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.

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.

Latest on The Underground Map...

Yiewsley

Yiewsley is a large suburban village in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Yiewsley’s transition from an agrarian community began when the Grand Junction Canal was opened. Construction started in May 1793 and connected the area to the Thames at Brentford, passing through Yiewsley on its way north following the River Colne. An aqueduct was built at Cowley Lock to cross the Fray’s River. In 1794, the canal opened between the Thames and Uxbridge, and in 1795, the aqueduct over the Fray’s River was likely completed.

The following year, in 1796, Colham Wharf, Yiewsley’s first dock, was established near Colham Bridge. In 1801, the Paddington Arm of the canal opened, connecting the area to national trade routes.

The canal played a vital role in transporting Cowley stock bricks, which were made from the abundant brick-earth in Yiewsley. The bricks were transported mainly along the Grand Junction Canal and the Regent’s Canal to supply the demand for building materials in Victorian London.

By t...

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NOVEMBER

2023

South Harrow
South Harrow originally spread south and west from the hamlet of Roxeth as a result of easier access from Central London by rail In the 1890s, the Metropolitan District Railway, which later became the District Line but was operating as an independent company at the time, recognised the inadequate service to Uxbridge and Harrow. To address this, they proposed the construction of a railway line towards both towns, and this led to the formation of the Ealing & South Harrow Railway. The railway line was intended to extend to South Harrow, which was then a rural area located to the south of Roxeth.

Construction of the railway line was completed by 1899, but the District Line faced financial difficulties that delayed its opening until 1903. Consequently, South Harrow became the terminus of a line extending from Park Royal & Twyford Abbey. The location around Northolt Road subsequently developed into South Harrow’s own commercial and residential hub.

The original station building was approximately 170 metres south of the present-day station. This extension marked a significant miles...
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SEPTEMBER

2023

Great Portland Street
Great Portland Street is a London Underground station near Regent’s Park Great Portland Street station was opened on 10 January 1863 as Portland Road, renamed Great Portland Street and Regents Park in 1923 and changed to its present name on 1 March 1917.

The station’s present structure, constructed in 1930, is situated on a traffic island at the intersection of Marylebone Road, Great Portland Street and Albany Street. This building features a steel-framed design with a cream terracotta exterior. The station’s perimeter also houses shops and, in the past, included a car showroom with office spaces above it. Notably, Great Portland Street was a significant sales location for the motor industry. The station’s architectural design, credited to C.W. Fowler, earned it a Grade II listing in January 1987.

The area around Great Portland Street station offers various points of interest. Regent’s Park and the iconic BT Tower are nearby attractions. Additionally, the station’s proximity to Regen...
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SEPTEMBER

2023

Courtfield Gardens, SW5
Courtfield Gardens is named after the field beneath it, cultivated until the 19th century According to 16th-century records, Courtfield Gardens was built on a vast open meadow known as Great Courtfield. This meadow was surrounded by fertile land and small farms and was part of a large area of land that extended from Cromwell Road to The Old Brompton Road in one direction, and from Gloucester Road to Earl’s Court Road in the other direction. Great Courtfield was included in the Earl’s Court ’manor’.

During the 18th century, Earl’s Court House, a grand manor house, was constructed on the land that is now the western terrace of Barkston Gardens. This building replaced an extensive dwelling that was described in 1705 as having fountains, a marble-tiled dairy, engines for water, and impressive gates at its entrance.

In the 19th century, the area surrounding Courtfield Gardens was developed with rows of terraced houses, as the demand for housing in London grew. Earl’s Court House was demolished in the middle of th...
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JUNE

2023

Alba Place, W11
Alba Place is part of the Colville Conservation Area Originally the stable house accommodation for the main houses on Lancaster Road, the primary purpose of the Mews properties is now residential.

Alba Place is located on the site of an original Mews but has been redeveloped to a degree that it no longer contains any surviving Mews properties. It is a gated cul-de-sac off Portobello Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, almost opposite Hayden’s Place (another redeveloped Mews). It contains 16 properties used for residential purposes.

