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...

»more

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.
»read full article

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...
»more

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 ...
»more

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 -...
»more

DECEMBER

2016

St. Mary Axe
St Mary Axe was a medieval parish in the City of London whose name survives as that of the street which formerly occupied it. The Church of St Mary Axe was demolished in 1561 and its parish united with that of St Andrew Undershaft, which is situated on the corner of St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street. The site of the former church is now occupied by Fitzwilliam House, a fact acknowledged by a blue plaque on the building’s façade. Nearby parishes include the medieval Great St Helen’s (1210) and St Ethelburga (14th century).

The street name may derive from a combination of the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and a neighbouring tavern which prominently displayed a sign with an image of an axe, or simply from the church name itself, which may have come from the axes used by the Worshipful Company of Skinners, who were patrons. The sign of an axe is reported to have been present over the east end of the church.

The street St Mary Axe is now most notable for the Baltic Exchange at No. 38, and the "Gherkin" at No. 30, a distinctively shaped skyscraper built on the site ...
»more

DECEMBER

2016

St John the Evangelist Friday Street
St John the Evangelist Friday Street was a church in Bread Street Ward of the City of London. The church stood on the south side of Bread Street, on the corner with Friday Street.

In the early 18th century, some years after the destruction of the church itself, the parish was described as covering "part of Watling Street", the number of houses being "24 and an half." The patronage of the church belonged to the prior and abbey of Christchurch, Canterbury until the dissolution, and then to the dean and chapter of Canterbury Cathedral.

In the early 1620s a debate was held between George Walker, the church’s puritan rector, and some Roman Catholics. The pastor argued that the Church of England was the "true church" and that the Church of Rome was "the whore of Babylon." The Catholic priests replied that "you Protestants in England, have no Church nor Faith." The debate, which was conducted mainly in a series of syllogisms, was published in a pamphlet.

The building was renovated at the cost of the parishioners in 1626, and in the same ...
»more

DECEMBER

2016

Little Guildford Street
Little Guildford Street was the middle part of what is now Herbrand Street, between Great Coram Street and Bernard Street, on the western edge of the Foundling estate. It appears in rough outline on Horwood’s map of 1799, and fully developed, together with Mews to both sides, on his map of 1807

This area was undeveloped fields until the early eighteenth century

It was presumably named for its location near Guilford Street

No numbers appear on Horwood’s maps

There was a pub, the Red Lion, there in the 1820s (The Times, 3 June 1824); there were also livery stables (The Times, 10 June 1825)

At the end of the century, the pub was still there, but had become the Old Red Lion (The Times, 11 June 1883); there was also now a school, Christ Church School (The Times, 26 November 1888), presumably associated with nearby Christ Church, Woburn Square

By the latter part of the century the street had become a slum; in 1897 the leases fell in and the street was sold, along with Little Coram Street, to the LCC in 1898 (Donald Olsen, Town Planning in London, 2nd edn, 1984)

It was incorporated into the new Herbrand Street development in 1901.
»read full article

DECEMBER

2016

Strawberry Vale, N2
Strawberry Vale is now simply a road - it was once an estate. The old name for the area was Brownswell. A well had been ’late re-edified’ for travellers on the Great North Road in 1593. A cottage stood there by 1623 and the Huntsman, by 1731 called the Green Man, by 1718. In 1754 there were some three buildings at Brownswell.

Meadow land fronting the common was advertised in 1796 as a delightful situation for building. By 1814 a few buildings stood on the west side of the Great North Road, north of the Green Man.

The enclosure of Finchley Common did not lead to a sudden spread of building. Some houses were built at Strawberry Vale east of the road near Brownswell by James Frost, who acquired an estate there in 1816.

In 1854, 87 acres allotted at enclosure to Bibbesworth were sold to the St. Pancras burial board, which sold 30 acres to that of St. Mary, Islington. In 1855 St. Marylebone opened a cemetery on 26 acres of farmland south of East End Road, between the demesne lands of Bibbeswort...
»more

DECEMBER

2016

Fitzroy Square, W1T
Fitzroy Square is one of the Georgian squares of London. The square, nearby Fitzroy Street, and the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street have the family name of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, into whose ownership the land passed through his marriage. His descendant Charles FitzRoy, 1st Baron Southampton developed the area during the late 18th and early 19th century.

