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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JANUARY

2017

Campbell Road, N4
Campbell Road, or "The Bunk" - was known as the worst street in London. Campbell Road had a bad reputation from the moment it was built in 1865, on land known as the St Pancras’ Seven Sisters Road Estate. It was a long street just to the west of Fonthill Road, off Seven Sisters. Building along the street was done piecemeal and took a long time. Over a period of years, the demand fell and poor people, unable to afford to buy or rent a whole house, started taking rooms in the properties.

In 1880 a lodging house was opened at 47 Campbell Road, licensed for 90 men. It was the first of many such establishments in the road and by 1890 Campbell Road had the largest number of doss house beds for any Islington street.

People were very poor, many of them with large families. With such over-crowded rooms, life was often lived in the street. Campbell Road was a slum so wretched that its inhabitants sold the glass from their windows, so unlawful that the police steered clear - career criminals lived there. It was so insular that t...
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JANUARY

2017

Heathrow Airport Central bus station
Heathrow Airport Central bus station serves London Heathrow Airport. The bus station provides local bus and long distance coach services. It is located between Terminals 1, 2, and 3, and is open 24 hours a day. It is a few minutes’ walk from the terminals via underground walkways.

From Terminals 4 and 5, passengers can catch a free Heathrow Connect or Heathrow Express train service to the Central Bus Station. A travel centre at the central bus station is open from 06:00 to 22:30.

It is the UK’s busiest bus and coach station with over 1,600 services each day to over 1,000 destinations.

Read the Heathrow Airport Central bus station entry on the Wikipedia...
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JANUARY

2017

Kensington Market
Kensington Market was a three storey indoor market at 49 Kensington High Street, created in late 1967 It catered to hippie and bohemian culture. In the 1980s to end of the 1990s it catered to punks, new romantics, metal heads, ravers, goths, trance, acid house and various sub-cultures of modern music, fashion, hair stylists, body arts, crafts and accessories, vintage rock ’n’ roll wear, fetish rangers.

Before Queen became successful, Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor had a stall there.

In early 2000 the market closed down. The building was left derelict following its closure, and was demolished in 2001.

Read the Kensington Market, London entry on the Wikipedia...
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JANUARY

2017

Bexleyheath Clock Tower
The Bexleyheath Coronation Memorial Clock Tower, commemorating the coronation of King George V, was formally opened on Bexleyheath Gala Day, 17 July 1912. Designed by Walter Epps, the Clock Tower was intended to stand "as a memorial to the enterprise and loyalty of the inhabitants of Bexleyheath" and it was thought that the Clock Tower "would be the beginnings of better things to come in Bexleyheath". The clock would certainly be useful for passengers waiting at the tram terminus at the Market Place.

At the opening ceremony a "temporary" bust of King George V was unveiled. The architect, Epps, ended his speech with, "I hope to see all the niches filled with busts of members of the Royal Family".

A bell was installed on 17 June 1913 but in August 1914 the Defence of the Realm Act banned the ringing of bells for fear they might be used by German spies to convey secret messages. The bell did not ring again until the year 2000.

During the 1930s the bust of King George disintegrated and then completely fell apart during cleaning after WWII. It was recast by John Ravera, Bexleyheath resident and a ...
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JANUARY

2017

Branch Hill Pond
Branch Hill Pond which was fed from a spring which was also the main source of the Westbourne. Branch Hill Pond, which disappeared in the late nineteenth century, can still be seen as a distinct hollow in the heath which is still grassland at this point.

John Constable (1776-1837) came to Hampstead Heath in the late summer of 1819, seeking relief from urban London for his family of two children and his wife Maria who suffered from consumption. He rented a cottage at Upper Heath and at once began to paint the countryside; the uneven ground provided splendid viewpoints over the heath and toward London to the south.

By 1827 Constable had rented on a permanent basis a small four-story house at 40 Well Walk, Hampstead Heath. while still keeping a studio and minimum living space in London. He wrote Fisher that the drawing room of their new house situated on the high ground commanded "a view unequalled in Europe—from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend."

It was there in 1827 that he painted an important oil of Branch Hill Pond. Hampstead Heat...
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JANUARY

2017

Cannon Stream
The Cannon Stream was, before it was sent underground, a tributary of the Westbourne River. Two main tribitaries fed the former Westbourne River - the Kil Bourne and the Cannon Stream.

The highest branch of the River Westbourne begins at what is still the highest point in Greater London - the area just north of Whitestone Pond in Hampstead. It then flows downhill to cross Branch Hill in Hampstead. Nowadays it is rare to see any surface water, but after heavy rain the sandy soil can become waterlogged.

