Wembley Park is a district of the London Borough of Brent, England. It is roughly centred on Bridge Road, a mile northeast of Wembley town centre and northwest from Charing Cross.
The name Wembley Park refers to the area that, at its broadest, falls within the limits of a late 18th-century landscaped estate in northern Wembley in the historic county of Middlesex. Part of this estate became the location of development in the 1890s after being sold to Edward Watkin and the Metropolitan Railway cutting through the area. Wembley Park was developed into a pleasure and events destination for urban Londoners, with a large fairground made there. It was later also a key area of the Metro-land suburban development in the 1920s—the same decade Empire Stadium was built and the British Empire Exhibition was held. Wembley Park continues to be a recreational centre today, being home to Wembley Stadium, England's primary football stadium and a major sports and entertainment venue; as well as Wembley Arena, a concert venue; among others.
Today the area continues new retail and housing development schemes near the stadium complex that have started since the early 2000s. The Chalkhill housing estate is also located in the area. The east is home to large industrial land, called Stadium Industrial Estate, adjacent to Brent Park; whereas to its north lies Fryent Country Park and to its north-east the Welsh Harp.
History
The Page family Wembley was in the parish of Harrow, and the manor of Wembley was a sub-manor of Harrow. It belonged to the Priory of Kilburn. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Priory's lands in Wembley and Tokyngton came into the possession of Richard Page.
The Page family, successful local farmers, had already been leasing the land before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Pages became one of the largest and richest families in Middlesex.
Richard Page and Humphry Repton Richard Page (died 1771) was the landowner and lord of the manor. He lived in Sudbury, west of Wembley. Around 1787, his son, also called Richard (1748–1803), had the ambition of converting 'Wellers' into a country seat, turning the fields around it into a landscaped estate.
In 1792 Richard Page decided to employ the famous landscape architect Humphry Repton (1752–1818) to convert the farmland into wooded parkland and to make improvements to the house. Repton was clearly impressed by Page's property. He wrote, "in the vicinity of the metropolis there are few places so free from interruption as the grounds at Wembly; and, indeed, in the course of my experience, I have seen no spot within so short a distance of London more perfectly secluded ... Wembly is as quiet and retired at seven miles distance as it could be at seventy."
Later, writing to a friend in May 1793, Repton wrote of Wembley "on Wednesday I go to ... a most beautiful spot near Harrow. I wish I could shew it to you." Repton often called the areas he landscaped 'parks', and so Wembley Park owes its name as well as its origins to Humphry Repton.
The area landscaped by Repton was larger than the current Wembley Park. It included the southern slopes of Barn Hill to the north, where Repton planted trees and started building a 'prospect house' – a gothic tower offering a view over the parkland. Repton may also have designed the thatched lodge that survives on Wembley Hill Road, to the west of Wembley Park. It is in a style frequently used by him, known as "cottage orne". Humphry Repton was in the habit of recording his designs in Red Books, but the one for Wembley Park, which would answer this speculation, has not survived.
Richard Page lost interest in Wembley Park, partly because he had inherited a fully completed Capability Brown (1716–1783) landscape at Flambards in Harrow, so the house itself was never remodelled by Repton. The tower on Barn Hill was never finished either. It became known as "Page's folly" (as with the later example of Watkin's Tower) and was eventually demolished.
John Gray The house appears to have been sold to John Gray (died 1828), a London brandy merchant, in 1802. The Page family retained the Barn Hill part of the park, some 91 acres (77 hectares).
Gray renovated and extended the house between 1811 and 1814, at a cost of £14,000. He may also be responsible for the late 18th- or early 19th-century cottage orné style lodge on Wembley Hill Road, if it was not built for Page by Repton. Whoever built it, it is thought to be the oldest property in Wembley.
Even without the Barn Hill portion, the Wembley Park estate covered some 327 acres (132 hectares) from what is now Wembley Hill Road in the west to the River Brent in the east, and from the modern Chiltern Line in the south to Forty Lane in the north.
The current Empire Way (originally Raglan Gardens) now bisects Repton's landscape. Wembley Park Mansion, now with stucco facing as part of Gray's improvements, (and so known locally as 'The White House'), was situated west of Empire Way, while much of the parkland was to the east.
Wembley Park was described in 1834 as "beautifully diversified by fine grown timber judiciously placed, contributing a seclusion such as is scarcely elsewhere to be enjoyed, but at a considerable distance from the metropolis." Later visitors described "a grove, a pleasant retreat in summer – a scene of tranquility furnished with an old temple and a summerhouse" to the west of the house.
In 1880 the Metropolitan Railway extended its line from Willesden Green to Harrow, cutting through Wembley Park. The railway company bought 47 acres (19 hectares) of land from Gray's son, also called John. He died in 1887. Two years later Wembley Park was bought by the Metropolitan Railway Company for £32,500. Its chairman was Sir Edward Watkin (1819–1901).
