'Kilburn' comes from a stream; 'Park' was a builders' invention.
The name, first recorded in 1134 as Cuneburna, perhaps means the king's stream or the cattle stream; the stream is the Westbourne, now underground. In 1850 the Reverend Edward Stuart sold 47 acres here to five developers, who laid out roads and sewers. Buyers were slow to come, and the estate was finished only in the late 1880s.