Cannon Stream flowed past the contemporary Spedan Close and roughly follows the line of Redington Gardens and Heath Drive before crossing the Finchley Road. Locals named this Cannon’s Stream because it trickled down Cannon’s Hill. At the foot of the hill the stream flowed behind the Cock and Hoop tavern and fed a small pond on West End Green, West Hampstead. Both pub and pond are long since gone.

The stream followed the fields which formed the boundary between West End Green and Kilburn before joining the Kil Bourne at Kilburn Priory.
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JANUARY

2017

River Westbourne outflow
The River Westbourne flowed into the Thames at this point. A vestige of the river, a wide quay opens into the river Thames about 300 yards (270 m) west of Chelsea Bridge. An overflow outfall, from a pipe named the Ranelagh Sewer, can still be seen at low tide, as most of the Westbourne’s course has been used as a convenient depression in the land to place the local sewerage system, some of which takes surface water to form a combined sewer which links to two intercept sewers, the Middle Level Sewer and the Northern Low Level Sewer in the London sewerage system.
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JANUARY

2017

Chelsea Bridge Road, SW1W
Chelsea Bridge Road was built in the 1850s to connect Chelsea with its bridge. The Ranelagh pleasure gardens opened in 1742 to become one of the most fashionable pleasure resorts of the 18th century, with access by river as well as by road. In the 1760s Sir Thomas Robinson, one of the proprietors of the pleasure gardens, built a mansion east of the rotunda to his own designs called Prospect Place, where he lived until his death in 1777; by the 1790s the house had been divided.

In 1803 the pleasure gardens closed and Ranelagh House, its Rotunda and other features were cleared. This part of the estate then became gardens in the ownership of the Hospital.

In 1857-8 Chelsea Bridge Road was laid in a straight line from a widened White Lion Street to the new Chelsea Bridge, sweeping away the later Ranelagh House, Wilderness Row and the eastern end of the burial ground; all the land west of the road was thrown into the Hospital’s gardens, including land lying in Westminster. The land between the new road and the Westbourne was take...
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JANUARY

2017

Elms Lane, W2
Elms Lane in Bayswater was situated on the west bank of the Westbourne stream. By 1828, the main Uxbridge Road, facing Kensington Gardens, had been built up between Petersburgh Place and Porchester Terrace. Houses stretched north to Moscow Road, nearly completed, although there was open ground near the boundary and between Petersburgh Place and Bark Place.

Fields survived along the Uxbridge Road from St. Agnes Villas to Bayard’s Watering Place, whence Elms or Elm Lane led northward, with some houses between it and the stream, along the line of the later Craven Terrace to the east end of Craven Hill.

Elms Lane was named after the line of elm trees which ran along its length.

Craven Terrace was built along the former route of Elms Lane.
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JANUARY

2017

Red Lion Bridge
Harrow Road once spanned the River Westbourne at this point. Now an extremely urban area, with the Westway running on a flyover directly above the rerouted Harrow Road, this was once a very rural spot in Westbourne Green.

The Red Lion pub, a country pub on the bridge was moved 100 yards to the east when the first major change to the area came - the building of the Great Western Railway.

The railway caused many roads to be built and rerouted - for instance a proposed "Westbourne Street" by property developers became "Westbourne Bridge" over the railway tracks in the 1840s.

The rural spot was no longer and urbanisation proceeded rapidly.
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JANUARY

2017

Bayswater Rivulet
The Bayswater Rivulet was the original name for the Westbourne River Now culverted and firmly underground, the river ran through what is now suburban Kilburn Park.

It ran under where Kilburn Park Road and Rudolph Road meet.
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JANUARY

2017

Long Water
The Long Water is a recreational lake in Kensington Gardens, created in 1730 at the behest of Queen Caroline. The Long Water refers to the long and narrow western half of the lake that is known as the Serpentine. Serpentine Bridge, which marks the boundary between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, also marks the Long Water’s eastern boundary. The Long Water and the Serpentine are generally considered to be part of one lake.

Originally the lake was fed by the River Westbourne entering at the Italian Garden at the north-western end of the Long Water.