Watkin and Wembley Park
Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman of the Metropolitan Railway Company, wanted Britain to have a bigger and better tower to rival the new Eiffel Tower in Paris. Watkin also hoped that this tower and an associated pleasure gardens would bring passengers to his Metropolitan Railway. Wembley Park, which was only 12 minutes by train from Baker Street, seemed the ideal location. The International (later Metropolitan) Tower Construction Company was formed to finance construction of the tower, with Watkin as chairman. It leased a significant part of Wembley Park from the Metropolitan Railway.
The park became a sizeable pleasure garden that boasted cricket & football grounds, a large running track, tea pagodas, bandstands, a lake, a nine-hole golf course, a variety theatre and a trotting ring. Served by the new Wembley Park station, it officially opened in May 1894, though it had in fact been open on Saturdays since October 1893 to cater for football matches in the pleasure gardens.
The tower design was chosen through a competition, judged in March 1890. The judges eventually awarded the 500 guinea prize to a design for a 1,200-foot steel tower by Stewart, MacLaren and Dunn. Originally intended to have eight legs, the plan was changed to a cheaper four-legged design and the height reduced to 1,150 foot. There were to be two stages, one 155 feet up and another at the halfway mark, with a viewing area at the summit. The platforms would be fitted with "restaurants, theatre, shops, a Victorian Turkish bath, promenades and winter gardens." The foundations were laid in 1892 and Watkin's Tower opened in 1896.
Over 100,000 people visited Wembley Park in the second quarter of 1894, though this declined to 120,000 for the whole of 1895 and only 100,000 for 1896. Despite an initial burst of popularity, the tower failed to draw large crowds. Of the 100,000 visitors to the Park in 1896 rather less than a fifth paid to go up the Tower.
In 1902 the Tower, now known as "Watkin's Folly", was declared unsafe and closed to the public. In 1904 it was decided to demolish the structure, a process that ended with the foundations being destroyed by explosives in 1907, leaving four large holes in the ground.
The loss of the tower did not diminish the park's appeal as a public recreation ground, and it continued to offer football, cricket, cycling, rowing, athletics and in winter, ice skating on the frozen lake. After 1907 the Variety Hall in the park was used as a film studio by the Walturdaw Company Limited, founded by E.G. Turner. An 18-hole golf course was opened in 1912, and by the end of the First World War over 100 sports clubs were using the park.
After 1889, the Metropolitan Railway built roads to the south-west of Wembley Park tube station, on that part of Wembley Park not allocated to the pleasure gardens or the Metropolitan track itself. In 1908, Wembley Park Mansion was demolished to allow construction of the new Manor Drive. The house had been a convent from 1905, housing French nuns fleeing the Third Republic's separation of Church and State.
In 1906 the Great Central Railway opened a line and several stations between Neasden and Northolt Junction (today South Ruislip), where it connected with the newly built Great Western & Great Central Joint Line. The Great Central's southernmost station on this short line (and so its southernmost station anywhere, other than its terminus at Marylebone) was Wembley Hill, just south of the Wembley Park pleasure gardens.
The British Empire Exhibition
In 1921 the British Government decided to site the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, on the site of Edward Watkin's pleasure gardens. The Urban District Council was opposed to the Exhibition, but its objections were overruled. Wembley Stadium (then the Empire Stadium) was built for the Exhibition and, famously, the 1923 FA Cup Final was played there.
Much of Humphry Repton's Wembley Park landscape was transformed in 1922–1923 during preparations for the Exhibition.
In addition to the pavilions and kiosks there were a lake, a funfair, a garden and a working replica coal mine. There were also numerous restaurants, the most expensive of which was the Lucullus restaurant (in 1925 the Wembley Garden Club restaurant) near the exhibition gardens. In 1924 J. Lyons held a monopoly of catering, but the restaurant in the Indian Pavilion used Indian cooks and was advised by Edward Palmer "of Messrs. Veeraswami [sic] & Co." to serve as "Indian Adviser at the restaurant". In 1925 Veeraswamy & Co. ran the Indian restaurant, even though, for reasons both economic and political, the Indian Government did not take part in the 1925 season. Veeraswamy & Co. later founded the first Indian restaurant aimed at a non-Anglo-Indian white clientele in England, in Regent Street. It still survives, and was awarded a Michelin star in 2016.
The British Empire Exhibition took place in 1924 and 1925. While it failed to make a profit or reinforce conclusively the national attachment to the ideal of the British Empire, it did make Wembley a household name. Arthur Elvin's rescue of the Empire Stadium building then ensured that this continued, and that Wembley Park would remain the pre-eminent visitor attraction in west London, even though much of the Exhibition site was taken over by light engineering.
Inter-war suburban development and "Metroland" A few large houses had been built on parts of Wembley Park, south-west of Wembley Park tube station, as early as the 1890s. In 1906, when Watkin's Tower closed, the Tower Company had become the Wembley Park Estate Company (later Wembley Ltd.), with the aim of developing Wembley as a residential suburb.
Unlike other railways, from an early date the Metropolitan Railway had bought land alongside its line and then developed housing on it. In the 1880s and 1890s it had developed the Willesden Park Estate near Willesden Green station, and in the early 1900s it developed land in Pinner, as well as planning the development of Wembley Park.
In 1915 the Metropolitan Railway's publicity department created the term "Metro-land" and gave the name to the company's annual guide.