Northwick Park
Northwick Park, Brent
A Metroland suburb situated between Kenton and Harrow
In 1905 Harrow school bought 192 acres of Sheepcote Farm to thwart plans for development near the school and the fields were converted into a golf course that opened two years later. The rest of the farm was laid out with streets by 1914 by the established owners of the land, the Churchill-Rushout family. Northwick Park was their estate in Worcestershire and several of the new roads were given the names of places in its vicinity.
Housing was not built until after the opening of the station in 1923. Captain Spencer-Churchill’s original intention was to create “a unique specimen of town planning, the largest and best laid out estate near London” but the end result was more prosaic. In 1936 the council bought the remaining land for use as open space.
Harrow technical college was established here in 1959 and replaced most of Northwick Park golf course. The college has since become the Harrow campus of the University of Westminster. The substantial Northwick Park hospital was built from 1962 onwards on some of the public open space. It is now part of the London North West Healthcare NHS Trust.
The surviving 120-acre park has extensive sports facilities, including a golf course and two Gaelic football pitches.
Northwick Park Village was built on Nightingale Avenue in 2001 by London Strategic Housing, a specialist key worker housing association.
The Northwick Park ward is the second least deprived in the borough and has the lowest crime level. Residents of Indian birth or descent make up the largest minority, followed by white British.
Sybil Fawlty receives treatment for an ingrowing toenail at Northwick Park hospital in the classic ‘Germans’ episode of the television comedy Fawlty Towers, making a long journey from Torquay for a relatively minor procedure.