At its corner with the Edgware Road, in this section, stood Kilburn Mill which gave Mill Lane its name. The mill burnt down in the 1860s and not a trace remains.

Although Edgware Road and Haverstock Hill shared the combination of accessibility to London with a rural setting, this area did not attract gentry and London merchants in the same way, possibly because it lacked the height to give fine views. Indeed cottages on the Earlsfield in Mill Lane disappeared between the 1740s and 1762 - a sort of reverse urbanisation.

The Powell- Cotton family owned vast tracts of the land along the Edgware Road (Kilburn High Road) and gradually started the process of cashing in on their land as demand for housing development grew after the arrival of the railways in the nineteenth century. In the 1890s building on the Powell-Cotton estate spread north of Mill Lane. Fordwych Road was extended north of the lane by 1892 and most of the 57 houses built in the road between 1892 and 1907 were in the northern section.

Between 1934 and 1938 Fordwych, Hillcrest, and Kendal courts and Warwick Lodge were built on the sites of nos. 50-64 Shoot Up Hill, on either side of Mill Lane.