In the eighteenth century, two of the estates of Kilburn were combined to form a 60 acre estate on either side of West End Lane. The estate was inherited in an 1814 will by John Roberts, who changed his name to John Powell Powell. Powell died in 1849 and his estates were held by trustees under his will, for the use of his nephew, Col. Henry Perry Cotton, who also inherited his uncle’s house at Quex Park, Isle of Thanet.

In 1866 plans were approved for a number of roads on the Powell Cotton’s Liddell estate, mostly named after places in Kent near the Powell-Cotton family seat of Quex Park. A Roman Catholic church and Wesleyan and Unitarian chapels were built in Quex Road in 1868-9 and at least 55 houses were built on the estate between 1871 and 1885. There were shops on Quex Road by 1885.

On the western side of West End Lane, the Chimes, a large house built in the 1860s by E. W. Pugin for the painter John Rogers Herbert (1810-90), for some time insulated the area from further building. Building spread northward from Quex Road west of the Chimes. Kingsgate Road, named after another place in Kent, stretched northward to the estate border by 1875 and 77 houses were built there between 1878 and 1888.

The site of the Chimes was given over to the builders in the late 1890s. A block of flats (Douglas Mansions) was built at the corner of West End Lane and Quex Road in 1896 and another three blocks there (King’s Gardens) in 1897.

In 1947 the L.C.C. announced a scheme for 104 flats in Kilburn Vale. In 1948 the L.C.C. began clearing the area between Greville Road and Mortimer Place and Crescent, which it replaced with the Mortimer Crescent estate, eight smallscale, brick blocks of flats, which were opened c. 1955. A second phase of the Kilburn Vale estate, north of West End Lane, bound by Mutrix and Quex roads and involving the demolition of the eastern part of Birchington Road, was completed by 1984.


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