Streets of London - Kensal Rise to Primrose Hill (4K)
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- čas přidán 15. 08. 2020
- A walk through the streets of northwest London starting at Wrentham Avenue in Kensal Rise and ending at Primrose Hill. Also introducing my project in collaboration with Kensal Rise Library for Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture in the Brent Biennal www.brent2020.co.uk/events/br...
The route of the walk takes us into Tiverton Green, Kensal Rise then down Brondesbury Park to Salusbury Road, Queens Park. We turn along Lonsdale Road to Brondesbury Road. We cross Kilburn High Road which forms part of the Roman Road of Watling Street, believed to be a much older trackway. In West End Lane we walk over the buried 'lost' river of the Westbourne or the Kilburn (Kilbourne) that rises in Hampstead and makes its confluence with the Thames at Chelsea.
“In the lush meadows of Westbourne, near the highway to Harrow, the citizen of London could once see dragonflies and loosestrife, or, lying face down in the buttercups, tickle a brace of trout against the coming Friday.” Alan Ivimey, Wonderful London
Passing Abbey Road and Priory Road, with its resonances of Kilburn Priory, we work our way to Finchley Road and Swiss Cottage before turning off Adelaide Road down Harley Road to Primrose Hill. This venerated spot was once the meeting place of Bards and Druids (the modern version) and is one of the protected views of London.
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Related links and credits:
© OpenStreetMap contributors” www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
Westbourne Route map 1790 from Wikipedia upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
Public Domain
Created: 1 January 1790
Blog post - a walk along Watling Street from Cricklewood to Oxford Circus thelostbyway.com/2018/09/walk-...
Kensal Rise Library www.savekensalriselibrary.org/
This Other London audiobook (affiliate link) amzn.to/3kR4QOE
Music
Cylinder One by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/
Artist: chriszabriskie.com/
The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: chriszabriskie.com/honor/
Artist: chriszabriskie.com/
Pachabelly by Huma-Huma
Nevada City by Huma-Huma
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my grandad was born just across the road from the hill. great memories of going there and admiring the view. thanks for this .
very interesting John, brought back memories when i lived in kilburn and brondesbury and went to school at chamberlayne road and Aylestone
I like the fact that you have been weaving together several of the places my ancestors have lived. One of the things that strikes me is how short those distances, yet how different the environments are. Hopefully, I will someday be able to work out why my people moved around the way they did, and what they actually worked at.
I was the Lead Nurse for the Brent Mental Health Services from 2001-1012, John. You are doing a great job of highlighting one of London's less fashionable, but most multicultural (a Tory target trope, so well worth celebrating!) boroughs. Thank you.
Thanks Trevor, it was a real privilege to work with the community on this project
Great view of the old girl, at the end and lovely music as always 👍
Thanks John -Lived in NW6 in 2008 - very bohemian.
An historic tour of Inner North West London, brilliant!
Wow amazing walk about I always enjoy you watching you walk about keep the good work up
thanks Meranda
As usual a very interesting walk John - really enjoy your walking tours. I'm from Wales and love walking in London. The last time my partner and I were up Primrose Hill, I found a small worked prehistoric blade on the eroded soil surface at the very top of the hill - the ancestors were certainly up there looking down on the valley. I took the blade to a museum curator I know who dated it to the Neolithic.
What a fantastic find!!
Thank you so much. Yet again you have taken me back to the London I grew up in. My ex lived behind Barrow Hill reservoir jn a Water Board cottage and I knew that area so well. Our first flat was in Greencroft Gardens which you just passed by ( rent £7.00 a week, his full wage in 1968). In other videos you have taken me to Bloomsbury where I lived too and Chalk Farm where my grandmother lived in Kent House, Ferdinand Street. You showed the flats but did not mention their architectural merit. Lastly, thank you again as you have given purpose to my afternoons since my husband died quite recently.
I grew up in that area, went to school on Harvest Road, spent my childhood in Queens Park. I love Kensal Rise, I always remember going to the Post Office on Chamberlain Road. My dad told me Tottenham Hotspurs paraded the FA Cup down Chamberlain Road when they won it in 1962 he told me he saw Jimmy Greaves...
Superb video. Brought back many comforting memories. I must have done that walk a trillion times. Interesting to see how relatively deserted London appears to be. I now live rurally in the middle of nowhere and you can't move for people. It's like Lockdown never happened!
Absolutely wonderful. I lived in NW London for many years and love Primrose Hill and surrounding areas. Saudade. I so miss it. Every time I visit with my teenage daughter we visit that area at least once. It feels such an integral part of who I am.
I love your approach to studying London! First video of yours I have watched. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, and looking forward to watching more, as I've just subscribed to your channel.
