Wembley

Wembley is derived from the Old English proper name "Wemba" and the Old English "lea" for meadow or clearing. The name was first mentioned in the charter of 825 of Selvin. A further instance may be seen in the Plea Rolls of the Common Pleas, as Wambeleye.[6]

The village of Wembley grew up on the hill by the clearing with the Harrow Road south of it. Much of the surrounding area remained wooded. In 1547 there were but six houses in Wembley. Though small, it was one of the wealthiest parts of Harrow. At the dissolution of the monasteries in 1543, the manor of Wembley fell to Richard Andrews and Leonard Chamberlain, who sold it to Richard Page, Esq., of Harrow on the Hill, the same year. There was a mill on Wembley Hill by 1673.

The Page family continued as lords of the manor of Wembley for several centuries and eventually commissioned Humphry Repton (1752–1818) the landscape gardener to design what is now Wembley Park.[7][8] Wembley Park thus derived its name from Repton's habit of referring to the areas he designed as "parks".

In 1837, the London and Birmingham Railway (now part of the West Coast Main Line) was opened from London Euston through Wembley to Hemel Hempstead, and completed to Birmingham Curzon Street the following year. The changing names of the local station demonstrated the increasing importance of the 'Wembley' name. 'Sudbury' station opened in 1845, renamed as 'Sudbury and Wembley' in 1882, renamed as 'Wembley for Sudbury' in 1910, renamed as 'Wembley Central' in 1948, at the time of the Olympic Games.

St John the Evangelist church was built in 1846

To modernise the service, a new Watford DC Line was built alongside the main lines and Bakerloo line trains, and electric trains to Broad Street started in 1917. Electric trains to London Euston began running in 1922. Since 1917, there have been six platforms at what is now Wembley Central station. In 1880, the Metropolitan Railway opened its line from Baker Street through the eastern side of Wembley, but only built a station, Wembley Park, in 1894. There are now three physically separate services, the London to Aylesbury Line, the Metropolitan line, and the Jubilee line. Only the latter two services have platforms at Wembley Park station.

Harrow Road, c. 1910, showing Sudbury Park Farm on the left and Crabs House on the right (now buildings of Barham Park)

In November 1905, the Great Central Railway (now, in this section, part of the Chiltern Main Line) opened a new route for fast expresses that by-passed the congested Metropolitan Railway tracks. It ran between Neasden Junction, south of Wembley, and Northolt Junction, west of London, where a new joint main line with the Great Western Railway began. Local passenger services from London Marylebone were added from March 1906, when new stations were opened, including 'Wembley Hill', next to what later became the site of Wembley Stadium – the national stadium of English sport – which opened for the FA Cup Final of April 1923, remaining open for 77 years until it closed for reconstruction in October 2000.[9] After a long planning and redevelopment process dogged by a series of funding problems and construction delays, the new stadium finally opened its doors in March 2007.[10] Wembley Hill station was renamed 'Wembley Complex' in May 1978, before getting its present name of 'Wembley Stadium' in May 1987.[11]

Wembley was also served by tram (route 62) and later trolleybus (route 662) which ran through the Harrow Road from Sudbury to Paddington until the abandonment of the networks.[12] The route is now mostly served by bus route 18 which is also one of the busiest bus routes in all of London today.[13]

Wembley Fire Station

The fire brigade headquarters of Middlesex County Council were located on Harrow Road and is now a fire station of the London Fire Brigade.

Wembley, in common with much of northwest London, had an extensive manufacturing industry, but much of it closed in the 1980s. Factories in the area included Glacier Metals (bearings), Wolf Power Tools, Sunbeam Electrical Appliances, Griffin & George (laboratory equipment) and GEC (whose research laboratories, opened in 1923, were one of the first of their type in the United Kingdom[14]).

British Empire Exhibition postage stamps

The area around the current Wembley Stadium was the location of the British Empire Exhibition[15][16][17] of 1924–1925.[18][19][20][21] Until the 2000s, remnants of the many reinforced concrete buildings, including the original Wembley Stadium, remained, but nearly all have now been removed, to make way for redevelopment.

Most of the rest of Wembley's housing consists of inter-war semi-detached houses and terraces and of modern apartment blocks, with a significant minority of detached housing.

Expansion in the town centre continued. In 1929 the Majestic Theatre was opened, later becoming Odeon Wembley cinema. It closed in 1961 and was demolished, replaced by a C&A store (today a Wilko store).[22] Another cinema in the town was an ABC cinema originally opened as The Regal in 1937, located on Ealing Road, which operated until 1976. After this it operated for some years as an independent cinema showcasing Bollywood films. The building was demolished in 1987.[23]

Chesterfield House, demolished in 2017

During the 1960s, rebuilding of Wembley Central station, a block of flats, an open-plan shopping plaza, and a car park were constructed on a concrete raft over the railway. The retail centre of Wembley (the High Road and north end of Ealing Road) has suffered from chronic traffic congestion and from the opening of neighbouring purpose-built shopping centres, first Brent Cross Shopping Centre in the 1970s and later the Harrow and Ealing Broadway shopping centres.

