Did someone say bandwagon?
Like any publication worth its salt, this website is not immune to the allure of churning out a review of the past 12 months. So here are the crime-fighting vicars and the organic cauliflowers that made up 2012 for West Hampstead.
First, the stories you may have missed, then a fuller round-up of the bigger news of the year.
January: During a siege far away in Child’s Hill, it was necessary to explain to some in West Hampstead how helicopters work. The Kings Troop left their barracks in St John’s Wood, which meant no more parades up West End Lane. Police carried out a sting operation to rescue a kidnapped dog held to ransom.
February: West Hampstead’s crime fighting vicar Andrew Cain got plenty of attention from the press after he apprehended a thief. A man was evicted after building a microlight and a boat in his flat. Virgin broadband customers were told problems would be sorted out by mid-March.
March: We began the Herculean task of testing all the Sunday lunches in the neighbourhood.
April: Vince Power shelved his ambitious (did someone say ridiculous?) plans for a festival in Kilburn Grange park that would have lasted throughout the Olympics. The Netherwood Day Centre received another – more lasting – reprieve from council cuts.
May: We launched NxNW6 for local film listings. Virgin broadband customers were told problems would be sorted out by mid-September. Luton fans caused chaos at the Thameslink station.
June: Twitter power got a potentially dangerous hole in a railway fence fixed very quickly. It really isn’t just about Stephen Fry and photos of breakfasts y’know.
July: Kilburn High Road flooded spectacularly. There was the first of two outdoor film screenings on Fortune Green. Some residents complained about having to look where they were driving. A man bought a bag for £20 in a West End Lane charity shop that was worth a small fortune.
August: Local celeb Robert Webb got miffed when a fan told him via Twitter that he’d spotted him in the pub.
September: The Met Line ran its last old train. George Orwell’s son read from his father’s Bookshop Memories essay in West End Lane Books. Developers offered a free Mini if people bought one of the Mill Apartments on an open day. Virgin broadband customers were told… well, you get the idea.
October: The Blackburn Road student building had its topping out ceremony. Camden proposed a 20mph blanket speed limit.
November: The tenth whampgather set new records for attendance and money raised. We learned the West End Lane post office will close, but only when new (co-located) premises have been found.
December: We launched ZENW6 for health & fitness news and reviews, and Property News. The third Christmas market was a success once again. We learned there were 704 Jedis in Camden (but only 9 Scientologists)
Bet you didn’t remember all that?
But what about the issues you did remember?
In the market for produce?
News that we might get a market first emerged in April. Back then we were told that the Iverson Road site would not be big enough for an accredited farmers’ market. Readers were asked to say what sort of market they’d like to see instead. The results were overwhelmingly in favour of a food market.
Good time then for Hampstead Butcher & Providores to announce its plans to open in West Hampstead. After two years of tweeters clamouring for a butcher, it seemed as if their prayers had been answered. A month later, we learned that the butcher had “postponed” its decision to move to the area. We’re still waiting.
In June, we discovered that London Farmers’ Market – the group that runs multiple markets in the city, including the large one in Queens Park – was in negotiation with Network Rail and that a proper farmers’ market was looking likely. It was not until August, and a false start, that we finally had a firm opening date for the farmers’ market and a cow to prove it. The cow stood next to a short-lived hot dog stand and Mr Whippy van.
Finally, on September 22nd, while I was fast asleep in a hotel in Denver, Colorado, the market opened. There was joy, there was laughter, there were some quite expensive vegetables. I awoke to a deluge of tweets about it. It has since been described by several people (not all of whom are Cllr Risso-Gill) as being “the best thing to happen in West Hampstead for years.”
After trading for a couple of months (and having an amazing run of luck with the weather), the market required planning permission. An overwhelming 284 people wrote to the council in favour of the market, with just four objections. No surprise then that permission was granted.
February: the much-loved (but too seldom-frequented) Rotisserie on Fortune Green closed, while on West End Lane, Guglee opened after revamping the short-lived Costello’s.
March: Sushi Kou opened in the Rotisserie’s spot.
April: Walnut and Bon Express – at the opposite ends of both West End Lane and the culinary spectrum – both shut their doors. The latter remains empty. Karahi Master, which had been refused a late licence, also closed. Kebab options in West Hampstead were dwindling fast. Meanwhile, the Lion became the Black Lion (again) to confuse everyone.
