Maida Vale
 
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Location of Maida Vale in Greater London |
Maida Vale is a district of the British capital London . It belongs to the City of Westminster and covers parts of Paddington , among other things . Maida Vale has been one of the wealthy districts of London since the beginning of the 20th century . The streetscape is characterized in many places by houses in Victorian and Edwardian architecture. Maida Vale is also home to Little Venice , a residential area criss-crossed by canals.
Surname
The name Maida Vale has been documented since the 19th century . It is derived from the licensed pub The Maida in 1810 , which at the time stood on Edgware Road . The pub's name refers to the British Lieutenant General Sir John Stewart, who was publicly known as the Hero of Maida after his regiment defeated Napoleon's troops in July 1804 near the Calabrian town of Maida . What became known as the Battle of Maida was part of the Napoleonic Wars . In the decades that followed, some streets in the area were given names that included Maida , such as Maida Hill East as part of Edgware Road and Maida Avenue , which flanks Regent's Canal . The part of the name "Vale" means a valley in English.
geography
Maida Vale extends over an area of about 1 km². Neighboring boroughs are Kilburn to the north and St. John's Wood to the east . The southern border is the Regent's Canal, to which Westbourne Green connects. In addition to Regent's Canal, part of the Grand Union Canal , which was still called the Grand Junction Canal in the 19th century , runs through Maida Vale. There is a pool at the meeting point of both canals . This area of the borough is also known as Little Venice .
Maida Vale has several public gardens, including Crescent Garden and Rembrandt Gardens . To the east, Lord's Cricket Ground is bordered by Maida Vale, one of the most traditional stadiums for cricket in the United Kingdom .
There are several London Underground stops in Maida Vale . The one on the Bakerloo line lying Station Maida Vale was opened 1915th It is at the intersection of Elgin Avenue and Randolph Road . The entrance, designed by Stanley Heaps , is clad with glazed terracotta tiles. The station, which has been a listed building since 1987, was restored in 2006. The Warwick Avenue stop is also in Maida Vale.
The district has the postal code W9.
history
Today's Maida Vale was outside the city limits of London until the end of the 18th century and was uncultivated pastureland. The area was crossed by the River Westbourne , which at the time was still above ground . Part of the land belonged to the Bishop of London . The area was released for building from 1795, but it remained natural for almost another decade. The trigger for the beginning of the development was ultimately the construction of the Grand Junction Canal 1801, which runs through part of the area.
The land in today's Maida Vale initially remained the property of the diocese. Initially she organized the development of the area herself, from 1835 the Ecclesiastical and Church Estates Commissioners for England took over this task. They left users with the land in the following decades, usually on long-term rental or lease agreements ( leases ).
From around 1805, starting from Paddington, the first country houses and the Hero of Maida pub , which later gave the area its name, were built. Up until the middle of the 19th century there was no closed development. It was not until 1860 that investors such as Hugh Biers and Edward Vigers began building homes intensively. In the vicinity of the canals, numerous mostly three-storey, white plastered or painted row houses were built in “pseudo-Italian style.” The part north of the Grand Junction Canal, on the other hand, was initially only sparsely developed. In the 1880s, however, larger terraced house complexes were also built here, including 90 buildings on Kilburn Road and 50 in Sutherland Gardens. They did not consistently take up the Italianized style of the older buildings; many of the younger buildings had red or multi-colored brick facades.
Comparatively high rental or lease costs between £ 200 and £ 1000 led to the settlement of wealthy residents in the late 19th century; However, the district did not reach the radiance of the city-near areas around Hyde Park . The residents of Maida Vales at the turn of the century included numerous writers such as Thomas Mayne Reid and John Davidson, as well as visual artists. There were also several Indian dignitaries, including a Rajah from Kodagu . Although the last vacant lots were closed in the first half of the 20th century, the population density in Maida Vale was still lower than in the rest of Paddington. Maida Vale retained its reputation as an upscale district in the interwar period. In 1921, for example, it was described as "one of London's most desirable suburbs". However, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War , inexpensive apartments for workers were also built in the northern outskirts.
After the end of the war, Maida Vale did not experience any consistent urban planning development; Town houses were only replaced irregularly by larger residential complexes. A structural change was due at the beginning of the 1980s, when the diocese put more than 2000 houses and apartments for sale. Although current users were offered a 20 percent discount, sales were sluggish. By 1985 only two thirds of the units on offer had been sold. The rise in real estate prices from the late 1980s onwards was also noticeable in Maida Vale and especially in the particularly attractive Little Venice . A number of properties have been taken over by investors here and converted into high-priced condominiums.
The Jewish community in Maida Vale
At the end of the 19th century there was a large Jewish community in Maida Vale. In 1880 about a fifth of the population was Jewish. On the outskirts of the district stood the Bayswater Synagogue , which opened in 1863 and was destroyed in an air raid during World War II.
Little Venice
As Little Venice , a not clearly circumscribed part of Maida Vale, is referred to since the early 20th century, which is crisscrossed by canals. The area is considered particularly picturesque and a tourist magnet.
