Childhood & Youth In West Kilburn

A Memory of Kilburn.

After the war, my brother David & I returned to Kilburn from evacuation. Our Smith family was re-united at 28 Kilburn House, Malvern Place, where mum (Isobel) continued to live during the Blitz. Dad (Bert) was in the RAF & returned from Australia in 1946 to take up his work as a hotel chef (the Great Northern Hotel & later the Kingsley Hotel, Holborn). I began school for a short period at Carlton Vale infants, joining my brother Dave at Percy Road Secondary Modern when I was 7 or 8 (1945/46). He left in 1951 to work as an apprentice printer in Cambridge Rd & I left in 1953 to start work as a van boy in the Radio & TV retail trade. After school, I began a life-long friendship with an old classmate, John Conroy, who lived at 137 Carlton Vale. We were both active members of St John's church near Kilburn Park station. John now lives in Hatch End & we keep in regular contact and meet up every year in London with another old school chum, Tom Ashmore.

Though I have fond memories of the 1950s in Kilburn, these exist alongside an awareness of the deprivation and hardship that daily life was for Kilburnites, at least for my parents and probably many families like them: the substandard housing, limited local social amenities, & the poor educational opportunities that must have blunted the future prospects of so many kids. Having returned to Kilburn this year (2017), I realised that nostalgia for the past shouldn't blot out the beneficial transformation of Kilburn that has taken place since I left in 1971. Its probably now a much better place to grow up in than it was for me and Dave.

Bob Smith

---

---