Property News · October 6, 2017

Let’s move to Dollis Hill, north-west London: ‘It could have been Silicon Hill’


Research labs once lined the North Circular, but now this is a cosmopolitan suburb with wonderful views and a lovely parkWhat’s going for it? When I’m bored, I like to imagine another fate for Dollis Hill. Today, it’s a synonym for suburbia, the hill striped with 1920s semis, the tube station sucking in and belching out its daily diet of commuters; but it’s a cosmopolitan kind of suburb, and those semis soon filled with aspirant Jewish émigrés from the East End. Dollis Hill coulda been a contender. It could have been Silicon, er, Hill. In its heyday, when research labs lined the North Circular, the Colossus computer, of code-breaking fame, and Ernie the computer for premium bonds, were built in its Post Office Research Station. (Yes, there was a Post Office Research Station. I feel an Ealing comedy coming on.) Had global fortunes not turned the way they did, Dollis Hill might have had its own Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Instead, they’re probably pushing the grandkids around Gladstone Park, dreaming about what might have been.The case against Suburban ennui. The lovely Gladstone Park aside, there’s not much to it, just a parade of newsagents and offies by the station and endless avenues. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Let’s move to Dollis Hill, north-west London: ‘It could have been Silicon Hill’

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