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 left and then clicking Reset Location.

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

You can also view historical maps of London - click on the "pile of paper" control on the top right of a page's map to change to a particular decade.

Latest on The Underground Map...

Avenue Road, DA8

Avenue Road follows the line of the original path leading to Lesney Farm and the Erith Manor House. In 1769 William Wheatley laid out an avenue of elms. Wheatley came from a prominent Erith family and was Lord of the Manor of Erith by then. He built a new manor house which was slightly blighted by a legend that the avenue was haunted by a headless woman being driven by a headless coachman and four black horses.

In 1858 the manor house was pulled down and the far Erith end of Avenue Road (around the railway lines) seems to have been developed at that time. In August 1874 the Wheatley estate was sold off, fetching £170 000 with the open land being sold for building development.

Even so, in the late nineteenth century with all of its pressure for new housing, the road developed only slowly.

In the twentieth century, Avenue Road was extended west along the remaining line of elms. At the western end, in the post Second World War years, council housing was built by Erith Borough Council. The very first development of the new Lesney Farm Esta...

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DECEMBER

2020

Tube Mapper Project
https://wwwamazoncouk/dp/0750994371/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=theundergro07-21&linkCode=w00&linkId=0c3e449b00d457af8e03965b586d2a72&creativeASIN=0750994371 The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.
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NOVEMBER

2020

East India Dock Wall Road, E14
East India Dock Wall Road followed an early 19th century high stock brick wall leading to the former East India Dock East India Dock Wall Road was laid out as a road between 1822 and 1824 and gave access to Brunswick Wharf (built 1834) and ran parallel to Naval Row - where the two roads diverged is a connecting flight of steps for pedestrians.

The construction of warehouses along the north side of the Export Dock in 1816 led to the building of a general office at the west end of the quay. The beginnings of East India Dock Wall Road started as no more than a path to serve the building. The warehouse was a plain single-storey brick building, partly top-lit by means of a glazed lantern, with an entrance in the centre of the west front through a porch flanked by paired pilasters. This building survived until after the Second World War.

East India Dock Wall Road’s main purpose by the 1840s was to connect Blackwall station (and the Brunswick Temperance Hotel) to the outside world. Blackwall had been a railway station which served as the eastern terminus of the Commercial R...
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NOVEMBER

2020

Queen’s Theatre
The Queen’s Theatre is located in Shaftesbury Avenue on the corner of Wardour Street The original plan was to name this venue ’The Central Theatre’. After a lengthy debate involving the owners, it was named The Queen’s Theatre and a portrait of Queen Alexandra was hung in the foyer.

It opened on 8 October 1907 on the corner of Shafter\sbury Avenue as a twin to the neighbouring Hicks Theatre (now the Gielgud Theatre) which had opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by WGR Sprague.

In September 1940, a German bomb landed directly on the Queen’s Theatre, destroying the façade and lobby. The production at the time was Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca starring Celia Johnson, Owen Nares and Margaret Rutherford. The theatre remained closed until a ₤250,000 restoration was completed by Westwood Sons & Partners almost 20 years later. The auditorium retained its Edwardian décor while the lobbies and exterior were rebuilt in a modern style. The reconstructed theatre opened on 8 July 1959 with John Gielgud’s ...
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NOVEMBER

2020

Spa Road, SE16
A train left Deptford railway station for Spa Road station at 8am on 8 February 1836 - it was the first train in London In 1770, one Thomas Keyse discovered a natural spring. He had opened a tea garden beside what is now Spa Road, on the banks of the River Neckinger. The fortuitous discovery of a chalybeate spring enabled the gardens to be described as ’Bermondsey Spa’. During the 18th century, drinking mineral water was considered good for one’s health. As a result Bermondsey boomed and led to the development of the health-giving elixir which ’Spa Road’ commemorates. Unlike the tapwater-based spring in the nearby ’Only Fools And Horses’ Peckham, Bermondsey Spa was the real deal, although it closed in 1804.

