Wembley () is a district in the London Borough of Brent, north-west London, northwest of Charing Cross. It includes the wards of Alperton, Barn Hill, Kenton, Northwick Park, Preston, Sudbury, Tokyngton and Wembley Central, Wembley Hill and Wembley Park. The population was 133,616 in 2021, an increase of 20,000 since 2011.
Wembley was for over 800 years part of the parish of Harrow on the Hill in Middlesex. Its heart, Wembley Green, was surrounded by agricultural manors and their hamlets. The small, narrow, Wembley High Street is a conservation area. The railways of the London & Birmingham Railway reached Wembley in the mid-19th century, when the place gained its first church. Slightly south-west of the old core, the main station was originally called Sudbury, but today is known as Wembley Central. By the 1920s, the nearby long High Road hosted a wide array of shops and Wembley was a large suburb of London. Wembley then, within three decades, became an integral outer district of London, in density and contiguity. Wembley formed a separate civil parish from 1894, incorporated as a municipal borough of Middlesex in 1937. In 1965, when local government in London was reformed, the area merged with the Municipal Borough of Willesden, which was separated by the River Brent, to create the London Borough of Brent, one of the 32 local government districts of Greater London.
The estate of Wembley Park was largely pleasure grounds when the Metropolitan Railway reached this part in 1894. It was chosen to host the British Empire Exhibition in 1924, resulting in the development of landmarks including the Empire Stadium, later known as Wembley Stadium, which became an iconic football stadium. Suburban protection of public parkland and low-to-mid building density of all but high-rise western Wembley Park means most of Wembley is integral to and archetypal of the once well-advertised – mainly Middlesex – Metroland. After years of debate, the 1923 stadium was replaced by a modernised stadium with a grand, skyline arch which opened in 2007; it is home to the England national football team, hosts latter and/or final stages of annual competitions such as the FA Cup and has the greatest capacity nationwide. In the early 21st century the London Designer Outlet pedestrianised plaza was built.
History +Wembley (civil parish then Metropolitan Borough from its inception) population ◄ Split from Harrow on the Hill 1901 4,519 1911 10,696 1921 16,187 1931 48,561 ◄ From abolition, 1 April 1934, of Kingsbury Urban District () until 1965 about, that is if static as at 1931, 16,636 residents, absorbed1931 Census of England and Wales, Table B, 'Areas altered between 26th April, 1931 and 30th June, 1934, showing constitution as at the latter date, in terms of constitution as at the former date, together with particulars of acreage and population'.; M. of H. Order No. 78096. The Middlesex Review Order, 1934; 8.2.1935. M. of H. Declaration under Section 145 of the LGA, 1933 1939 112,563 1951 131,384 1961 124,892Note no 1941 census due to warsource: UK census/The 1939 Register
Toponymy 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.aalt.law.uh.edu; http://aalt.law.uh.edu/E3/CP40no357/aCP40no357mm1toEnd/IMG_7441.htm; third entry, line 3, "apud Wambeleye"; in 1349
The old manor 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, , 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. Wembley Park thus derived its name from Repton's habit of referring to the areas he designed as "parks".
The former Barley Mow pub was recorded in 1722 thus was the earliest long-lasting pub of Wembley.
Railways, parish formed and development In 1837, the London & 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.
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.
Anne and Frances Copland, who in 1843 inherited Sudbury Lodge and its lands, gave a plot for a church to serve the southern part of Harrow parish.Diane K Bolton, H P F King, Gillian Wyld and D C Yaxley, 'Harrow, including Pinner : Modern churches', in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 4 ed. T F T Baker, J S Cockburn and R B Pugh (London, 1971), pp. 257-260. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol4/pp257-260 In spite of less support from local farmers, who preferred part of Lord Northwick's property on Wembley Hill, the sisters' offer was accepted since they would bear all the cost of building. The church of Saint John the Evangelist, Wembley, designed by George Gilbert Scott and W. B. Moffatt, was consecrated in 1846, in which year Wembley became a parish. It was built of flint with stone dressings, in the Gothic style, and comprised chancel, nave, northeast chapel, and wooden bell turret. A north aisle was added in 1859 and a south aisle in 1900; extensions were made to the west to designs of G. P. Pratt in 1935. It has one church bell.
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. 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. Wembley Hill station was renamed 'Wembley Complex' in May 1978, before getting its present name of 'Wembley Stadium' in May 1987.
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. The route is now mostly served by bus route 18 which is also one of the busiest bus routes in all of London today.
The 1937-built fire brigade headquarters of Middlesex County Council on Harrow Road, in Moderne style, is now a fire station of the London Fire Brigade. It is statutorily recognised and protected in the initial category, Grade II, of listed building.
Wembley, in common with much of northwest London, had an extensive manufacturing industry, but much of it closed in the 1980s. Its factories 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).
Empire Exhibition and the Stadium
What had been Wembley Park hosted the British Empire ExhibitionPhotograph of exhibition siteMap of exhibition siteSunday Tribune of India (newspaper) Article on exhibition (2004) of 1924–1925.British Pathe (agency) Film of British Empire Exhibition, reel oneBritish Pathe (agency) Film of British Empire Exhibition, reel twoBritish Pathe (agency) Film of British Empire Exhibition, reel threeBritish Pathe (agency) Film of British Empire Exhibition, reel four 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 houses.
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). Another cinema in the town was an ABC cinema originally opened as The Regal in 1937, 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.
Post-war
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's end. However the large Indian community in the town maintained a growing jewellery market with their shops on Ealing Road.
A British Army recruitment centre led away from the High Road and came under attack by an IRA bomb in 1990, seeing a soldier die and four people injured (see 1990 Wembley bombing).
Recent regenerations
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. A shopping plaza along High Road, an attractive shopping district in the 1950s, suffered slow decline by the 1980s and was therefore poorly maintained. Its Marks & Spencer department store closed in 2005 after 71 years trading.
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. The rest was completed in phases until 2015 after nine years' time, with additional retail and housing units. The local Argos store also moved to a new unit in the redeveloped Central Square.