Brent Cross
A London suburb in development
This Ordnance Survey 1895-1900 series map of Golders Green and Brent Cross shows a landscape awaiting the suburbia which would cover the area over the following 30 years. Click on the map to enlarge it.
At the bottom right of the 1900 map is the Golders Green Road/Finchley Road/North End Road crossroads awaiting the arrival of Golders Green station in 1907.
Stretching in a north-westerly direction away from the crossroads is Golders Green Road - home to a series of particularly wealthy residents in large houses - Woodstock House, Highfield, Ravenscroft and others. North from the crossroads runs the Finchley Road through a rural Temple Fortune. The area to the right of Finchley Road would become Hampstead Garden Suburb.
Nearly in the centre of the 1900 map - away from everything - are the local sewage works and to the works’ southeast, a fever hospital. The valley of the River Brent was somewhat marshy - so much so that the North Circular Road would later, in the 1920s, be built along its floodplain when the area had been overwise built up. Developers had avoided the boggy ground leaving space for the new road. In 1900, in this marsh, the sewage works, isolation hospital and a gas works had been built on the ‘substandard’ land.
The large area of water in the bottom left is the easternmost section of the Welsh Harp - much larger then, and originally built as a water feeder for the Grand Union Canal.
On the map, farms are scattered throughout the area - Renter’s Farm, Grove Farm, Temple Fortune Farm and, in the northwest corner of the map, Stoney Farm. Over Stoney Farm lands, Hendon Central Circus (and station) would be built where Butcher’s Lane (later called Queen’s Road) took a sharp turn to the north.
In the accompanying video, the commentary makes the assumption that Brent Cross station was built in the middle of nowhere and that all the local housing sprung up in 1922 and 1923 as the station was opened. Thanks to subsequent feedback, there’s a bit more clarity in the history of this obscure suburb of northwest London. All local history is a work in progress and so this is not the final story.
When I say ‘obscure’, of course, Brent Cross is pretty well-known throughout the capital thanks to the shopping centre and flyover of the same name. Fewer though know of the suburb on the other side of Hendon Way, away from all the commerce.
The Northern Line - or rather its predecessor ‘The Hampstead Tube’ had reached Golders Green station and no further in 1907.
Pictured here by Topical Press as a rural crossroads (Finchley Road with Golders Green Road/North End Road) as late as 1904, the population of Golders Green subsequently exploded once its station was built on the site of the wooden building in the photo. Ten years later, new housing stretched as far as the River Brent on both sides of Golders Green Road and on both sides of the Finchley Road
Plans had been afoot to extend the line to Edgware before the First World War. Land had been reserved along the projected route but the company ran out of the money and means to build any further.
Up to 1909, the route of the tube line extension was planned to run through southern sections of Temple Fortune, passing the Prince Albert pub and onto Brent Street, Hendon.
By around 1909, the proposed route had been changed to run on its present course. To achieve this embankments and bridges were needed by 1910 before housing estates were established on the original route.
At the same time, there were other planned railway projects. Only with the collapse of the Junction Railway and the Metropolitan Extension in 1913 did the Edgware extension become the dominant railway project in the Brent station area.
In 1922, several houses were demolished in Golders Green to make way for the tube. Clearly builders were caught out by the change of route.
Back to the Brent Cross area in particular, housing had already reached the eastern end of Highfield Avenue - the road which would later host Brent Cross station - by 1912. But the expansion into the Golders Green hinterland was slowing as the housing was built further and further from the station, becoming less attractive as a commute proposition.
But the government bailed the railway extension scheme out in the early 1920s, possibly as part of the initiative to provide work for returning servicemen and to provide “homes for heroes” in new suburbs.
The tube contractors’ office chosen before they started work, was adjacent to the line in Woodstock Avenue.
The London General Omnibus Company took photos of two signs - one in Highfield Avenue and one just around the corner on Hendon Way, just being laid out at the time of the above photo in 1922. Renter’s Farm - soon to be demolished and built over - are the buildings seen in the background.
Brent Cross station was indeed built on a greenfield site but only just. Housing was stretching down Highfield Avenue but had not quite reached the site of the station.
But to challenge one of the assumptions of my own video - that the suburb of Brent Cross sprung up in 1922 - well, it’s not quite true. The area was already partly built - apart from the streets immediately next to the new station: Western Avenue, Highfield Gardens and Heathfield Gardens - before the railway came along.
Brent Cross station opened with the name Brent in 1923. The line to Edgware was completed all the way from Golders Green in 1924. A new name, Brent Cross, for the station occurred in the 1970s.
Brent (Cross) station, and the entire extension was built at the same time as the construction of the Hendon Way (A41) and North Circular Road (A406).
Brent station ended up tucked in a corner of the two new main roads and a large commercial centre did not spring up around the station unlike in Hendon Central, Colindale, Burnt Oak and Edgware. There were no through routes to encourage retail developments at Brent.
There were shops at Brent station, and within memory, they amounted to a sweet shop and a W.H.Smith’s, but we certainly don't see the shopping parades that we see around the other stations on the line.
Interestingly Edgware branch stations beyond Golders Green have shops, but they didn't have pubs. The Railway Hotel in Edgware was already built. The Chandos is good way away from Colindale Station, and Hendon Central's "The Hendon" was opened considerably later as a pub for the Watford Way, rather than the railway.
Brent Cross is now the best-preserved station of Stanley Heaps' station designs on the Edgware branch. It is the only one which is mostly as it was when opened. All the others were rebuilt after Second World War bombing or have had later extensions.
In the thirty or so years between the 1900 map shown at the top of this post to the 1930s Geographica street map here, the area has changed almost beyond recognition.
The footprint of the two maps are identical. Click on this map to enlarge it.
During the 1920s, not only did the railway appear but both the North Circular Road and the Hendon Way - two new arterial roads. The landscape is now covered by roads and housing. In a corner of Hendon Way and the North Circular junction, Renter’s Farm only just hangs on. Over the road, the future site of Brent Cross Shopping Centre is still occupied by the sewage works and intriguingly, shooting grounds.
Hendon Central station has appeared on the former Butcher’s Lane bend. All of the large houses along Golders Green Road have been knocked down and redeveloped, some of them being remembered in road names.
NOTE: Brent Cross to Golders Green on the Northern Line is one of a series of videoed walks I’m doing between every Underground station in London. There are hundreds of these to do and the reason for doing them is to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK. I was diagnosed with Stage 3.5 prostate cancer in late 2022. My life was saved by a rapid response by medical professionals and the radiotherapy and hormone therapy I was given in early 2023. These walks give me a bit of focus and raise money.