Fitzroy Square was a speculative development intended to provide London residences for aristocratic families, and was built in four stages. Leases for the eastern and southern sides, designed by Robert Adam, were granted in 1792; building began in 1794 and was completed in 1798 by Adam’s brothers James and William. These buildings are fronted in Portland stone brought by sea from Dorset.

The Napoleonic Wars and a slump in the London property market brought a temporary stop to construction of the square after the south and east sides were completed. According to the records of the Squares Frontagers’ Committee, 1815 residents looked ...
»more

DECEMBER

2016

Shipley's Drawing School
101 The Strand was an art school from 1750 until 1806. The drawing school was established by William Shipley and attended by such notable ﬁgures as William Blake, Richard Cosway and Francis Wheatley.
»read full article

DECEMBER

2016

Ackermann’s
Rudolph Ackermann (20 April 1764 in Stollberg, Saxony – 30 March 1834 in Finchley) was an Anglo-German bookseller, inventor, lithographer, publisher and businessman. Ackermann worked as a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, then moved to Paris, working for famous Paris carriage maker Antoine Carassi before moving to London about 1784.

He continued to make designs for British coach-builders and probably in the process became interested in the making of prints (for the coach designs).

In 1795 he established a print-shop and drawing-school in the Strand. After a year, he took over a drawing school previously established by William Shipley (which lasted until 1806) at 101 Strand. Thus began the Ackermann print business which lasted over two hundred years.

In 1797, Ackermann moved his shop to the premises at 101 Strand, which he named as "The Repository of Arts" the following year. In 1827, Ackermann moved to 96 Strand, In this shop he sold not only prints and illustrated books, but also paper, art supplies (some manufactured by Ackermann himself), old master paintings, miniatures, and man...
»more

DECEMBER

2016

101 Strand, WC2R
This shop was one of the first in London to have gas lighting fitted. The print seller Rudolph Ackermann lived and worked here at No. 101 The Strand between 1797 and 1827.
»read full article

DECEMBER

2016

Kilburn Wells
Kilburn Wells. a medicinal spring, existed between 1714 and the 1860s. The fashion for taking ‘medicinal waters’ in the 18th century came to Kilburn when a well of water impregnated with iron was discovered near the Bell Inn in 1714. In an attempt to compete with the nearby Hampstead Well, gardens and a ‘great room’ were opened to promote the well, and its waters were promoted in journals of the day as cure for ‘stomach ailments’.

By the 1860s, the Wells had declined completely.
»read full article

DECEMBER

2016

Millfield Nursery
An article about "nurserymen" from Jim South written in March 1977. The Nursery industry grew out of the market gardening that supplied London via Covent Garden. The Lea Valley was "natural" for this development. Within easy reach by horse drawn vehicles travelling by night, with "chain" horses stationed at places like Stamford Hill.

The alluvial soil that served market gardens of fruit growers was also level and suited the constructors of early "Vine" type glass houses. Water was available, boring wells was like putting a pin into a plastic pipe and, for example, ballast pits filled up as soon as they were abandoned.

Transport was well served by rail, road and canal. The main road, following roughly the Roman Ermine St. was the only access to London from much of East Anglia. The railways were built during the 19th century and the Lea canal carried coal, coke and timber. When I left Goffs Oak some coke was still carried by barge up the Lea. Until 1940 a great deal of coke came over from Belgium via this route.

»more

DECEMBER

2016

Eastcastle Street, W1T
The portion of Eastcastle Street to the east of Wells Street originally belonged to the Berners Estate. The Berners Estate section of the street was not developed until the 1760s though it was laid out in the late 1730s. Originally it was Castle Street East.
»read full article

	Unless given an attribution, images and text on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. If given an attribution or citation, any reuse of material must credit the original source under their terms.
	Attribution: No known copyright owner. Public domain assumed
	If there is no attribution or copyright, you are free: to share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix - to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). share alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. CC-BY-SA-2.0 truetrue
1900 and 1950 mapping is reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.

The Underground Map

PREVIOUSLY ON THE UNDERGROUND MAP...