Maida Vale - "The studios, the Beatles & the trees"

Location

• Maida Vale is a residential district of west London located between St John’s Wood and Kilburn. The area is mostly residential and mainly affluent, characterised by its wide tree-lined avenues, large communal gardens and red-brick mansion blocks dating back to the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras. The first mansion blocks were completed in 1897.
• Maida Hill, in the south, includes the Paddington Basin, more commonly known as Little Venice. To the east are St John’s Wood and Lord’s Cricket Ground. Where it meets St. John’s Wood Road, Maida Vale reverts to the name ‘Edgware Road’.

Historical facts

• Developed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the early 1800s as middle class housing, it took the name from a public house named after John Stuart, ‘Count of Maida’ which opened on the Edgware Road soon after the Battle of Maida, in 1806. By the late 19th century the area a predominantly Jewish district, with a Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue serving as headquarters to the British Sephardic community. The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, lived within sight of this synagogue on Warrington Crescent.
• Maida Vale underground station was opened on June 6, 1915, on the Bakerloo Line. It was the first station ever to employ all female workers – male staff were in short supply, as many had been conscripted into the army to fight on the western front during World War I.
• It is also home to the BBC Maida Vale recording and broadcast studios – the building being one of the BBC’s earliest premises, pre-dating Broadcasting House, and was the centre of the BBC radio news service during World War II.

Famous residents

• Alan Turing (1912-1954), code breaker and pioneer of computer science was born at 2 Warrington Crescent.
• Ambrose Fleming, (1849-1945), English electrical engineer and physicist, and inventor of the wireless valve, at 9 Clifton Gardens.
• Andreas Kalvos, (1792-1869), Greek writer, at 182 Sutherland Avenue
• David Ben-Gurion, (1886-1973), the first Prime Minister of Israel, at 75 Warrington Crescent.
• Edward Ardizzone (1900 – 1979), artist, has an English Heritage blue plaque in his honour at 130 Elgin Avenue. This is where he lived and worked from 1920 to 1972.
• John Masefield (1878-1967), novelist, playwright and Poet Laureate from 1930 to his death, wrote his famous poem The Everlasting Mercy while living at 30 Maida Avenue.
• Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) co-author of ‘Noblesse Oblige: an enquiry into the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy’ which coined the terms ‘U’ and ‘non-U’, lived at 13 Blomfield Road in the 1930s.
• Sir Alec Guinness (1914-2000), Oscar-winning actor was born at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road. His most well-known feature film roles included Fagin in Oliver Twist, Sidney Stratton in The Man in the White Suit, Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
• Stephen Potter (1900-1969), humorist and author of the cult book ‘The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship; or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating’, lived at 23 Maida Vale in the 1960s.
• William Friese-Greene (1855-1921), pioneer of cinematography, developed a camera that took a sequence of pictures on a roll of perforated film moving behind a shutter, lived at 136 Maida Vale from 1888-1891. He later shot the world’s first movie film at his Maida Vale home.
• Nearby is North Kensington, which today attracts trendy media types and entertainer/songwriters (Jimi Hendrix wrote Purple Have at 167 Westbourne Grove which was then painted purple).