June: Grilled O Fried opened where Karahi Master had been. Was it a typo, or was it Portuguese? Feng Sushi took over from Walnut, bringing the number of sushi outlets in the greater West Hampstead area to seven. Millennium Café in Broadhurst Gardens closed with a whimper.
July: The smallest of those seven sushi bars closed – Sushi Gen was no more.
August: Picasso opened where Sushi Gen was – oddly, given that Picasso was a Spanish artist who lived in France, Picasso served Italian food.
October: Elephant Walk and J’s both closed.
November: Wired, a pop-up coffee shop, opened, as did Hana, taking over from the much-maligned Sea Lantern.
December: Bella Luna opened where J’s had been, and Grilled O Fried’s short-lived operation shut up shop.
Star of stage and screen
When you’re blessed with natural beauty and talent, it’s no surprise to find yourself thrust centre-stage. I should know, there was a whole paragraph about me in GQ earlier this year. Oh yes.
January: Maxine Peake was in the Wet Fish Café filming legal drama Silk. Across the road in West End Lane Books, Warwick Davis and Karl Pilkington were filming for An Idiot Abroad.
March: Vanessa Feltz grumbled about parking in West Hampstead on her BBC London radio show. A lively debate ensued online.
May: Keith “Plays Pop” Chegwin was spotted around Fordwych Road filming for a PR company
June: That episode of Silk aired, and the West Hampstead police stables were mentioned in a short BBC World film about Hampstead.
July: The Abbey Area estate was the setting for a BBC/Film 4 short film featuring Noel Clarke that polarised opinion [I liked it]
August: West Hampstead popped up in The Guardian, thanks to me, and in the Evening Standard, thanks to Robert Webb. It also featured on Samantha Womack’s edition of Who Do You Think You Are?
September: The police stables appeared again, as ITV reported on a performing horse joining the Met.
December: On the same day, Wired appeared on the One Show, and Flowerstalk featured on This Week. Later in the month West Hampstead was a pointless answer on Pointless, got a mention on Graham Norton and flashed by in archive footage in a piece about 150 years of the tube.
Plan of action
Perhaps the biggest stories of the year have been forged in Camden’s planning department. Not everyone gets excited about planning news, although as soon as building work begins you can guarantee a surge of interest and misguided accusations of a lack of consultation.
The most dramatic and controversial of all the planning decisions was that for 187-199 West End Lane aka West End Square aka the Ballymore scheme. Consultation for this sizeable residential development ended in mid-February. There were vocal objections to the scale, especially the 12-storey tower that would form the high point of this six-block plan. Nevertheless, in March, Camden passed the proposal on the grounds of the housing shortage and Ballymore’s amendments to its initial plan. City Hall also had to pass it, which it duly did. In September, the strip of shops on that land – from Café Bon to M.L.Estates – were given six months’ notice to quit.
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| West End Square proposal |
Consultation also closed in February for the residential development at 163 Iverson Road where the garden centre once stood. The original plans had been watered down and although there were still objections, Camden passed the proposals in the summer. There is no word on when building will start.
Gondar Gardens sounds like a location in The Hobbit, and the saga has certainly dragged on like a Tolkein novel. In May, Camden rejected developer Linden Wates’ second proposal for this site even as an appeal over the first rejection was underway. That appeal was upheld by the national planning inspector in November. Then in early December, to many people’s surprise, Linden Wates also decided to appeal against the second refusal as well. Hedging their bets, or simply trying to recoup costs?
West Hampstead has been earmarked as an “area for intensification” in the London plan, with the bulk of that increase in population destined for the area around the train lines. The neighbourhood is therefore likely to undergo significant change over the coming years, and thus – using powers under the new Localism Act – a Neighbourhood Development Forum was set up in January, and is drafting a Neighbourhood Development Plan. Over the course of the year, it unveiled locals’ attitudes to architecture and to West Hampstead in general. Alongside this sits Camden’s own Placeshaping plan. This initiative was launched in 2011, and finally published its report in June.
Education isn’t a topic covered often in these pages, but schools did feature in planning news this year. South Hampstead High School was granted permission to build temporary classrooms on the Lymington Road sports ground (which it owns) while a two-year rebuild and refurb of its existing site in Hampstead is carried out. Meanwhile, Liddell Road industrial estate has been identified as the probable site of a new primary school that will operate under the aegis of Kingsgate primary school.
Emmanuel School opened a new building across the road from its existing property. Lots of locals moaned about the choice of grey brick rather than the more traditional red. Finally, a small private school could move in to the empty ground floor unit of Alfred Court on Fortune Green.
