Flying High: Hendon Between the Wars

Poster advertising the RAF Aerial Pageant at Hendon. Image from London Transport Museum.

Last year we wrote a blog about Edgware, and how the opening of the 1924 Northern Line station changed the area from a village into a suburb of London. Now we will move a couple of stops down the underground extension to Hendon, to see how the opening of  Hendon Central in 1923 transformed the area in the years leading up to World War II, and saw modernism arrive on the outskirts of the capital. Hendon was a parish in the county of Middlesex, and steadily grew in the first decade of the 20th century, with a population of 56,013 in 1921. At this time the area became a hotbed for the nascent aviation industry, with Everett, Edgecumbe and Co building small planes at their works and aviation pioneer Claude Grahame-White establishing an aerodrome in 1908, both in Colindale.

Hendon Central tube station shortly after opening, before the flats and shopping parade was built. Image from London Transport Museum.

Hendon Central was built as part of the extension of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, later to be known as the Northern Line, as it extended into the growing suburbs. The station opened for service on 19th November 1923, serving as the terminus until the line was extended to Edgware the following year. The station and its parade of shops were designed by Stanley Heaps, chief architect to the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, owner of the new line, in a thoroughly Neo-Georgian manner, a far cry from the continental modernism that Charles Holden was to introduce at the other end of the line. The entrance has a grand portico with a colonnade of Doric columns, with the interior finished with wooden doors, white, black and green tiling and a chequerboard floor. ​

Hendon Odeon Cinema, now demolished. Image from Cinema Treasures.

Opposite the station, as part of another shopping parade, a symbol of the new style appearing in Britain from the continent and America appeared in 1932. This was the Ambassador Cinema, one of many art deco screens built all around the suburbs between the wars. It was designed by G.E MacLeavy of Henry F. Webb & Ash, with a curved entrance in white render and glass, with flanking buildings in more sober red brick and a pantiled auditorium, a typical mish mash of styles, both contemporary and historical, found in the suburban scene of the 1930s. Of course just one cinema was not enough for most suburban centres in the interwar years, and an Odeon opened on Church Road in 1939, the last in the country to do so before World War II broke out. Here modernity was more pronounced, with a curved brick entrance and rectangular tower, designed by Robert Bullivant of the Harry Weedon firm. Whereas the Ambassador still sits opposite the station, now as a health centre, the Odeon was demolished in 1981. 

Hendon United Synagogue, designed by Cecil J Eprile.

Not far from the station is the Hendon United Synagogue, which despite its religious purpose, displays some of the same art deco design as the aforementioned cinemas. It was opened in 1935, designed by architect Cecil J. Eprile, who produced a number of synagogues in the suburbs, as well as designing buildings for the Times Furnishing Company. The Hendon synagogue has a symmetrical frontage in brick, with decorative metal framed windows and stained glass windows reused from Cricklewood synagogue. Another religious building reflecting the design of its times, is Hendon Methodist Church in The Burroughs (1937), a more expressionist-influenced building, designed by Herbert Welch and Feix Lander. It has intricate brickwork around the entrance and stained glass by Christopher Webb inside. Twenty years earlier Welch had also designed Hendon Fire Station (1913) in an Arts and Crafts fashion, in keeping with neighbouring Urban Council Offices of 1900. 

Detached house on Ashley Lane, designed by Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander. Image from RIBApix.

Welch would also be involved in the area's biggest collection of modernist architecture, the houses for Haymills builders along Ashley Lane and Sherwood Road, built part of the Hancock estate on part of the grounds of Hendon Hall from 1933. The houses are similar to those that Welch, with partners Felix Lander and N.F. Cachemaille-Day, designed for Haymills at Hanger Hill and Wembley, two storey homes in brick with flat roofs and tiled parapets, modern but not overtly modernist. Many of these houses have now been extended with added floors, doric columns or white render added. The most spectacular house they designed in this area was across the other side of the Great North Way, but still on Ashley Lane. No,54 or Everest as it was called, was a grand art deco style house, built for Mr & Mrs Leslie MacMichael, with a central staircase tower and roof deck with metal railings, giving it the air of an airport control tower. Unfortunately the house was demolished and replaced by what is now Woodtree Close. Another modernist loss was 11 Talbot Crescent, a stern looking flat roofed house in brick by Harold Alexander, demolished in the 1990s. 

Everest, Ashley Lane, designed by Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander. Image from RIBApix.

Back down the other end of Ashley Lane, at No.5, is a lovely deco style house with a green pan tiled roof, white rendered walls and recessed entrance, designed by Bernard Engle, just before World War II. The most spectacular house in the area can be found two streets over in Downage, appropriately called the White House, one of architect Evelyn Simmons’ Sunway type house designs for the 1934 Ideal Home Exhibition. The house was designed to be built in any location, but its square staircase tower, bright white render and curved bays did not find favour with the buying public and only a handful were ever built. As well as houses, a number of apartment blocks were built such as Burnham Court in Brent Street, Quadrant Close in The Burroughs and Hendon Park Mansions in Queens Road, none with any great modernist conviction, but with enough moderne features to attract younger buyers looking for a new life in the suburbs.

Proposed Aerodrome and Landing Strip, Hendon (1930) by Marshall, Tweedy, Bernard and Partners. Image from RIBApix.

Also worth mentioning is Hendon Greyhound Stadium, opened in 1935 with its art deco style square entrance tower which was lit up at night. The stadium operated up until 1972, when it closed and demolished to make way for what would become Brent Cross shopping centre. One building that didn't appear but is worth placing here, is a proposal for an extended aerodrome from 1930 by Marshall, Tweedy, Bernard and Partners. Judging by the drawing, the aerodrome building would have been a couple of miles long, with the landing strip situated on the roof and the terminal buildings integrated into the structure.  

​By the outbreak of world war II in 1939, Hendon had gone through some profound changes. Its population had tripled, it had become an Urban District in 1932, and along with the arrival of the underground in 1923, the area had also hemmed in by the opening of various arterial roads. As we have seen, modernism had also arrived in this suburb, not through the provision of the state or dogmatic architects but via the speculative builder, cinema chains and religious organisations. In the post war era more modernist buildings would arrive, some courtesy of the local authority, such as new housing estates, and some by more commercial interests like the speculative Hendon Hall Court apartments by the Owen Luder Partnership (1966) and the brutalist Car Showroom on the M1. But the years between the wars was the period when Hendon grew into itself, and became a modernist suburb.

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