Following continuing decline, Wembley had become unattractive and increasingly derelict by the century end. However the large Indian community in the town maintained a growing jewellery market with their shops on Ealing Road.[3]

There also used to be a British Army recruitment centre off the High Road in Wembley. This centre came under attack by an IRA bomb in 1990 resulting in the death of a soldier and injuries to four people (see 1990 Wembley bombing).[24]

Central Square during vacancy in 2006 (left) and in 2015 (right) after regeneration

The town's regeneration is one of the major development projects in London in the early 21st century, as specified in the London Plan published by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone in 2004. The shopping plaza at High Road, which was an attractive shopping district in the 1950s, suffered slow decline by the 1980s and was therefore poorly maintained.[3] The Marks & Spencer department store on High Road closed in 2005 after 71 years trading.[25]

In a bid to reverse Wembley's fortunes, in the mid-2000s plans were created and approved to completely regenerate the place, carried out by construction company St. Modwen. The first phase, including construction of eighty-five homes, reconstruction of the plaza as a new public square and opening of new retail units including a TK Maxx, was completed in 2009.[26][27] The rest was completed in phases until 2015 after nine years' time, with additional retail and housing units.[28] The local Argos store also moved to a new unit in the redeveloped Central Square.

Purpose-built Brent Civic Centre near the stadium was completed in 2013, with all Brent administration moving to this complex. As a result, other offices were closed. The Chesterfield House block on Park Lane that was used as council offices, built in the 1960s replacing a Methodist church that moved further down the road, was demolished in 2017 and replaced by 21 and 26 storey blocks of apartments.[29][30] Brent House, an office complex on High Road, was sold by the council sold Brent House to a developer called Henley Homes who demolished the building and also replaced it with residential apartments.[31] Mahatma Gandhi House on Wembley Hill Road, another council office block, was also sold off.[32] The listed Brent Town Hall was also disposed and became a French school, Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill.

The regeneration project is focused on the "Wembley Park" site which includes Wembley Stadium and Wembley Arena, about a mile northeast from Wembley town centre. The Original Wembley Stadium closed in October 2000 and was demolished in 2003.[33] The new Wembley stadium was designed by a consortium including engineering consultant Mott MacDonald and built by the Australian firm Multiplex. It cost £798 million and opened in 2007.[34] Grade II-listed Wembley Arena, now the SSE Arena, has been sensitively refurbished in keeping with its Art Deco style.[35] In 2004, Brent Council approved a mixed use plan by Buro Happold for the development of 55 acres (223,000 m²) adjacent to the stadium, which was presented by Quintain Limited.

Brent proved to be one of the more unpopular of the mergers occurring during the creation of the modern London boroughs. Reasons for this included the limited road links between the two main areas of Wembley and Willesden (with the A4088 and A404 Harrow Road, the only major road links across the Brent valley boundary), the lack of a focal point or ‘heart’ for the borough and the contrasting characteristics; with Willesden more inner-city in nature, and Wembley more suburban. Widening schemes for the North Circular Road, which passed along the Brent valley, close to the boundary between the two, increased this sense of separation. The clash quickly turned political amid the plans to build Chalkhill Estate, as Wembley was Conservative while Willesden was Labour; the virtual balance of power between the two parties in Brent contributed to the borough becoming a byword for extremism.[3]

The unpopularity persisted and in 1989 more than ten thousand people signed a petition calling for Wembley to regain its independence or else join with the London Borough of Harrow with which it had historic administrative links, had better transport integration and had shared common suburban interests. The 1994, the Boundary Commission considered this, and other requests, considering a wide range of options[36] including restoring independence to the districts, or joining them to different neighbouring boroughs – an option the Commission preferred.

Wembley and Harrow were felt to be a natural match, and the London Borough of Harrow supported these proposals and called for a boundary rationalisation with Barnet so that the A5 Road (Watling Street) formed the enlarged borough's entire eastern boundary. Willesden was harder to satisfactorily match with a neighbour, with Ealing considered the most natural choice, the main problem being the lack of a focal point, with the industrial areas of Park Royal, Old Oak Common and North Acton forming a relatively ill-connected barrier between the two. The Commission concluded that there was insufficient justification for the disruption caused by the changes, and that such changes should only be considered during a comprehensive review of London's boundaries.

A London Marylebone-bound train leaves Wembley Stadium station

Stations in the town are:

• Wembley Stadium (Chiltern Railways)
• Wembley Central (Bakerloo line, Southern, West Midlands Trains and Watford DC Line)
• North Wembley (Bakerloo line and Watford DC Line)
• Wembley Park (Jubilee line and Metropolitan line)
• Sudbury Town (Piccadilly line)
• Preston Road (Metropolitan line)
• Alperton (Piccadilly line)
• Stonebridge Park (Bakerloo Line)

View of High Road near Park Lane; on the right is the town's former post office, now a public house

Wembley has numerous Transport for London bus routes that run through its centre on High Road, namely routes 18, 79, 83, 92, 182, 204, 223, 224, 297, 483, H17, and night route N18.

Wembley lies very close to the A406 North Circular Road. The A404 Harrow Road passes through its centre. The town centre is served by three pay-and-display car parks.

Wembley Arena is served by Wembley Park station on the London Underground via Olympic Way, Wembley Stadium on the Chiltern Railways line from London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill, and Wembley Central (walking via the White Horse Bridge). Bus route 92 stops directly outside.

The onsite parking facilities are close by, with a multistorey car park called Red Parking and a surface level car park on the eastern flank of the Stadium called Green Parking.[66] Disabled parking is available at a reduced rate but on a first-come first-served basis.[67]