With so much activity, I added a “Planning news” menu option for the website and compiled an annotated map of all large local developments that will be kept updated throughout 2013 – a year that could see construction start at 187-199, and will definitely see the Abbey Area development begin.
Dial 999
It is sadly inevitable that over the course of a year in an area as densely populated as West Hampstead there will be crime and tragedy. In 2012, much of this seemed to be concentrated in the last two months of the year.
On Saturday November 10th a car hit two pedestrians on West End Lane. Desreen Brooks, from south London, was killed as she left the house of some local friends. Amy Werner, a postgrad from Vermont, was extremely badly injured. Her parents flew over immediately and she spent a month in an induced coma. A couple of weeks before Christmas she was able to fly back to the US where she is now in a rehab centre recovering slowly but steadily. Police are still piecing together what happened and no arrests have been made.
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| Desreen Brooks, with husband Ben Dutton |
Later in November, Douglas Hutchison, a 60-year-old visually impaired man, was seriously injured in what is believed to be an unprovoked attack in broad daylight outside his home in Goldhurst Terrace. His attacker was immediately arrested following a police chase through the streets of South Hampstead. Mr Hutchison, who was more commonly known by his nom de plume, Professor Whitestick, died from his injuries in December.
There were two serious house fires in December. The first was in West End Court and sadly resulted in the death of the elderly woman who lived in the flat. The second was in Maygrove Road; thankfully fire crews were able to rescue all four people inside. There was also an unusual fire on West End Lane that thankfully caused no injuries but knocked out power for some residents.
What of the emergency services themselves? West Hampstead fire station looks secure for the time being, although Belsize is set to close. The local police station, however, has been earmarked for closure. In December, we learned that PC Ruth Marshall from the local Safer Neighbourhood Team will be returning to Northamptonshire police in early January.
March: A security van was robbed on West End Lane, which caused a few wags to speculate on how a speedy getaway would work given all the traffic.
June: Following a spate of attacks, the Ham & High reported on the pressure on Camden to improve security on the Black Path.
August: A dispersal zone was created around the Lithos Road and Lymington Road estates. Strangely it was removed in November with no consultation.
December: There were two West End Lane accidents in one day, one in the morning involving a police car and one in the evening when a pedestrian appeared to have been knocked down on a zebra crossing.
Sporting triumphs
For London, the Olympics was the year’s single biggest story. West Hampstead may not have held any events itself (although we learned it has some Olympic history) but we were not immune from the Games (and at least two locals performed in the opening ceremony).
There were fears that TfL had underestimated the impact the Olympics would have on the interchange between the three stations, especially with Lords and Wembley being close by and with two of the three lines heading straight to Stratford. In the end, West Hampstead coped remarkably well, and Kilburn even hosted the Trinidad & Tobago cultural house.
Sports person of the year (officially and unofficially) was Tour de France winner and Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins. His local connection first came to the fore in an interview with Sky Sports, and from then on the media dubbed him the “Kid from Kilburn” (even though he’s lived in the north-west of England rather than London for quite some time). There are still murmurings about getting him to do a victory parade up Kilburn High Road, or naming something in his honour; and there was a lot of unnecessary quibbling about where exactly he came from.
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L’Equipe identifies Kilburn
(photo via @mascart) |
A year is a long time in politics
It was a relatively quiet year politically for West Hampstead. In the Mayoral elections in May, West Hampstead voted to keep Boris as mayor, but resoundingly kicked out Assembly Member Brian Coleman – as did the rest of his Barnet & Camden constituency. The Lib Dems, who hold all six of the West Hampstead and Fortune Green council seats, took a battering at the ballot box.
In October, the Boundary Commission presented its revised proposals for parliamentary constituencies and returned Fortune Green to Hampstead & Kilburn.
It was confirmed that all three main parties will field new candidates in the next general election, although none is yet to declare its candidate. The Conservatives have at least drawn up a shortlist, while speculation is rife as to who will assume Glenda Jackson’s mantle for Labour.
The end of the year as we know it… and I feel fine
There you have it – all the news that’s old and approved as Adrian Kronauer would have said if Good Morning Vietnam had had a slightly flippant review of the year. Hope you enjoyed following along on West Hampstead Life this year. For a weekly round-up of local news delivered to your inbox, just sign up to the newsletter. You’ll also be the first to hear about upcoming whampevents.
Best wishes for 2013.