The term Venice refers to the Italian lagoon city of Venice . It is unclear who made this comparison. Some see the British poet Robert Browning as the author, others Lord Byron . It wasn't until the 1930s that it became Little Venice . The addition is often traced back to Margery Allingham's novel When Geister Die (original title: Death of a Ghost ), in which a so-called house with a canal view plays a role.
The Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal and Regent's Canal cross in Little Venice . In the 1810s, a basin was created at the intersection of the two waterways, initially known as Paddington Broadwater . In the middle of the basin is the small island of Brownings Island , named after Robert Browning. In the second half of the 19th century, urban villas began to be built on the plots by the basin. Artists' studios were also built in some places, but these were demolished in the 1970s. Today there are numerous narrowboats on the banks of the canals , some of which are permanently inhabited as houseboats .
Between the basin and Warwick Avenue is the small park Rembrandt Gardens , which was designed in the 1950s and was called Warwick Avenue Gardens until 1975 .
The Maida Vale Studios
In Delaware Road which maintains BBC the Maida Vale studios . The building, constructed in 1909, was initially used by the Maida Vale Roller Skating Palace and Club . The BBC Symphony Orchestra has been based here since a renovation carried out in 1933, leaving only the portal of the original building intact . The complex is home to London's largest classical music studio. There are several concert halls for public events; the performances can be recorded as well as broadcast live. In addition to classical music, contemporary productions are also created here. Groups like the Beatles , Led Zeppelin , Radiohead and Little Mix performed here and the disc jockey John Peel produced his programs here, which were published on Radio 1 until the 1990s .
In the 21st century , Maida Vale Studios is the BBC's oldest still-in-use space. The station intends to close the asbestos-contaminated facilities in 2023 at the latest in order to build a new building in the Olympic Park . The decision was received critically by British artists.
Well-known residents of Maida Vales (selection)
- David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Israel's first prime minister , lived temporarily in Maida Vale
- Björk (* 1965), Icelandic singer, lived in Maida Vale in the 1990s and early 2000s
- Richard Branson (* 1950), British entrepreneur, has a houseboat in Little Venice
- Joan Collins (* 1933), British actress, grew up in Maida Vale
- Eva Green (* 1980), actress, lives temporarily in Maida Vale
- Alec Guinness (1914-2000), British actor, was born in Maida Vale
- John Davidson , British writer
- Thomas Mayne Reid (1818-1883), British writer
- Mstislav Rostropovich (1927–2007), cellist, lived temporarily in Maida Vale
- Alan Turing (1912–1954), British computer scientist
Maida Vale in the film
- The story of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller When Calling Murder (1954) is set in Maida Vale. However, the film does not show any exterior shots of the district.
- Some outdoor shots for the 1966 feature film Georgy Girl were filmed on Regent's Canal and Maida Avenue.
- Some scenes from the feature film Paddington (2014) were shot in Maida Vale. The Maida Vale metro station can also be seen in the film. It bears the fictitious name "Westbourn Oak" here.
- Some scenes from The Mummy (2017) were filmed in a pub in Maida Vale.
literature
- Peter Aykroyd: London. The biography , Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3813502909
- TFT Baker, Diane K. Bolton, Patricia EC Croot: Paddington: Maida Vale , in CR Elrington (Eds.): A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 9, Hampstead, Paddington , London, 1989.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c T.FT Baker, Diane K. Bolton, Patricia EC Croot: Paddington: Maida Vale , in CR Elrington (ed.): A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 9, Hampstead, Paddington , London, 1989, P. 212.
- ↑ Description of the Crescent Garden on the website www.londongardensonline.org.uk (accessed on October 26, 2018).
- ^ Bingham: Official Guide to Paddington , 1921, p. 431.
- ↑ a b c N.N .: Little Venice, Westminster. hidden-london.com, accessed September 23, 2018 .
- ^ TFT Baker, Diane K. Bolton, Patricia EC Croot: Paddington: Maida Vale , in CR Elrington (ed.): A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 9, Hampstead, Paddington , London, 1989, p. 264.
- ^ Rat's Islander: The history of the place name known as “Little Venice”. londoncanals.uk, January 17, 2010, accessed September 23, 2018 .
- ↑ Brief description of Rembrandt Gardens on the website www.westminster.gov.uk (accessed October 24, 2018).
- ↑ John Burton: BBC Maida Vale Studios: Maid in Britain. www.soundonsound.com, January 2013, accessed September 21, 2018 .
- ↑ Mark Savage: BBC to leave iconic Maida Vale studios. www.bbc.com, June 5, 2018, accessed September 21, 2018 .
- ↑ Jim Waterson: BBC to close Maida Vale studios and move live music base to east London. www.theguardian.com, June 5, 2018, accessed September 21, 2018 .
- ↑ NN: Music industry stars unite to save BBC's Maida Vale studios from demolition. www.telegraph.co.uk, June 7, 2018, accessed September 21, 2018 .