Thanks for taking me John am always fascinated by your commentary.
Beautiful Primrose Hill. Great film. I wonder what that stone on the hill was about 🤔 Thanks John. D 👍
Love these London walks around residential streets. The seem to speak so much from the changes of architecture and green spaces, and love to imagine who lived there in the past and now. Cheers John.
I didn’t appreciate there are such great views from Primrose Hill, I must go and have a look for myself 🤓👍
it's certainly worth it Colin
Another super video John. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it Dave
Again John a great video could watch them for hours..thank you..
cheers Jonathan
Lovely!
Great stuff John. Can never fathom why folk are so little interested in the way their area has developed and how it relates to it's surrounding area. You make it live.
thanks Steven
Love it thanks
Excellent John. I watched it after my daily walk around claybury park, so my second walk of the day.
great stuff thanks Robert
Very beautiful.
Thank you. I was born in the hospital on Hampstead Heath, quite proud of that for some reason. Lived the first part of my life in a flat in College Crescent, Swiss Cottage. My pram was often pushed to the top of Primrose Hill. Funny that I could not dream of being able to afford to return to my place of birth. Still my Hampshire village is a pleasant alternative and it is nice to walk around the nearby walls of Calleva Atrebatum. All the best, these films have been a sustaining joy this year.
The Royal Free! I was born there too!
The mysterious stone at the end reminded me of the pursuit of London Stone I did a few years ago, finally found it opposite Cannon Street station, It supposedly dates back to the Romans and signified the centre of London from which milage was measured, the bottom half is still in position somewhere.
Wow! Never knew how amazing the view is on primrose hill
Wow what a great walk thank you
cheers 4thEyeVision
Superb stuff as usual John, a real delight to bump into you last Saturday in Ramsgate and am looking forward to that upload, keep up the good work
cheers Andrew - great to meet you too
I lived in Swiss Cottage for a short time when I was studying in London many years ago--I actually lived in those flats you showed when you go onto Adelaide Rd from Finchley (we looked down on the Swiss Cottage Library from our window)! Brings back some good memories. Thanks for the trip!
Another great walk. Interesting about Primrose Hill and possible burial mounds nearby, and druids. Sometimes I’d love to be able to time travel and see the ancient landscapes and their inhabitants back then.
Hi John, loved the video! Used to live in Purves Road for the first seven years of my life...
Really interesting video, thanks CZcams.
Another great walk, John. I've been walking along with you, up and down, back and forth, in my living room as I watch your videos on my tv. It's a great way for me to keep in touch with London during this time when I can't travel there from Massachusetts. This walk took me through some areas unknown to me (Tiverton Green and Brondesbury) to some I know well (Queen's Park and Belsize Park). On past visits to London, I've taken Pilates lessons in a studio on Lonsdale Road and shopped at the wonderful Sunday farmers' market at the Salusbury Primary School. Paddington Old Cemetery is lovely. You walked right past a pavement plaque on the Kilburn High Road at the junction with West End Lane that marks the location of the Kilburn Wells Spa. I shall keep walking through your back catalogue during this long, cold, pandemic winter. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to walk the streets of London with you!
Absolutely brilliant for me. Takes me back to my evening journeys late 70s early 80s before we were married when I live Kensal Green and my wife live in Oakwood Thanks for sharing SMILES 👍🇬🇧👌
that's wonderful to hear - I've recorded some great stuff. It'll also be available to listen to online
Very interesting video as always John, sounds like a great project and Im really looking forward to that one, hope the back is ok now.
Thanks Raymond
I think Swiss Cottage is an 'Interzone', John. I'm not surprised you couldn't get your head around it. We lived in West Hampstead from 1986-92. It has now become utterly unaffordable, as you point out, but it is essentially an area without any green space, apart from the risible Fortune Green, which was most mostly full of Tennant's Super consumers in our day. We moved to leafy Crouch End soon after our first kid was born and never regretted it.
If you doing Brent then Kingsbury church is worth a look which is near the dam that creates Welsh Harp. Barn Hill near Brent Town Hall Library has some ponds and a great view of London. On one side of it there were prefabs. In the middle of fryent way park is an air raid shelter. In the 70s it was a farm with cows and there were plenty red squirrels. From there looking north you can see Stanmore.
When the wind was the right way you could sit on barn hill and hear the concerts from Old Wembley stadium for free including Live Aid. The security guards were only paid till half time or would bunk off and so half way thro a concert you could get in for free and see bands like Rolling Stones.
In front of Brent Town Hall, which was a stopping place for the miners strike march, there used to be a 1960s concrete estate called Chalk Hill that was someone's dream of a future for urban housing but turned into a nightmare concrete jungle of violence, where postman had to have a police escort and so got taken down.