In 1730 Queen Caroline, wife of George II, ordered the damming of the River Westbourne in Hyde Park as part of a general redevelopment of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Original monastic ponds may have existing in the location and these were modified as part of the 1730–1732 scheme to create a single lake. At that time, the Westbourne formed eleven natural ponds in the park. During the 1730s, the lake filled to its current size and shape. The redevelopment was carried out by Royal Gardener Charles Bridgeman, who...
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JANUARY

2017

Blandel Bridge
The bridge over the Westbourne at Sloane Square was called Blandel Bridge and was later renamed Grosvenor Bridge. In the 18th Century, Sloane Square looked much the same as it does today, except that the square was an open green space enclosed by wooden posts, connected by iron chains. It was here that Queen Charlotte’s Royal Volunteers often assembled, and marched off in military order to Hyde Park, headed by their band.

On the eastern side of the square, the same side as the Royal Court Theatre, stood Blandel Bridge, which crossed the Westbourne River, one of the old rivers of London. It was about twelve or fourteen feet wide, and had walls on either side high enough to protect passengers from falling into the river.

It was nicknamed “Bloody Bridge” going back as 1590 so named allegedly following the murder of Lord Harrington’s cook who was attacked and beaten to death by highwaymen. Bloody Bridge once comprised of a footbridge with a plank before a more substantial bridge, 16 feet wide and lined by high walls, was built in the reign of Charles ll.
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JANUARY

2017

Bayard’s Bridge
Bayard’s Bridge took the Uxbridge Road over the River Westbourne. The origin of the river name Westbourne is not clear and does not appear before the 19th century. The areas named Westbourne such as Westbourne Grove were called that as they lay west of the bourne or river.

The river itself was named Bayswater Brook and named the Westbourne later on.

The name Bayswater is said to have derived from ’Bayard’s Watering Place’, first recorded in 1380, where the River Westbourne passed under the Uxbridge road (now Bayswater Road) , a ‘bayard’ being a horse which would have taken water from the river.

Another explanation is that the land now called Bayswater belonged to the Abbey of Westminster when the Domesday Book was compiled; the most considerable tenant under the abbot was Bainiardus, may therefore be concluded that this ground known for its springs of excellent water, once supplied water to Baynard, his household, or his cattle; that the memory of his name was preserved in the...
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JANUARY

2017

34 Redchurch Street, E2
34 Redchurch St has existed since at least the late seventeenth century. Originally occupied by a pub called The Crown and renamed The Owl & The Pussycat in 1990.
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JANUARY

2017

Kilburn Aqueduct
Some way from the area now called Kilburn, the Kilburn Aqueduct of the Grand Union Canal spanned the River Westbourne. When the canal was built at the turn of the nineteenth century, the valley of the River Westbourne ran through what were known as the Kilburn Fields. To span the valley, the new canal was placed on a 30 foot high embankment to cross the river.

In a report dating from 1814 it is said of the aqueduct that “it is formed over the valley to an elevation of 30 feet above the natural surface of the ground; a brick aqueduct here… being made for the conveyance of the canal over the Serpentine River or Westbrook.”

Progressive development of the area since the canal was built meant the Westbourne river was now becoming an open sewer. Around the early 1820s locals complained the awful smell emanating from the Westbourne. It was culverted for a considerable distance either side of the aqueduct by 1823.

By the 1830s when the area was under development, especially with regards to the railway, the Westbourne had its course diverted and straightened ...
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JANUARY

2017

River Westbourne
The Westbourne is one of the lost rivers of London. The river was originally called the Kilburn (Cye Bourne – royal stream, ’Bourne and burn’ being the Germanic word equivalent to rivulet as in the geographical term ’winterbourne’) but has been known, at different times and in different places, as Kelebourne, Kilburn, Bayswater, Bayswater River, Bayswater Rivulet, Serpentine River, The Bourne, Westburn Brook, the Ranelagh River and the Ranelagh Sewer. It is of similar size to the Fleet.

Rising in Hampstead in two distinct branches, the river flows south through Kilburn (also the name of the river at that point) running west along Kilburn Park Road and then south along Shirland Road. After crossing Bishops Bridge Road, the river continued more or less due south, between what is now Craven Terrace and what is now Gloucester Terrace. At this point, the river was known until the early 19th century as the Bayswater rivulet and from that it gave its name to the area now known as Bayswater.
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JANUARY

2017

Westbourne Pond
Westbourne Pond is marked on the 1830 Greenwood map as the source of the Westbourne River. While this pond did indeed exist, the Westbourne River rose in Hampstead and flowed into (and out of) this pond. The rivulet above this point was not marked on the map of 1830.

By 1860, the stream had been culverted below here.
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JANUARY

2017

Waverley Road, W2
Waverley Road, now gone, lasted just over a hundred years. It was built in the late 1850s as the last vestiges of rural Westbourne Green faded away and lasted until the early 1960s.
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