Kilburn has a rather ancient past with its origins in a 12th century priory founded at the crossing of Kilburn River – modern day Kilburn High Road and Belsize Road – from which it took its name. In the 18th-century, a medicinal well had been discovered and exploited with gardens and a great room for the 'politest companies'. Today it is a mixture of elegant stuccoed Regency villas, Victorian stock-brick terraces, mansion flats of the 1890s, post-1945 council blocks, small-scale industry, and shops. In the High Road, the fish shops, public houses, small factories and shops selling exotic vegetables and saris reflect the successive waves of immigrants that have given Kilburn its cosmopolitan flavour.