Thomas Roberts erected Neasden House (on the site of the modern Clifford Court) in the reign of Henry VIII.

In the 19th century these farmers and moneyers at the Royal Mint wholly owned Neasden House and much of the land in the area.

[citation needed] In 1893 the Great Central Railway obtained permission to join up its main line from Nottingham with the Metropolitan.

Trains ran on or alongside the Metropolitan track to a terminus at Marylebone (this is now the modern day Chiltern Main Line).

The Great Central set up a depot south of the line at Neasden and built houses for its workers (Gresham and Woodheyes Roads).

The Great Central village was a "singularly isolated and self-contained community" with its own school and single shop, Branch No.

In the 1920s, the building of the North Circular Road, a main arterial route round London, brought another wave of development; it opened in 1922–23.

All of Neasden's older houses were demolished during this period, except for The Grange, and the Spotted Dog was rebuilt in mock-Tudor style.

In 1945, Willesden Borough council acquired land by the North Circular Road to build temporary prefab homes.

There were two sites: one called Ascot Park built beside the gas factory, and another either side of The Pantiles public house (which is now converted into a McDonald's restaurant).

[8] The post-war history of Neasden is one of steady decline; local traffic congestion problems necessitated the building of an underpass on the North Circular Road that effectively cut Neasden in half and had a disastrous effect on the shopping centre by making pedestrian access to it difficult.

But nonetheless Neasden has survived, largely due to a succession of vibrant immigrant communities keeping the local economy afloat.

In 1978, Tesco purchased a 43 acres (17 ha) site in Neasden's Brent Park retail area by the North Circular Road.

In 1988, IKEA opened its second UK store at the Brent Park retail area, at the site of the old Ascot Gas Water Heater factory.

[13][14] The Grange Tavern (previously called The Old Spotted Dog) on Neasden Lane was closed in the 1990s and demolished to make way for a block of flats, bringing to an end the inn that had stood there for around two centuries.

On 14 July 1993 in an MI5 anti-terrorist operation, a Provisional IRA man was arrested in his car on Crest Road carrying a 20 lb bomb.

The area around Neasden Lane North was for a while terrorised by a local gang called "Press Road Crew" who carried knives, dealt drugs and performed vandalism.

In 2003, seven members were caught and were banned from the streets they were active in, including Chalkhill Estate in Wembley Park, in the then biggest (by area size) anti-social behaviour order in Britain.

In 2018 the writer Nicholas Lezard called Neasden a "prime example of what happens when a big road [North Circular] both carves up and strangles an area.

"[18] Neasden is within the UK parliament constituency of Brent Central, currently represented by Dawn Butler MP (Lab).

In a celebrated spoof of the Early Music phenomenon which grew enormously in the late 1960s, Neasden was selected by BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer David Cain, as the home of a fictional ensemble dedicated to historically-informed performances on authentic musical instruments from an indeterminate number of centuries ago.

It was thus that in 1968, listeners to BBC Radio 3 were given a recital by the Schola Polyphonica Neasdeniensis, whose members performed on the equally fictional Shagbut, Minikin and Flemish Clackett.

Diana Evans's 2006 novel, 26a, details the experiences of twin girls of Nigerian and British descent growing up in Neasden.