The road then spent thirty quiet years until it took its place in London history as the capital’s first station: Spa Road became the terminus of the London and Greenwich Railway (later the South Eastern and Chatham Railway). Keyse’s tea gardens were roughly situated at the site of the station on the south side of Spa Road.

Spa Road - then Grange Road -...
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JULY

2015

Belsize Lane, NW3
Belsize Lane is a thoroughfare linking Rosslyn Hill with Swiss Cottage. Belsize Lane is very old, being marked between hedges in Rocque’s 1745 map, and shown as leading to the grounds of the manor-house.

Baines says that about 1839 "Belsize Lane was long, narrow, and lonesome; midway in it was a very small farm, and near thereto the owner of Belsize House erected a turnpike gate to demonstrate his rights of possession."

While still an attractive road, the road is slightly too narrow for the modern buses which run along it. Traffic tends to buildup behind them.
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JULY

2015

Harrow Road, Kensal Green (1900s)
The corner of Ravensworth Road and Harrow Road in NW10.
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JULY

2015

St Charles’ Square Training College (1908)
St Charles’ Square Training College/Carmelite Convent. This photo was taken from the bottom of St Marks Park which was open land all the way to Highlever Rd at this point. Pangbourne Avenue where the Princess Louise Childrens hospital was (and is now the Argyll development) was not built until the 1920s.
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JULY

2015

The Crown
The Crown was situated at 57 Princedale Road. This pub was established in 1851 and this magnificent photo was taken by a photographer from Maxilla Gardens, Notting Hill.

It featured in a couple of episodes of ’Minder’, which was filmed on location in this area.

This pub became a bar/restaurant called The Academy in 1987.
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JULY

2015

Barnet Grass Speedway
Barnet Grass Speedway was active between 1929 and 1936, next to the recently constructed Barnet By Pass. It was the North London Motor Club that negotiated to run speedway on a twenty acre grass track that was adjacent to the Barnet Bypass. It was thus so convenient to travel to with plenty of room for spectators and their transport. The track was originally grass-covered rather than the more usual cinder or shale. The track was opened for the first meeting on the 27 July 1929.

The site remained the venue for open meeting through to 1936 although by 1934 the grass was all but worn away and cinders were added to the bends. The name for its final year was changed to simply ’Barnet Speedway’.

Closing in 1937 when the North London Motor Club failed to achieve an extension on the licence after having successfully completed eighty seven meeting meaning that speedway was lost to the area however the NLMC moved their speedway operation to High Beech leaving the owners of the land free to sell it on for building.

Once the circuit had been s...
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JULY

2015

Colville Terrace, W11
Colville Terrace, W11 has strong movie connnections. Colville Terrace began the 20th century well-to-do but some time before World War Two the houses became multi-occupied. The street suffered some bomb damage in the Blitz and hosted the local communists’ headquarters. In the late 50s numbers 2, 9, 10, 19, 22 and 24 were Rachman houses occupied by West Indian immigrants and prostitutes, including Majbritt Morrison who wrote the ’Jungle West 11’ book.

In the 1958 riots they became targets for the fascist-influenced local mob. In 1960 the basement of number 24 was put under police surveillance and duly established to be a brothel. Michael de Freitas, who was living on the top floor, was arrested but the police couldn’t prove he was the landlord.
Colville Terrace also hosted several West Indian blues clubs including Sheriff’s gym and the Barbadian La Paloma. In the early 70s number 42, at the east end of Powis Square, became renowned as the gay hippy commune, which was evicted and re-housed by Notting Hill ...
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JULY

2015

Colville Gardens, W11
Colville Gardens was laid out in the 1870s by the builder George Frederick Tippett, who developed much of the rest of the neighbourhood. It is possible that the street was named after the Colville Family, Scottish steel magnates. The houses were intended as single family homes for the well-to-do but, from the beginning, it proved difficult to attract wealthy buyers to the area and as early as 1888, the buildings began to be subdivided into flats.

In 1885, Tippett was declared bankrupt. He attributed his failure to "his inability to let a large portion of his property and to the pressure of secured creditors". Gradually, the character of the buildings changed as wealthier tenants left the area.