Brent Town hall library was known for its revolutionary books many which today would get you into Belmarsh and tapped into the idea of the council real name was 'The Revolutionary Peoples Republic of Brent [Nuclear Free Zone]. Ken Livingstone could probably tell you a few tales. There used to be nuclear air raid warning siren, we had drills at school of hiding under desks, where salmon street meets forty lane. Opposite which was the first ever USA style supermarket in the area, a Safeway where someone would stand at the end of the checkout and pack your shopping into paper bags [no plastic then]. Which at the time seemed space age.
great notes thanks for that. Kingsbury Church was going to be in my book This Other London but we took a slightly different route from the Welsh Harp and missed it out
Another great film; I enjoyed you being a flaneur.
thanks Ian
Fab as usual, you have inspired me to start a channel, i grew up in Leyton but live in Cyprus now. Thank you.
Great - best of luck with your channel
Lovely views John - last few shots showed the Snowdon Aviary - great stuff
I only know of Kensal Rise as I got a train through there from Barking to possibly Wilsden Green, but it was over a decade ago...
Hello John Rogers, an very interesting Borough of Barnet that I not know about it.
A great idea for a project John, marrying bricks and mortar with oral histories. I can just imagine how those places would redefine themselves with the accounts of those who have lived there. I look forward to 17th Sept! Best of luck with this
Been to primrose hill, it's an amazing view of the skyline.
Thank's John, Keep safe. Dave. in Yorkshire 👍
cheers Dave
Hi John i will watch your latest video tomorrow.
Thanks Robert
Finger on the pulse. Thanks John : D
Great video again John. Looking at Primrose Hill I could picture it as a Druidic Ceremony site, an Iron Age hill fort, a motte and bailey castle and even the site of World War II anti-aircraft guns-a magical site indeed. All the best for your project. Hope you bring out a dvd for us living in the ex-colony
thanks John - there should be plenty of stuff from the project online so you can follow along
funny, i almost did the exact same walk yesterday (from the top of ladbroke grove right next to kensal to primrose hill)
Another fascinating walk. I believe Primrose Hill was used as a burial place for plague victims,can't remember where I heard that.
hi John, thanks for the great video as always - you should check out Wayne Kirkum Way on your next walk eastwards from Kensal Rise if you haven't already, there is caged ramp overgrown with foliage that leads to Mill Lane, well worth the detour!
Many thanks for your fascinating explorations. You should try Hampstead Garden Suburb - it's a very weird place.
that's a great idea John - I've only been round there once and that was a few years ago now
Looking forward to visiting London again at some point. I seem so distant in Tokyo at this time.
🚶♂️🌞⚽️✝️🍺🏡🎼🧙♂️🗿 Marvellous John! Many thanks!
Cheers Ashley
John Rogers The Druidic or Druidian (?) insights were terrific, John. Also, Primrose Hill makes me think of George Smiley (🕵️♂️🤪), but maybe in the depths of winter.
Madness
Loved this one John . Often found myself in the 80s supping Guinness in biddy mulligans on Kilburn high road with my Irish mates . I was only 20 at the time . Now visit London a couple of times a year and tend to bore the kids with my youthful escapedes . Oh well ....
thanks Tony - I bet your kids remember all those stories though
John Rogers ....lest they forget .....haha
@@tonykehoe123 they were the good old day's
Many a time myself and my friends would head there
Love from 🇮🇪💚☘️❤️
Bee Oh El totally my good friend . I’m a joiner and was working in London as a kid and wouldn’t sit with all the joiners in the canteen but would get amongst the Irish lads and listen to all the stories and learn how to grow up and be a man !
@@tonykehoe123 the best knowledge came from the elders and the wiser
Are you still in England or are you Irish that's if you don't mind me asking 💕
Hi John, if somebody were to ask you "where's the best place in London (including outskirts) to move to, without hesitating where would you say?
Without thinking..."yeah I could live there".
🍻
Don't get me wrong, but you are narrating more and more...the information is good, but comes at the cost of the therapeutic brilliance which imho is your magic. Cheers John.
Thanks for the feedback. Sometimes it’s tricky to get the balance right. I think you’ll find the next video might possibly be the opposite
Could the stone be a parish boundary marker? Joolz Guides, another London based You Tuber points one out in a video of his, thanks for the great videos.
thanks for that Simon - only occured to me when I was watching the video back - sounds very likely
I second this
Great walk John. The soundtrack is sublime as always, love the Emily Sheppard violin. Did you find out anymore on the stone ?
thanks Tim. From the comments it seems likely to be a boundary stone
Thanks to watching your videos John I now understand the sharp dips on the Camden side of Kilburn High Road (Messina Ave., Gascony Ave., West End Rd., Belsize Rd. etc.) and if you walked a little further south toward the top of Maida Vale where a tollgate used to be you would have seen the old Kilburn village where the Kilburn Priory once stood, and a 600 year old pub.
