Pastureage sold in 'Erlesfeld' was listed among the issues of the Hampstead manor in 1322. It is unlikely that Earlsfield was part of the original manorial demesne because of its position. It may have originated in assarted land that was later leased or granted out or it may have been tenant land which had escheated to the lord.

In 1632 John Kemp leased a cottage at Shoot Up Hill and two crofts called Earlsfield (6 acres). They, together with two cottages and a small close at Kilburn, passed on John's death in 1643 to his brother Francis Kemp of Willesden,

By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Greenhill family held Earlsfield. The estate was identifiable as two fields south of Mill Lane, forming a long strip of 7 acres, copyhold and heriotable. It passed to Samuel Hoare and his son Joseph, who sold it to the Midland Railway Company in 1867.

The other two long fields to the east were freehold, comprising a house and 14 acres in 1705. By the time that the 1800 map was published, the house had gone. The freehold fields passed through a number of hands in the eighteenth century until finally held by Richard Houlditch and by his executors in 1864.

With the building of the Midland Railway, the tracks ran across the middle of Earlsfield. It was split into two. Fronting Mill Lane, there was just a triangle of land left which was sold to the Land Building Investment and Cottage Improvement Co.

Terraced houses in varied styles presumably indicating the builders, E. Garrett and William Brown, both of Ravenshaw Street, J. C. Wallas of Belsize Road, and Rathbone of Croydon, were crammed into Ravenshaw and Glastonbury Streets and Broomsleigh and Dornfell Roads between 1883 and 1887. Another 10 were built in Broomsleigh Road in 1890 and two in Ravenshaw Street in 1894.

The southern triangle become West End railway sidings originally and them the West End Sidings housing estate.


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