Living in Cricklewood

Cricklewood grew up along the Edgware Road, the old Roman Watling Street, and it still feels like a place people pass through on the way elsewhere. Cricklewood Broadway is a long, busy stretch of shops, takeaways, pubs and supermarkets, with a large bus garage and heavy traffic. The area was once a centre of aircraft manufacturing, with Handley Page's factory and airfield, and later of Irish working-class life.

Its main station, Cricklewood, is on Thameslink, with direct trains to St Pancras in around fifteen minutes and on to Farringdon, Blackfriars and London Bridge, and services north to Luton and Bedford. There is no tube, but Willesden Green and Kilburn on the Jubilee line are a bus ride or twenty-minute walk away, and Brent Cross West station, on Thameslink, has opened to the north.

Gladstone Park, on a hill to the west, is the area's main green space, with views over north-west London, a walled garden and sports facilities. The large Brent Cross Town development is transforming the land between Cricklewood and Brent Cross with new homes, offices and parks, and it will change the character of the northern side of the area over the coming years.

The streets are mostly Edwardian and late Victorian terraces, a good share now split into flats, plus some interwar homes and new-build blocks. Rents are generally lower than in West Hampstead, Kilburn or Willesden Green, making it a good-value option in north-west London. Local amenities are practical, with limited nightlife beyond pubs. Cricklewood suits people who work near a Thameslink station, want value close to fashionable parts of north-west London, and are comfortable with a scruffy, busy main road and the gradual pace of regeneration.