Queen's Park is in fact the newest district in this book's remit, having been created in 1887 out of the muddy fields of the Royal Agricultural Society's 1879 show by the Corporation of the City of London. A housing estate around the new open space then developed in the late 19th century. However, the author also takes in the southern part of Willesden, a parish which existed for over a thousand years, embracing a number of Anglo-Saxon hamlets, including Harlesden, Neasden and Willesden itself. These were for centuries small, isolated farming communities, near to yet separate from the ever-growing metropolis of London. Their only connection to one another was their inhabitants' passionate adherence to the parish church.