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Captain Edward George Spencer Churchill (May 21, 1876 – June 24, 1964) was a cousin to Sir Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister, and who inherited the Northwick estate from his step-grandfather Lord Northwick, who had no direct heir of his own, as a young boy in 1887. His trustees decided to develop the farmland in the early in the 1920s but their plan to create a superior type of suburb of original design was beset with problems, not least access. At the time Harrow could be approached from Kenton only on foot or cycle and children relied upon farm carts to get them to school, staying at home if the weather was inclement. So bad were the problems and lack of interest from buyers that two of the early builders Costin and Nash, considered pulling out of the project to concentrate their efforts elsewhere. That changed in 1923 when Middlesex County Council announced it was to widen and straighten Kenton Road and to erect a new railway bridge, improving communications. The new Northwick Estate began to take shape in 1924 with the construction of a 500 foot circle around the site of a private club called the Palaestra, with roads branching out from it like the spokes of a wheel. This road formed the boundary to the Northwick Estate. The son of Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, fifth son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough, Edward George Spencer Churchill was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He joined the Grenadier Guards in 1899 and saw service in the South African War and in the First World War. He was awarded a Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre with palm, and was twice wounded. On the first occasion after he was shot in the head, and on regaining consciousness found himself in a mortuary. He was High Sheriff of Worcester from 1924 to 1925 and as an avid art collector was, from 1943 to 1950, a trustee of the National Gallery. He also wrote books, namely Tarpon Fishing in Mexico and Florida; Home Industry; and The Herbal of Apuleius Barbarus. He died in hospital after scalding his back falling into a bath of hot water at his home in Charles Street.