So what DID happen on the junction of Chamberlayne and Chevening Roads? I'm intrigued now lol
It was a large meeting of Suffragettes that took place in 1901 - if you search ‘Kensal Rise Has a Story’ you’ll be able to listen to the recordings
@@JohnRogersWalks wow some great local history there.. I'll definitely look out for that, thanks!
Queens Park is a confusing name.The area around the park has only been known as Queens Park in recent decades. As a child I lived in one of the avenues near the park. We wrote our address as Kilburn but my great aunts who lived in an upstairs flat would write Brondesbury as their address. Queens Park as an area referred to the artisans estate between Kilburn Lane and Harrow Road the other side of the east coast main railway line. It is from that estate that QPR get their name. They are a merger of two church teams St Jude's (demolished 1959 to 1960). And Christ Church.
They just showed the beginning of your film now at the screening of Belleville rendezvous cycle in cinema...in pimp hall park
Hey John. Thanks for another fascinating video. I’ve briefly passed through the areas in your video, so I have no real personal attachment, but I strongly feel the areas are ancient and have been in constant use for eons. Your comment on the animal tracks touched on that. Do you ever enter an area cold so to speak, but get a feeling from it? Do you think continuous use of an area can leave an imprint on it. Sorry if I sound new age lol.
I certainly feel that some areas record an imprint of the past somehow. The place where this most strongly resonates for me is Black Mary's Hole in Clerkenwell - here's a blog post I wrote in 2006 thelostbyway.com/2006/03/black-marys-hole.html
John Rogers I’ve heard a little about that place, in your book if I remember correctly. I’ll check it out, cheers mate.
Hi John! Thanks again for another great film. I've never lived in London, but one of my oldest friends lives on Chevening Road so it was great to see some familiar locations. Can't wait to find out the secret of Chevening Road and Chamberlayne Road! I was also wondering if there is a way to purchase your audio book, without using Amazon? Is there a more direct way, where you receive more of the purchase price? Thanks again John!
thanks for that Henry - it's a good story about Chevening Road, something I found in the archives that had been forgotten. I'm not sure where else you can get the Audiobook but to be honest I make more commission from this link via Amazon than I do from the publishers amzn.to/3aA2XkD
It's weird, another walker that I follow on CZcams went through Primrose Hill just a couple of days before. I guess it must be some algorithm thing. Nice to watch the contrast in each video though. :)
or it could be the spirits of place drawing us in (but more likely an algorithm thing)
Sven came from Swiss Cottage! I wonder what he is doing now...
Hi john, there was anti aircraft battery on primrose hill ww2. Wondered if there is any evidence. Loved video.
I didn't see any to be honest, but I suppose the concrete area where there's the plaque showing the view and the Blake inscription would be the perfect place
For many reasons now I won’t get to take that audio tour. Tell me: What happened at the end of Chevening Rd and the junction with Chamberlain Rd. ?
Vist my hometown of Hornchurch 🏴👍
great idea Connor
Hi john . It may have escaped me but have you anything in your canon regarding battersea power station ( been indulging in a bit of floyd at present )
Swiss Cottage is almost as changed as Kings Cross in many ways. They are apparently even considering pulling down the complex just up the Finchley Road, which was only constructed in the 1990s. Attention deficit disorder in action?
See you got the os app...
Interesting note for you: WolfPack Craft Brewery is owned & run by Ex Saracens RFC's Al Hargreaves & Chris Wyles - www.wolfpacklager.com
'19th Century Druids' - I almost sensed you biting your tongue, trying not to say 'Victorian Hippies and Occultists'...
As a fan of mid-century modern and brutalist architecture [with quite a library of rare old books from the 60s/70s on the subject], I once made a pilgrimage to St John's Wood Library, only to be deeply saddened to find that its more recent neighbours were no respecters of the space it inhabits and that is necessary to view any more than a fractional glance of it.
Tiverton Green. Is that the former sports field of Aylestone High School?
Good point Alan - somebody told me that was the case but they weren't sure
Could be..................... Following instructions from an ancient book, those present constructed a stone circle and placed a sheathed sword on a central stone
Why would Tottenham in 1962 have paraded the FaCup down Chamberlayne Road-why not go down Blackbird Hill and turn left on to N Circular Road _which takes you to Tottenham. It's like Chelsea say coming out of Wembley and say parading The cup on Hanger Lane _bizarre.