Alba Place was Albion Place until 1937, one of the many patriotic names dating from the period immediately following the Crimean War.
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LATEST LONDON-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROJECT

Eileen Brecknock Road, N7 Added: 10 Nov 2023 09:42 GMT	Brecknock Road Pleating Company My great grandparents ran the Brecknock Road pleating Company around 1910 to 1920 and my Grandmother worked there as a pleater until she was 16. I should like to know more about this. I know they had a beautiful Victorian house in Islington as I have photos of it & of them in their garden. Source: Family history Reply
Squirrel’s Lane, IG9 Added: 6 Nov 2023 16:59 GMT	061123 Why do Thames Water not collect the 15 . Three meter lengths of blue plastic fencing, and old pipes etc. They left here for the last TWO Years, these cause an obstruction,as they halfway lying in the road,as no footpath down this road, and the cars going and exiting the park are getting damaged, also the public are in Grave Danger when trying to avoid your rubbish and the danger of your fences. Source: Squirrels Lane. Buckhurst Hill, Essex. IG9. I want some action ,now, not Excuses.MK. Reply
Christian Cornwall Road, W11 Added: 31 Oct 2023 10:34 GMT	Cornwall Road, W11 Photo shows William Richard Hoare’s chemist shop at 121 Cornwall Road. Reply
Vik Oaks Road, TW6 Added: 30 Oct 2023 18:48 GMT	Old pub sign from the Rising Sun Hi I have no connection to the area except that for the last 30+ years we’ve had an old pub sign hanging on our kitchen wall from the Rising Sun, Stanwell, which I believe was / is on the Oaks Rd. Happy to upload a photo if anyone can tell me how or where to do that! Reply
Phillip Martin Ashburnham Place, SE10 Added: 16 Oct 2023 06:25 GMT	16 Ashburnham Road On 15 October 1874 George Frederick Martin was born in 16 Ashburnham Road Greenwich to George Henry Martin, a painter, and Mary Martin, formerly Southern. Reply
Christine Bithrey Holly Park, N4 Added: 15 Oct 2023 15:20 GMT	The Hollies (1860 - 1900) I lived in Holly Park Estate from 1969 I was 8 years old when we moved in until I left to get married, my mother still lives there now 84. I am wondering if there was ever a cemetery within The Hollies? And if so where? Was it near to the Blythwood Road end or much nearer to the old Methodist Church which is still standing although rather old looking. We spent most of our childhood playing along the old dis-used railway that run directly along Blythwood Road and opposite Holly Park Estate - top end which is where we live/ed. We now walk my mothers dog there twice a day. An elderly gentleman once told me when I was a child that there used to be a cemetery but I am not sure if he was trying to scare us children! I only thought about this recently when walking past the old Methodist Church and seeing the flag stone in the side of the wall with the inscription of when it was built late 1880 If anyone has any answers please email me [email protected] Reply
Chris hutchison Broadhurst Gardens, NW6 Added: 15 Oct 2023 03:04 GMT	35 broadhurst gardens. 35 Broadhurst gardens was owned by famous opera singer Mr Herman “Simmy”Simberg. He had transformed it into a film and recording complex. There was a film and animation studio on the ground floor. The recording facilities were on the next two floors. I arrived in London from Australia in 1966 and worked in the studio as the tea boy and trainee recording engineer from Christmas 1966 for one year. The facility was leased by an American advertising company called Moreno Films. Mr Simbergs company Vox Humana used the studio for their own projects as well. I worked for both of them. I was so lucky. The manager was another wonderful gentleman called Jack Price who went on to create numerous songs for many famous singers of the day and also assisted the careers of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. “Simmy” let me live in the bedsit,upper right hand window. Jack was also busy with projects with The Troggs,Bill Wyman,Peter Frampton. We did some great sessions with Manfred Mann and Alan Price. The Cream did some demos but that was before my time. We did lots of voice over work. Warren Mitchell and Ronnie Corbett were favourites. I went back in 1978 and “Simmy “ had removed all of the studio and it was now his home. His lounge room was still our studio in my minds eye!! Reply
Sue L Battersea Added: 13 Oct 2023 17:21 GMT	Duffield Street, Battersea I’ve been looking for ages for a photo of Duffield Street without any luck. My mother and grandfather lived there during the war. It was the first property he was able to buy but sadly after only a few months they were bombed out. My mother told the story that one night they were aware of a train stopping above them in the embankment. It was full of soldiers who threw out cigarettes and sweets at about four in the morning. They were returning from Dunkirk though of course my mother had no idea at the time. I have heard the same story from a different source too. Reply

