South Hampstead's local history
The area marked ‘ South Hampstead’ on the A-Z of London emcompasses the southern part of the old village of West End. West Hampstead is more generally acknowledged as the new incarnation of West End Village, and much of the history of West Hampstead would be familiar to its southern neighbour. However, South Hampstead is not without an identity, and its neighbourhoods deserve space for their own stories.
Any schoolchild looking at a map of the area will tell you that the thoroughfare starting at Edgeware Road and turning into Maida Vale, Kilburn High Road and Shoot Up Hill is so straight it must be a Roman Road. In fact it forms part of the famous Watling Street, running from the Kent coast to North Wales. “Kilburn” itself means “cold stream” (kyle burn) or possibly “cow’s stream” or even “royal stream” (cuneburna) and refers to the brook that used to run alongside what is now the High Road.
At the beginning of the 18th century Kilburn began to market itself as a spa resort, following the discovery of a mineral spring in the back of a tavern. It never really caught on, and couldn’t compete for long with Belsize or Hampstead as a fashionable retreat. From the 12th century, the heart of Kilburn was its priory. Originally a hermitage, it became a logical – and ultimately very busy – resting place on the pilgrimage route from London to St Albans. However, the Reformation took its toll on the priory as a religious centre and the building itself had disappeared altogether by the early 1800s. The Abbey Farm Estate is sited on the old Kilburn Priory lands, and Abbey Road is named after the route between the priory and Westminster Abbey (the priory having been given to the Abbot of Westminster by the hermit, Godwyn, who founded it).
Several streets around Canfield Gardens take their names from the rural estates of the Maryon Wilson family. This family owned the largest tracts of land in Hampstead, as well as farming estates in Sussex and Essex, and expended considerable energy in the field of property development. If it wasn’t for pressure from residents and Hampstead Heath users the Maryon Wilsons would probably have built extensively on the heath, and the landscape of the area would be much diminished for it.
