The infant River Westbourne crossed, what in 1900, was still a boggy field.
After the First World War, builders got themselves organised in suburban London. The Metropolitan Railway had bought vast swathes of adjacent land to its tracks and sold them on the developers to build “Metroland” estates. This pattern held sway throughout London, north and south.
Whether Kenton or Kenley, 1920s and 1930s housing looks very similar - homogeneous estates in a then-fashionable style which were well provided with bathrooms and other features inside and the areas designed with “all mod cons” too – shops, schools and parks.
The scale of suburban growth was staggering – the countryside started at Gospel Oak and White City before the First World War. Before the Second World War, just 25 years later, the new housing reached as far as Edgware and Hounslow.
It was not always this way. Before 1914, London was built one street at a time. Builders would not buy a whole farm but just a field – maybe two fields but maybe parts of a field.
And rather than building housing in anticipation of demand - the inter-war model - often the Victorian way was to build simply according to immediate needs. Land was sold to a new owner and then a house was built. Sometimes the potential owners had used their building society savings to buy land and afterwards employ a friend or well-known local builder to build their house.
Thus, many seemingly uniform Victorian streets change their style half way along – a different looking house here and a unique building there.
The nineteenth century map of London is full of half-built streets – laid out roads, many houses there but otherwise still awaiting completion.
Builders also often left the “difficult” land to successors. The new North Circular Road found its route in the 1920s through undeveloped land which was already surrounded by new suburbs, because the River Brent took a route through boggy pasture for much of its length. Hence you can see this river next to the new road for much of its northwestern length – Henley's Corner, Brent Cross and points south.
And on this featured map from 1900 we see a Hampstead field as yet undeveloped, but surrounded by housing.
This branch of the River Westbourne which was originally called the Kelebourne here - rises just north of here and the field to the south of its source was very marshy. Once the price of land made this piece of potential real estate worthwhile, the field was build upon.