Click here to explore another London street
We now have 628 completed street histories and 46872 partial histories

MAY

2015

Coach and Horses
The Coach & Horses was situated at 108 Notting Hill Gate. Mr Drinkwater, landlord of the Coach and Horses, then ‘still a small and primitive tavern’ was prosecuted for selling spirits at the Kensington Hippodrome in the 1830s.

In "Bygone Days", Florence Gladstone added in his defence, ‘the tavern itself was reputed to be quiet and respectable, instead of being a refuge for highwaymen as of old.’

The pub closed in 1957 and has now been demolished.

By 2015, the site was occupied by McDonald's beneath Campden Hill Towers.
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MAY

2015

Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was situated at 2a Ladbroke Road, next to the Kensington Temple. The Sunday School of the Horbury Chapel was erected in 1851, and began life as a school. The architect was John Tarring, who also designed the chapel. It was subsequently used as a church hall (“Horbury Hall”), and then briefly in the early 1920s the “Horbury Rooms” were occupied by the Kensington Local Pensions Committee. In the second half of the 1920s, the building was the studio of the Russian-Canadian sculptor Abrasha Lozoff (1887-1936), whose woodcarving Venus and Adonis, now in the Tate Collection, was almost certainly created there.

In 1927, Horbury Hall was purchased by Ashley Dukes, a successful West End playwright and theatrical impresario and the husband of Marie Rambert (later Dame Marie). The Russo-Polish ballerina had run a ballet school in Notting Hill Gate since 1919, and the hall was first used as studios for the school.

In 1930 Rambert founded the “Ballet Club” to give performances to the public, forming a dance troupe from...
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MAY

2015

Horbury Chapel (Kensington Temple)
In September 1849, the Horbury Chapel, Notting Hill was officially opened. It was established to serve this fast developing area of London by the Hornton Street Congregational Church situated in nearby Kensington. This original church donated significant sums of money for the project.

The new church grew to around 600 people with a Sunday school of 200 and a day school of 300. The church was socially-minded and ministered effectively to the poor in the area.

It had a pastor, Rev. William Roberts, BA who was described as an "earnest, thoughtful and evangelical" minister. The church also had a strong missionary emphasis supporting many overseas missions. Gladys Aylwood, a missionary to China, found Christ following one of the services at Horbury Chapel and Rev. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist minister preached there.

After the First World War, significant decline set in, in many British churches, including Horbury Chapel. For this reason, it was rented out and in 1931 finally sold to a new and growing movement k...
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MAY

2015

Ladbroke Road, W11
Ladbroke Road is a street in Notting Hill. Ladbroke Road was one of the new streets in the grand plan for the Ladbroke estate drawn up in 1823 by Thomas Allason, the surveyor-architect employed by James Weller Ladbroke when he decided to develop the farmland he had inherited from his uncle in 1819. However, nothing was actually built in the new road until the 1840s.

In 1840, James Weller Ladbroke gave a lease of the land around what is now the intersection of Ladbroke Road and Kensington Park Road to the speculator/developer William Chadwick. The latter began, as developers so often did, by building a public house, the Prince Albert, in 1841, before moving on to erect a number of houses at the southern end of Ladbroke Road.

