station is now Neasden Station; it was then named Kingsbury-and-Neasden. The Metropolitan also purchased land to build workshops and engine sheds and labourers’ cottages.
In 1882 the Metropolitan built an estate of 112 houses to accommodate its workers. The estate, which was called Neasden Village, was based on the two streets which are now called Quainton Street and Verney Street. Between these streets, on what is now Neasden Lane North, a row of ten shops was built with two storeys of living accommodation above.
St Saviour’s Church
In early 1883 the London Diocesan Home Mission appointed the Reverend James Robert Mills as the missioner for this outlying part of the parish of Willesden. The Metropolitan Railway generously donated a site at the corner of Quainton Street and Neasden Lane for the construction of a mission building. The Mission Church of St Saviour’s was duly constructed on designs by the architect Edward J Tarver. It was was opened on Christmas Day 1883.
A new Parish of Neasden-cum-Kingsbury
It was planned to create a new parish of Neasden out of the parish of Willesden and build a large church and vicarage in Neasden, but events up the road in Kingsbury led to things taking a slightly different course.
In April 1884 Old St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury was closed following the building and opening of Holy Innocents Church near Kingsbury Green. Consequent upon the great indignation which this caused in the parish and outside it at Neasden, a suggestion was made that Old St Andrew’s and its surrounding area be merged with the proposed new parish for Neasden. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners were petitioned to this effect, and in July 1885 an Order-in-Council was made which created a new parish of Neasden-cum-Kingsbury. Rev Mills was its first Vicar. Old St Andrew’s was the parish church.
A new Vicarage in Neasden
Plans had already been approved to build a large new church and vicarage in Neasden on an acre of land which had been purchased from the Metropolitan Railway. This is the site on which the Neasden Methodist Church would later be built. It was decided to build the vicarage before the church. The vicarage was completed by July 1887, and a vicarage house-warming party was held that month which was attended by the great statesman William E Gladstone, who had been residing at Dollis Hill House while Lord and Lady Aberdeen were travelling abroad.
The Temporary St Catherine’s Church
In the 1890s the London end of Neasden grew faster than the Village end. It was therefore decided that the planned new church for Neasden needed to be sited nearer the former end of the parish. Accordingly, a temporary iron church was erected in 1901 on the corner of Prout Grove and Neasden Lane as a chapel-of-ease to Old St Andrew’s, Kingsbury. Mr William E Nicol and his wife Catherine, who lived at Neasden House, had donated the land and £500 to build the church. The church was dedicated to St Catherine of Alexandria after Catherine Nicol (nee Prout). It was dedicated on 16 October 1901. Neasden’s population rose from 1,040 in 1901 to 2,074 in 1911.
The Parish Room
In 1907 a parish room was built in Neasden Lane just below the forge, about where the Tesco Express now stands. This made things easier for people at the London end of the parish who belonged to the many flourishing societies which it now had, such as branches of the Mothers’ Union and the Girls’ Friendly Society and a company of the church lads’ brigade.
The new St Catherine’s Church
In 1910, following further building developments in the parish, an appeal was launched for funds for a new permanent St Catherine’s church in Neasden. Again Mr and Mrs Nicol generously provided the site required: half an acre of land from the grounds of Neasden House at the corner of Dollis Hill and Dudden Hill lanes. Building operations for the new church, whose architect was J S Alder, commenced in February 1915. When all but the western section of the building had been completed, the church was consecrated by the Bishop of London at a service on 4 March 1916.
The First World War
The First World War broke out in August 1914. Large numbers of men joined the Colours and went to the trenches of France and Belgium. In February 1916 Dollis Hill House was converted into an auxiliary military hospital attached to the Endell Street military hospital near Covent Garden. The hospital’s Red Cross flag is now here in St Catherine’s Church. War casualties were also cared for in St Andrew’s Hospital which had been built in 1912 on the crest of the Dollis Hill ridge by the Roman Catholic diocese of Westminster, using money donated by an anonymous Frenchwoman.
Between the Wars
In the 1920s and 30s new housing estates sprang up in Neasden and Oxgate, which brought thousands more people into the area. In the early 20s the North Circular Road was cut through the middle of the parish, and towards the end of that decade the Nicol Estate was built on its north side, and the Brentwater Estate on its other side. Braintcroft School was opened in 1928, and Wykeham School in 1930.
Neasden Golf Course began to be eaten away in 1926, and in 1929 the contents of the clubhouse were auctioned off. Within a year the golf course was covered by the houses of the “Dollis park” estate to its eastern boundary at Vincent Gardens. The last country landmark in Neasden Lane, Jackman’s Forge, disappeared to make room for the new shopping parade. A new church hall for St Catherine’s Church was opened in 1928, and the old parish room which had been built in 1907 was demolished.
At the turn of the decade Neasden Recreation Ground was formed, then Neasden Library was built on the corner of Aboyne Road and the North Circular Road, opening in 1931. In 1930 the rear part of Neasden House was demolished to make way for Cairnfield Avenue, and the front part was converted into flats. In the early 1930s Neasden Shopping Centre was completed after Elmsted park estate, which lay between Neasden Lane, Dog Lane and the North Circular Road, was built on. At the junction of Neasden Lane and Dudden Hill Lane, Neasden Green, which had been getting smaller and smaller as the roads were widened, disappeared when Neasden Lane was bent back to meet Dudden Hill Lane at right angles opposite the new Tanfield Avenue. The playing fields south of Dollis Hill Lane was sold in the early 1930s to builders, including one called Lennox after whose family at least one and possibly three of the roads were named.
A new vicarage was built for St Catherine’s Church in Tanfield Avenue when it became the parish church of Neasden-cum-Kingsbury in 1932 in place of Old St Andrew’s, Kingsbury. A new parish for Kingsbury was created when the new St Andrew’s Church was transplanted stone by stone from Wells Street near Oxford Circus. The land north of West Way, Aboyne Road and the North Circular Road was incorporated in the new parish. The Ritz Cinema was built on the site of Neasden Cricket Club, opening in 1935. The cricket club moved to new land in Kingsbury. In 1938 the remainder of Neasden House was demolished and replaced by four blocks of flats named Clifford Court.
The Second World War
At the beginning of the war an Emergency War Headquarters was set up at the General Post Office’s research station at Dollis Hill, where the War Cabinet could meet. And a citadel was built for the Admiralty on the corner of Oxgate Lane and the Edgware Road. The nearby block of flats called Neville Court was requisitioned to provide accommodation for Admiralty staff and Government officials. Two flats in it were knocked together for the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and his secretaries.
The Neasden Underpass
At the end of the 1960s the Ministry of Transport began building an underpass to divert the Neasden Lane traffic and carry it under the North Circular Road. This traffic had hitherto gone through the Neasden Shopping Centre and there were traffic lights where Neasden Lane met the North Circular Road. This project was completed in 1973. Around 100 homes were demolished to make way for the underpass, and the shopping centre became a shopping precinct. The shopping centre became even quieter when a TESCO superstore was built at Brent Park in 1982 and an out-of-town shopping centre was created at Brent Cross.
Sources: Places in Brent - Neasden and Dudden Hill by Brent Archive
1,000 Years of St Mary, Willesden by Cliff Wadsworth
St Catherine’s Church Golden Jubilee Celebrations
Neasden: A Historical Study by K J Valentine