By 1928, the neighbourhood was described as "rapidly becoming poorer" and, by 1935, as a "largely slum area...large houses turned into one-room tenements and small flats".

Further decline set in as residents moved away during World War II to escape The Blitz and, indeed, one of the buildings at the end of the street was destroyed by bombing, which also damaged numerous other buildings ...
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JULY

2015

Buses in Shenley Road
A 292 and 358 in Shenley Road. Facebook user Maureen Sullivan has worked out the following from the clues in the photo:

This photo was probably taken in August 1968 (the advertised film was released in July that year).

The green Route 358 in the background is the 12.53 departure from St Albans, running about 5 minutes late according to the clock on All Saints Church tower.

The 292 is for some reason displaying the Saturday only intermediate blind for Route 292A.

Buildings on the right are still being finished off, on the site of the old Baptist Church, once home to the 1st Borehamwood Scouts.
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JULY

2015

Hayden’s Place, W11
Haydens Place is a small cul-de-sac off of the Portobello Road. Hayden’s Place is a short mews is just off the Portobello Road between Westbourne Park Road and Lancaster Road. It was built in the 1860s. Its original name was Hayden’s Mews; it was only by the time of the 1901 census that was described as Hayden Place. The apostrophe seems to have crept in much later – it was still described as Hayden Place on the 1935 Ordnance Survey map.

In 1871, John Hayden, described in the census return as “contractor employing 6 men” was living at 1 Hayden Mews, and it must have been named after him. He may well have been responsible for building the mews.

Originally, the mews had 19 numbered dwellings in it, so it probably extended right down as far as Elgin Mews, between the back gardens of the houses in Westbourne Park Road and Lancaster Road. But by 1891, no more than three households are recorded in the census (five in 1901). It seems that sometime around 1890 the western end of the mews was built over to form a b...
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JULY

2015

Elgin Crescent, W11
Elgin Crescent runs from Portobello Road west across Ladbroke Grove and then curls round to the south to join Clarendon Road. East of Ladbroke Grove, it was originally called Elgin Road with the middle section Surrey Gardens and the rest, Arundel Road.

West of Ladbroke Grove, it was originally numbered from 1-36 consecutive on the northern side, starting at the western end (so the present No. 120 was No. 1) and from 37-81 consecutive on the southern side starting at the eastern end (so the present No. 63 was No. 37). The street was officially renumbered in 1880.

The section between Portobello Road and Kensington Park Road consists of shops and cafes; the rest of the street is residential. It is intersected by Ladbroke Grove and further along, the southern side is broken by Rosmead Road. Many houses back on to communal gardens. The odd numbers are on the south side and the even on the north. From Ladbroke Grove west the Crescent is lined intermittently with mature and some new trees. Lamp posts are in the Victorian style.
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JULY

2015

Kilburn Bridge
Kilburn Bridge once marked the spot where the Edgware Road crossed the River Westbourne. Kilburn Bridge, which was recorded in 1398 and thought to have been built in the mid 13th century by the prior of Kilburn, carried Edgware Road across the Kilburn brook (the Westbourne River).

In 1826 the original stone bridge with a Gothic arch survived, flanked by brick portions added at two different periods. By that date repair was shared between the trustees of Marylebone turnpike and of the Kilburn Road.

In more modern times, as the river has been culverted and sent underground, there is no trace of the structure.

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JULY

2015

Goods Way, N1C
Goods Way runs from Pancras Road to York Way. The area north of King’s Cross was predominantly rural until the end of the eighteenth century - the whole area was then known as Battle Bridge. John Rocque’s map of 1745 shows fields adjacent to York Way (formerly Longwich Lane and then Maiden Lane). This road, and Pancras Road (formerly King’s Road), were traditional routes out of London to the north being the route to Hampstead, Highgate and Kentish Town.

With the completion of the Regent’s Canal in 1820, the area became linked to major industrial cities in the north of England. Another feature of the area’s growing industrial importance was the arrival of the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company. The company opened Pancras Gasworks to the south of the canal in 1824.