The road was originally called Weller Street East and Weller Street West, after James Weller Ladbroke, and several of the terraces had their own names and numbering systems. This was all rationalised in 1866, when the street was formally renumbered and the terrace numbers abol...
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MAY

2015

Albert Hotel
The Albert Hotel stood on the corner of All Saints Road and Westbourne Park Road. The pub’s address was 234 Westbourne Park Road with its first entry in the local directory in 1869. In the beginning, the road was called Cornwall Road and the pub’s address was number 62. Records refer to ‘John Frost Beer Retailer’ as its first landlord.

The pub seems to have closed in the 1980s with planning permission granted for flats above in 2013. The pub premises themselves are now a shop.

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MAY

2015

Mary Place Workhouse
Notting Dale Workhouse stood on the site of what is now Avondale Park Gardens, The Mary Place Workhouse, as it was official known, was supposed to be the cruellest in London. To it were sent the difficult cases from all other workhouses and the threat to send inmates to it was an effective method of discipline to others.

In 1870, Kensington Parish set up a labour yard and relief office at Mary Place, Notting Dale (now Avondale Park Gardens), where able-bodied men received out-relief in return for breaking stone. A dispensary was added in 1871 and a casual ward in 1878.

In 1882, at the behest of the Local Government Board, the workhouse became an able-bodied test workhouse, accommodating able-bodied men from all London’s unions. For the next twenty-two years, able-bodied men at Mary Place performed tasks such as stone-breaking, corn-grinding, and oakum picking for 55 to 60 hours a week. The only hour of leisure, from 7-8pm, was filled with "lectures" from a "Mental Instructor", at which attendance was obligatory. The diet was c...
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MAY

2015

Rosslyn House
Rosslyn (Roslyn) House, which stood between Wedderburn and Lyndhurst Roads, was one of the last of the famous old Hampstead houses to be destroyed. Mulys, later called Grove House, Shelford Lodge, and Rosslyn House, was occupied by the Fellows family from c. 1723 to c.1777.

It changed to its final name when it became the property of Alexander Wedderburn, first Earl of Rosslyn, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain in 1793.

He added a large oval room which held the library and disguised the shape of the original house. Rosslyn left in 1803 and in 1808 the house, a newly planted orchard, and 21 acres, were occupied by Robert Milligan (d. 1809), a West India merchant. There were also houses for a gardener and a coachman.

It was noted for its magnificent avenue of Spanish chestnuts said to have been planted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabethan relics have been found in the vicinity.

Rosslyn House was sold in 1816 to the undertenant and remained in parkland until it was demolished between 1896 and 1909.
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MAY

2015

Admiral Blake (The Cowshed)
The Admiral Blake was situated at the corner of Ladbroke Grove and Barlby Road. It had the alternative name the Cowshed because it stood near to the site of former cowsheds.

Admiral Mews was occupied by a series of sheds for cows. Drovers bringing their cattle to the London markets would house them in these sheds for the night, whilst they themselves found shelter and refreshment in the neighbouring tavern.

By the turn of the 21st century the pub had actually been renamed as "The Cowshed".

The exterior of the pub was featured in the early 2000s pub-based sitcom, "Time Gentlemen Please", written by Richard Herring and Al Murray.
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MAY

2015

St. Joseph’s Home
St Joseph's dominated a part of Portobello Road up until the 1980s. In 1864 Portobello farmhouse was sold to the Little Sisters of the Poor, who originated in Brittany. On the site of the farm's orchard, they built St Joseph’s Convent, a home for the aged and infirm, by 1869.

Three years later this was described as a 'large brick edifice, giving the impression of a workhouse hospital', in which over two hundred residents were accommodated. It was considerably enlarged in 1882 to designs by F. W. Tasker, who may also have designed the original building.

Contemporary accounts tell of a charitable and relaxed regime. The old and ill of both sexes were housed in large airy dormitories with patchwork quilts on the beds.The home was well supported by the local community. The Sisters were a familiar sight in the area until the late 1970s. They regularly collected foodstuffs from the market stalls and local shops.

