The Underground Map

The Underground Map is a project which is creating street histories for the areas of London and surrounding counties lying inside the M25.

Baker Street

In a series of maps from the 1750s until the 1950s, you can see how London grew from a city which only reached as far as Park Lane into the post war megapolis we know today. There are now over 85 000 articles on all variety of locations including roads, houses, schools, pubs and palaces.

You can begin exploring by choosing a place from the dropdown list at the top.

As maps are displayed, click on the markers to view location articles.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence

Click here to explore another London street
We now have 666 completed street histories and 46834 partial histories
Find streets or residential blocks within the M25 by clicking STREETS

APRIL

2016

Paddington
The first underground railway station in the world ran from Paddington on 10 January 1863 as the terminus of the Metropolitan Railway’s route from Farringdon. The first Metropolitan station opened as Paddington (Bishop’s Road) but Paddington station, designed by the celebrated engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had long been the London end of the Great Western Railway.

Paddington had been an important town west of London before it was engulfed by the metropolis. It was first a medieval parish, then a metropolitan borough and finally integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Also found in Paddington are St Mary’s Hospital (where penicillin was first discovered) and the former Paddington Green Police Station - once the most important high-security police station in the United Kingdom.

Alan Turing, the pioneer mathematician was born in Warrington Crescent.

Fictionally, Paddington Station has a display case showing Paddington Bear, a character of children’s fiction who, in the book, is first discovered at this station and hence named after it.

Paddington...
»more

APRIL

2016

Eastminster
Eastminster (The Abbey of St Mary de Graces) was a Cistercian abbey on Tower Hill and founded by Edward III in 1350. It was located just outside the Roman London Wall. New Abbey was its alternative name.

The abbey was dissolved in 1538, and the site has for centuries been occupied by the London part of the Royal Mint.
»read full article

APRIL

2016

’Royal Blue’ horse omnibus outside 5 Euston Road
The bus carries route information and an advert for Selfridge’s. The shops behind, including Boots the Chemist, Stewart & Wright’s Cocoa Rooms and the Northumberland Hotel, are covered in advertisements.
»read full article

APRIL

2016

Bullbaiters Farm
Bullbaiters Farm near Boreham Wood was originally called Bullbeggar's Farm - Bullbeggar meaning 'hobgoblin' or 'scarecrow'. Above the central door was the Byng family crest - onwers of the farm, who were based in Wrotham Park, South Mimms.

In the 1861 census, the occupant of Bullbaiters Farm was 60 year old William King, who farmed 190 acres and employed 3 men and 2 boys. In addition to his family two farm labourers also lived in the farm. Thrift Farm, nearby, was occupied by a farm labourer according to the census - so it may have been used as a farm cottage. Quite often, especially involving what had been smaller tenanted farms, the fields would be combined into a larger farm and the 'redundant' farm house used as farm cottages.
»read full article

APRIL

2016

Finstock Road, W10
Finstock Road is a turning out of Oxford Gardens. Finstock is an Oxfordshire place name.
»read full article

APRIL

2016

Avenue Farm
Cowhouse Farm was linked to Hodford Farm in Golders Green for a long period. Horses were raised here and by 1890 their breeding and training was widespread. There were several dairy farms and others where sheep were fed for the London market.

As Cricklewood suburbanised, the farm became surrounded by housing.

Latterly Dickers Farm and finally Avenue Farm, it was closed in 1932.

Its access track finally became Farm Avenue. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners refused to allow building of some of the land because of bad drainage and it was sold to University College school as a sports ground.
»read full article

APRIL

2016

Lothrop Street (1907)
Postcard of a "street on the Queen’s Park Estate". Most likely this is Lothrop Street.
»read full article

APRIL

2016

Barnet Gate Wood
This small woodland is public open space, owned and managed by Barnet Council. It is a remnant of the extensive Middlesex Forest which covered most of this area after the last Ice Age.

Barnet Gate Wood is a small ancient woodland, with a canopy of oak and hornbeam, and an understorey dominated by rhododendron. Some of the hornbeam are in strange shapes as they were originally trained as hedges and then allowed go wild.

The entrance is by a path from Hendon Wood Lane, near the junction with Barnet Road. There is also access from the Dollis Valley Greenwalk and London Loop, at wooden posts numbered 12 and 13, which are points on the Barnet Gate Wood Nature Trail.

Barnet Gate Wood is part of Moat Mount Open Space and Mote End Farm, a Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, Borough Grade II.

»read full article

APRIL

2016

Highwood Hill, NW7
Highwood Hill links the Rising Sun pub with Totteridge. Highwood Hill marks the junction of two ridges, one stretching east to Totteridge and the other south-east through Holcombe Hill to Mill Hill and Bittacy Hill.

“It is no uncommon thing to see 100 loads of hay go up to London on market day and each of the teams bring back a load of dung for dressing the land”, writes John Middleton in his "View of the Agriculture of Middlesex" (1798).

Hay farming, he says, was mixed with sheep farming; pig farming too “purchased fat by the hogbutchers of London”.

Some got rich through hay farming and some built many large mansions along Totteridge Lane, Highwood Hill and The Ridgeway. The landlords of these properties were allowed to enclose fields all over the area and the common lands, where the poor could graze their pigs, cows and geese, became much smaller and fewer, impoverishing those dependent on such land.

Lavish parks were laid out around their mansions, and the resident...
»more

MAP YEAR:	1750	1800	1810	1820	1830	1860	1900	1950	2024	Show map without markers
	TIP: To create your own sharable map, right click on the map

PREVIOUSLY ON THE UNDERGROUND MAP...