During this same period a number of other “polluting” businesses such as paint manufacture and refuse sorting were established in the area but much of the land to the north of the canal remained open fields. In a move to rais...
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JULY

2015

All Saints Church
All Saints church was designed by the Victorian Gothic revival pioneer William White, who was also a mountaineer, Swedish gymnastics enthusiast and anti-shaving campaigner. In 1852 the Reverend Walker bought 51 acres of Portobello farmland from Mary Anne and Georgina Charlotte Talbot. This covered the whole strip of North Kensington lying east of Portobello Lane, from Portobello farmhouse on the north to Lonsdale Road and Western Terrace on the south. On this land which joined the ‘Ladbrooke estate’, Walker commenced to build ‘a new town’ and erect an elaborate church to the memory of his parents.

The road on which the church was built was called St Columb’s Road, and the church was dedicated to St Ann, but the name of ‘All Saints’ was soon substituted.‘This ‘very stately and abnormal stone church, built after the model of that at St Columb’s Major in Cornwall was structurally completed in 1855, but owing to pecuniary difficulties was left without glass or furniture till 1861.’ Meanwhile it stood boarded up and weed-grown near a pond, the open ground behind being sometimes occupied by gypsies. A footpath which starte...
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JULY

2015

Apollo Victoria Theatre
The Apollo Victoria Theatre is a West End theatre, across from London Victoria Station. The theatre was built by architects Ernest Wamsley Lewis and William Edward Trent in 1929 for Provincial Cinematograph Theatres, a part of the Gaumont British chain. The theatre was built with two identical facades on Wilton and Vauxhall Bridge Roads. Construction is principally of concrete, with strong horizontal banding along the exterior sides of the auditorium. By contrast the entrances feature a cantilevered canopy, and are framed by vertical channelling, with two black marble columns rising to the roof line. The entrance is simple, making use of chrome trimmings, this leads to a nautical themed interior in the original Art Deco style that makes extensive use of concealed lighting, decorated with scallop shells and columns that burst into sculptured fountains at the ceiling.

The theatre had a 74 feet by 24 feet stage and was equipped with 10 dressing rooms and two suites for principals. The theatre was Grade II* listed on 28 June 1972.

The theatre op...
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JULY

2015

Dollis Avenue, N3
Dollis Avenue sprung to life in the Edwardian years. Early attempts to build up Olders Hill in the south-west corner of Finchley proved abortive. The National Standard Land Mortgage and Investment Co. bought the estate in 1880 but few lots had been built on by 1897.

Part of Grass farm, which adjoined Olders Hill to the north, was offered for building along Hendon Lane with similar lack of success in 1894. In 1901 that part of Finchley, while providing excellent sites, was thought to be undeveloped because of poor transport, which would be improved by trams.

After the arrival of trams in 1905 housing spread quickly.

There was building in 1906 on Grass Farm estate in Dollis Avenue, where Woodway Lodge, designed by Messrs. Bennet & Richardson, was one of several detached houses.
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JULY

2015

Barham Avenue, WD6
Barham Avenue was constructed on the site of two historic houses. A large house called Hillside once stood at the entrance to the future Barham Avenue.

Barham House stood to the east of Hillside. There had been a house on this site since about 1600 which had changed occupants many times and was renamed over the years. The last owner, famous publisher Andrew Chatto, was there in 1897. His son sold the property. In 1931 a local Estate Agent bought and demolished the house. He divided the ground into lots and this was the origin of Barham Avenue, built 1932.
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JULY

2015

East End Road, N3
East End Road was originally the route from the hamlet of Church End Finchley to the old Great North Road when it ran through Muswell Hill. Although apparently not so named until the late 19th century, it probably dated from the 14th-century growth of East End.