Latterly, the home consisted of a large group of outwardly utilitarian three-storey buildings with...
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MAY

2015

Kensal Rise (1907)
Motor buses at Kensal Rise station. This is an old postcard showing Kensal Rise. It is postmarked 30 August 1907.

In those days, the urban area stretched only as far as the railway at Kensal Rise - beyond it lay fields.

You can see the spread of development by switching between the 1900 and 1910 mapping.
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MAY

2015

William Miller’s Yard
William Miller's Yard stood in Chapel Place, West Row. William Miller lived at 4 South Row and kept chickens and a pig in the back.

The yard was situated behind Pollock House. Thomas (Old Tom) Sivers, who lived at 6 West Row, later had the yard for use of totters in the 1950s. A family called Newman also had horse and carts there then.

Middle Row School, opened in 1878, can be seen in the background.
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MAY

2015

Queen’s Cinema
This cinema was situated at the top of Queensway, on the corner of Bishop’s Bridge Road. The Queens Cinema opened on 3 October 1932 and was designed in the contemporary style by architects Stanley Beard and Clare. It was built for and operated by W.C Dawes’ Modern Cinemas, a small independent circuit which had cinemas in the west of London.

It was taken over by the ABC chain on 19 February 1935 and remained under their ownership for the following fifty years. In 1975 it was converted into a three screen cinema.

Cannon Cinemas ran it between 1986 and 1988 but closed that year. "Coming to America" was the final movie.

It was a restaurant between 1995 and 2007. When that in turn closed, the auditorium was demolished but the facade kept once converted into flats.
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MAY

2015

Adela Street, W10
Adela Street is a small cul-de-sac in Kensal Town. Adela Street was built by Mr Richard Ward of Holland Park in 1871. The name may be connected with Adela Ward Richardson, a spinster lady who owned several properties in North London in the mid-nineteenth century and was probably related to Richard Ward.

Adela Street had a brief starring role in the seminal 1972 movie Steptoe and Son as it doubled up as the location of Oildrum Lane, the site of their scrapyard.

As depicted in the film, Adela Street looks run down, but since the 1970s it has undergone a bit of a transformation. It is now the site of some expensive real estate.
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MAY

2015

West End Lane, NW6
West End Lane is the main road running through West Hampstead. West End Lane is one of the West Hampstead’s oldest roads. West End Lane and Mill Lane (Shoot Up Hill Lane and Cole Lane), probably existed as access in the Middle Ages since they formed the boundaries of several ancient estates.

It is possible to trace most of West End Lane’s bends and twists from the earliest maps on the modern street plan.

As late as the 1860s it was still a true country lane with high banks, "hedged irregularly for the greater part of its length, and enshrined too by the embracing branches of the majestic oak, elm and other forest trees, through which a sunny gleam here and there broke." according to Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms in Kilburn and West Hampstead Past.

West End Lane led westwards from Hampstead and then southwards to Kilburn. Where it took this sharp turn from running west to running south, a hamlet grew up. The hamlet was originally known as "le Rudyng" (indicating a woodland clearing) in the mi...
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MAY

2015

Westbourne House
Two hundred years ago, the biggest house hereabouts... The largest of the five main houses at Westbourne Green in the 1830s was Westbourne Place or Westbourne House, which was rebuilt in 1745 by the architect Isaac Ware as an elegant Georgian mansion of three storeys with a frontage of nine windows divided into three parts.

The central third was topped by a large pediment and contained the main door, which also had a pediment over it. The lower two storeys were formed into bays at each end, which contained three windows each. Amongst the well-known residents of this house were Sir William Yorke, baronet; the Venetian ambassador; the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell (a great great nephew of the diarist Samuel Pepys); and the General Commander in Chief of the Army, Viscount Hill, who left in 1836 (and who gave his name to the modern road bridge north of Westbourne Grove called Lord Hill's Bridge).

