Wembley, Middlesex

Historical Description

Wembley, an ecclesiastical parish in Harrow-on-the Hill parish, Middlesex, with a station, known as Wembley Park, on the Metropolitan railway. It is also near Sudbury station on the L. & N.W.R. It has an urban district council of nine members, was constituted in 1846, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Harrow. Population, 2533. The manor belonged to Kilburn Priory, went at the dissolution to R. Andrews and L. Chamberlayne, passed soon to the Pages, and with Wembley Park belongs now to the Metropolitan Railway Co. The park, which has a well-wooded and undulating area of about 130 acres, with a sheet of water of about 8 acres, was opened in 1894 as a place of public resort, and contains a cricket and football ground, &c. Its chief attraction, however, is the great tower, constructed of steel, designed to rival the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris. The supports of the tower are firmly embedded in concrete sunk 25 feet below the surface, and the base extends over an area 300 feet square or 90,000 square feet. The first platform is 200 yards square, and the higher levels are proportionately smaller until the highest point is reached, which is 1150 feet, or 175 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower, and about 1300 feet above the level of the sea. There is a workman's hall and institute in the parish. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of London; value, about £210 with residence. The church, erected in 1846 from designs by the late Sir G. Gilbert Scott, R.A., and enlarged in 1860, stands in the centre of the parish, is an edifice of flint and stone in the Gothic style, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, S porch, and a small western turret.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Wembley from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Wembley)

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Middlesex is online.

Maps

Online maps of Wembley are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)