The road has had various names such as Manor Lane (19th century) and Finchley Road (18th century). In the medieval period a triangle of waste, called Hunts Green (1437), which stretched from Stanley Road to the Junction of Church Lane, was the location of the first hamlet of East End Finchley (1365).
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JULY

2015

Holly Park Methodist Church
The Holly Park Methodist Church was founded in 1881 by the Rev. Morley Punshon and Sir Francis Lycett. The architect was Elijah Hoole. The church with seating for 1000 opened in 1882 - the lecture hall and school classrooms, considered by Mr Hoole to be his best work, opened in 1886.

In 1962 a modern church was erected on the site.
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JULY

2015

Victoria Bus Station
Victoria bus station is a bus station outside Victoria Station in Terminus Place. Victoria Station was built in 1861, after Victoria Street had been built a decade earlier through a slum dubbed "Devil’s Acre" by Charles Dickens. It connected Westminster Abbey with this part of Pimlico which gained the name Victoria instead, after the station which the growing suburb surroounded.

Quickly becoming one of the busiest stations in London, the forecourt outside quickly became an important hub for omnibuses. By the 1930s, it had a substantial roof canopy spanning all lanes - this was demolished in April 2003 as part of a station refurbishment.

Victoria is now London’s busiest bus station. In 2015 it had 19 bus routes using the station, with 200 buses per hour passing through in the peak.

It services bus services managed only by Transport for London, and is not to be confused with Victoria Coach Station, a few hundred metres away.
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JULY

2015

Kilburn Lane, W10
Kilburn Lane runs around the edge of the Queen’s Park Estate in London W10. Kilburn Lane is, after Harrow Road, the oldest road in the area and connected Kilburn and Kensal Green. Until the nineteenth century, the names "Kilburn Lane" and "Kensal Green Lane" were both used. The southernmost section was also known as "Flowerhills Lane".

It was known in the 17th century as "Flowerhills Lane". It was commented upon that the inhabitants of Willesden were indicted for not repairing it in 1722.

Kilburn Lane suffered from depopulation in the 18th century with those buildings that had been there, falling into disrepair and then removed. However, the enclosure of Kensal Green in the 1830s meant buildings appeared on the west of the lane near to the junction of Harrow Road.

In 1844 St John’s Church in Kilburn Lane was consecrated. There were now enough people living locally in order to create a new parish.

Further north, the road remained rural until the late nineteenth century with just two farms along it...
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JULY

2015

Middle Row, W10
Middle Row is one of the original streets laid out as Kensal New Town. Kensal New Town was developed in the period 1840-1859 by Mr Kinnard Jenkins on his land between the Great Western Railway and the Grand Union Canal, to provide housing for employees of the canal, the railway, the gas works, and the Kensal Green Cemetery in Harrow Road on the other side of the canal. He laid out the roads following his field boundaries- Kensal (Albert) Road, West Row, Middle Row, East Row and South Row, divided the blocks up and built cottages, and named it Kensal New Town.

The residents were largely Irish immigrants, many employed in the laundry business, the area becoming known as the "laundry colony". The village had six public houses.

Charles Booth in his "Life and Labour of the People in London" (First Series, Volume 1, pub 1902, pp.243,246) described Kensal New Town: "Kensal New Town retains yet something of the appearance of a village, still able to show cottages and gardens, and gateways between houses in its streets leading back...
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JULY

2015

Middle Row School
Middle Row School was established in the late 19th century to provide education to the children of Kensal New Town. Kensal New Town was a 19th century greenfield development of terraced workers housing sandwiched between the Grand Junction (now Union} Canal and the Great Western Railway, next to the Western Gas Company Gas Works.

The first schooling for the new settlement was provided by the church of St John's, Kensal Green (built in 1845. north of the Canal). St John's School was erected close to the church in 1850. and it was here that any child from Kensal New Town who wished to receive an education would have attended. There was also an early Ragged School in Kensal Road adjacent to the Canal where poorer children may have received a rudimentary education.

The passing of the 1870 Education Act brought about fundamental changes in British education, as the state started to replace the church as the main source of elementary education. From 1880 education became compulsory until the age often or when a certain standard of education was achieved, and by 1899 the mini...
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