For my 20th unsung suburb I'm off to a classic of the genre, a true "where on earth is that it sounds ridiculous why have I not heard of it before?" And yet it's a substantial neighbourhood in a world famous location, as a large white arch attests, also real enough to appear on official yellow fingerposts so it definitely exists, QED.
Tokyngton is essentially the areadue south of Wembley Stadium, which residents can't easily get to because there's a railway in the way. It's bounded to the east by the River Brent, to the south by the Bakerloo line and to the west by Wembley town centre. The name means 'the farm of the sons of Toca' and was first recorded in the 12th century, with a chapel and manor house following in the 13th and 14th. Tokyngton Manor's estate once stretched as far as Kingsbury and Kilburn, later contracting into Oakington Farm, an arable concern covering 300 acres. Even by the start of WW1 the sole buildings in the area were the farm and its gatehouse on the Harrow Road, after which a magic wand was waved and 2500 homes appeared instead, so comprehensively that almost nothing's been built in Tokyngton since WW2. It pretty much all looks like this.
This is Oakington Manor Drive, one of the estate's major spine roads, lined by endless semis and run-together semis which look like they've come straight from the Metro-land handbook. The impetus to develop the land instead came from a different railway, the Chiltern Main Line, which carved through in 1906 only narrowly avoiding the farm buildings. The lord of the manor then sold his land to Wembley council with the intention of developing a ‘garden city’ estate, stipulating that the former farmstead should become the heart of its main park. You might even want to use it as a library, he said, but they disagreed and by 1939 the part-Tudor building was so dilapidated that the ARP used it for air raid practice and destroyed it with explosives. You'd never get away with that today.
The site of the manor house is now occupied by Tokyngton Community Centre, a lowly hut that's home to a Montessori school during the week and Destiny House International at weekends. The remainder of the triangular park is easily large enough for kickabouts, basketball and supposedly a substantial wildflower meadow, although it's impossible to confirm the latter in September. Amusingly the football area has been bedecked with pictures of England captains, just in case the sight of Wembley's arch immediately behind isn't sufficiently inspirational. Step away from the trees and the elevated location offers views of a distant skyline including Hampstead, the BT Tower and the Shard, so it's easy to imagine how this might have been a strategic summit in medieval times. And yet on my visit there was absolutely nobody else here, only latecomers heading into church, because old school recreation can no longer compete with the brazen commercialism on offer immediately across the railway line at Wembley Park.
But mostly Tokyngton looks like this. Broad avenues, bay windows, Mock Tudor gables, sloping tiles, shrubbery, off-road parking, satellite dishes, extended porches, occasional pebbledash and house after house after house. The pattern is broken only a lofty redbrickchurch added in 1933, a primary school surrounded by a ring of back gardens and a health centre where the library used to be. The street past St Michael the Archangel is wider than all the rest, while further downhill one short street is actually called Wembley Way. Signs of life include a pile of lager cans on Park View suggesting some serious drinking went down last night, also padding cats, also pensioners from the subcontinent heading home with spicy shopping. Brent has Britain's highest proportion of residents born outside the UK and Tokyngton ward is comfortably above the borough average, such is Wembley's demographic transition since these streets were laid.
Tokyngton's eastern perimeter is marked by a half-mile linear park, through which flows the culverted River Brent. Originally the top end was called Tokyngton Recreation Ground and the lower end Monks Park but it's all since been rebranded as Brent River Park. One information board at the southern end includes my favourite excruciating outdoor cartoon, a six-panel account of a video about wind power and climate change made by a local youth group in 2011. The vinyl's peeling slightly now but most of the speech bubbles are alas still legible ("I'm So Excited To Meet The Brent Youth Volunteers And This River Park Is The Perfect Place", "It's Great To Reuse These Plastic Bottles And Create Mini Wind Turbines" "Have You Heard About The London Array?"). The final panel includes an exhortation to watch their video on YouTube, which I see has only had 163 views in the last 15 years, and rarely I have seen something so well-meaningly pointless.
The sole pre-20th century survivor hereabouts is the Harrow Road, still a key northwestern artery and still undulating up towards New-Wembley-Flats-on-the-Hill. The manor's former gatehouse is long gone, its location marked by a very short row of shops that goes grilled chicken/betting shop/minimarket/launderette. Tokyngton's main shops fill a typically 30s parade closer to the North Circular, bookended by a ghost sign for a shoe shop that must have moved out decades ago. Amidst the usual takeaways are specialists in Pakistani, Afghan and Goan cuisine, also two Brazilian butchers and a shisha cubbyhole. Apparently a lot of people call this end Monks Park rather than Tokyngton, or even Stonebridge Park given that's what the adjacent Bakerloo line station is called.
Tokyngton's sole tall building can be found here beside the dual carriageway, a 22-storey 1960s office block called Wembley Point. It's since been rebranded Wem Tower, now that what it contains is 439 contemporary micro-apartments as part of a "new vertical living concept", not that open plan hutches and high service charges are especially original.
A separate stripe of Tokyngton runs south of Harrow Road, hemmed in on the far side by the Wembley Brook and an enormous rail depot. Its main spine road is called Tokyngton Avenue and looks just like the rest of the neighbourhood except slightlymore downmarket, suggesting it got built second. Here the semis run together in fours or sixes, the gables aren't quite so angled and the builders didn't try quite so hard with the bay windows. Nine of the sidestreets are named after west Hertfordshire towns and villages (Aldbury, Berkhamsted, Bovingdon, Flamsted, Gaddesden, Nettleden, Northchurch, Tring and Wiggington) but my favourites are the two that aren't. These are Sylvia Gardens and Derek Avenue, a dated pair that conjure up unanswered questions every time I see them. Who were Sylvia and Derek, were they married, were they perhaps related to the builder or developer and did they ever see themselves immortalised in an address? Answers on a postcard please.
It may not be the most thrilling of suburbs but one thing binds all of Tokyngton together and that's living in the Wembley Stadium events parking zone. Signs on every street warn that only permit holders can park here between 10am and midnight on event days, otherwise you risk being towed away. Residents can buy up to three permits per household, they cost £15 and are valid for 15 years. Obviously the system's gone paperless, but if you insist on paying by cash you can turn up at the car pound in North Wembley and hand over your notes there. Currently the only event days on the list are 2nd October for England v Czechia and 16th October for the arrival of the Jacksonville Jaguars, but it's up to you to check. It's not just the white arch that looms over Tokyngton, so does the intermittent inability to park outside your own house.