The house was demolished in 1836 to make way for the houses and gardens of what is now Westbourne Park Villas.
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MAY

2015

Chamberlayne Farm
Chamberlain (Wood) Farm developed out of the manor of Chambers, named after Richard de Camera, an early 13th century cleric. Its was separated from its farmland by the building of the railway in the 1850s with a bridge over the new railway built. Immediately to the east of the bridge was the Lower Farm.

Its dairy business expanded greatly after the 1864 Act of Parliament which made it illegal to keep cattle within the City of London. Although by the late 1800s residential development had greatly reduced the farmland, still in the 1890s many sheep and pigs were raised in the district.

The Chamberlain farmland was built over in the period 1894 - 1907.
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MAY

2015

Chamberlayne Road (1909)
Until after the first world war, the area north of Kensal Rise was still fields. Chamberlayne Road was originally part of a footpath which ran from Kensal Green to Willesden Green.

As the nineteenth century wore on, a railway which later became the North London Line pushes east-west across the fields and Kensal Rise (a made up name) station was built.

The footpath of Chamberlayne Road was upgraded to a suburban street as far as the station.

In 1890, the National Athletic Grounds were built just to the north of the station and Chamberlayne Road leapt over the railway to serve it.

The land hereabouts belonged to All Soul’s College and who were keen to exploit it. But, they like the rest of London were affected by a slump in property prices after 1904 and lasting until the First World War.

North of the railway they built Clifford Gardens in 1897, designed by Charles Langler and Charles Pinkham, the facades decorated with quaint and curious stucco scenes. (Note that the "1900" map was act...
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MAY

2015

Carmelite Monastery of The Most Holy Trinity
Convent in North Kensington This convent was established by French Carmelite nuns, nine of whom came here in 1878, one of them being a sister of the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk, who appears to have bought the site from the freeholders.

Building began in Spring 1877 to the designs of F. H. Pownall, and the first stone of the chapel was laid by Cardinal Manning on 16 July of that year. The nuns entered the convent on 28 September 1878.Substantial additions were made to the buildings in 1893–4.
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MAY

2015

St Charles Square after bombing (1950)
A corner of St Charles Square looking north, just after the Second World War
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MAY

2015

Canning Town
Canning Town is a district in the West Ham area of the London Borough of Newham. Prior to the 19th century, the district was largely marshland, and accessible only by boat, or a toll bridge. In 1809, an Act of Parliament was passed for the construction of the Barking Road between the East India Docks and Barking. A five span iron bridge was constructed in 1810 to carry the road across the River Lea at Bow Creek. This bridge was damaged by a collision with a collier in March 1887 and replaced by the London County Council (LCC) in 1896. This bridge was in turn replaced in 1934, at a site to the north and today’s concrete flyover begun in smaller form in the 1960s, but successively modified to incorporate new road layouts for the upgraded A13 road and a feeder to the Limehouse Link tunnel, avoiding the Blackwall Tunnel. The abutments of the old iron bridge have now been utilised for the Jubilee footbridge, linking the area to Leamouth, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, on the western bank of the Lea.

The area is thought to be named for the ...
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MAY

2015

Western Iron Works
The Western Iron Works was the foundry business of James Bartle and Co. James Bartle was born in Camborne, Cornwall in 1826 and the 1851 census shows him working in Islington.

In 1854 he founded the iron foundry at at 236A Lancaster Road. It made coachwork and iron castings including manhole covers, lamp posts and railings. A great speciality for years was the complete equipment of gasworks plant, including in a number of cases the gasometers. Another feature of the foundry's work was cast-iron bridges, numbers of which were erected over London canals, including that over the "cut" at Ladbroke Grove. Members of the Bartle family lived at 3 Rillington Place.

By 1881 James Bartle was employing 62 men and 13 boys. He was a leading figure in the community and was made a Freeman by Kensington Vestry. Bartle died aged 70 at Camborne House, 236 Ladbroke Road in 1896 and the business was sold in 1910 to C S Windsor.

The new owner not only continued to produce cast iron products but also developed and manufactured th...
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