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...

Chester Road, DA15

Chester Road lies to the north of the Blackfen Road. In the early 1930s, estates of houses and bungalows were being built in the area by C. R. Leech, Wates and New Ideal Homesteads.

Buying a new house in the area was an exciting business and show house viewing (even for those not intending to purchase) was a popular weekend occupation for many who lived in the inner London suburbs.

Many families who moved here were attracted by modern houses with gardens, fresh air and space. Many of the 1930s houses though were small and even had outside toilets.

»more

JANUARY

2021

Mayplace Road East, DA7
Mayplace Road East was an old lane leading east from Barnehurst In 1750 Miles Barne inherited a large estate: May Place.

’Barnehurst’ was an artificial name created for the local railway station from the family name. The area was previously agricultural - a mix of market gardens, orchards and woodland. A settlement was concentrated along Mayplace Road. Only with the electrification of the railway in 1926 did the large housing developments of the 1920s and 1930s start to appear.

In 1926, the developer W H Wedlock Ltd started to build on the site of Mayplace Farm and based on Oakwood Drive.

W H Wedlock Ltd developed the ’Mayplace Estate’ between Erith Road and Barnehurst Avenue only after 1932 as the underlying land was more difficult to develop.

The Barne family finally disposed of May Place in 1938, selling it to Crayford Urban District Council for £24,500.
»read full article

JANUARY

2021

Boxmoor Street, W11
Boxmoor Street was also known as Henry Place and Beaumont Street during its brief life It ran west from Norland Road and started its life in the 1840s. The western end was originally the Counter’s Creek rivulet, later superseded by the track of the West London Railway.

By the 1930s, Boxmoor Street was described as "a little road off the Norland Market in Shepherd’s Bush". Its entrance was located opposite the Stewards Arms pub.

It was quite unique as it was part of W11 lying within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The M41 (West Cross Route) motorway was built over the top of the street.
»read full article

JANUARY

2021

Waterloo Street, EC1V
Waterloo Street once ran from Lever Street to Radnor Street The modern layout of Galway Street still includes the part of the line of Waterloo Street and nearby Murton Street.

The original street dates from around 1829 and like other streets of similar name, commemorates Wellington’s 1815 victory. The whole area was redeveloped for the Pleydell Estate in 1965.
»read full article

JANUARY

2021

Dupont Street, E14
Dupont Street ran from Maroon Street to Burn Street Limehouse was a large, important London port in the medieval period. It specialised in production such as rope making and shipbuilding rather than cargo handling. In 1600, it was estimated that half of the population of 2000 who lived in Limehouse had a seafaring connection.

Dupont Street seems to have been built as Catherine Place during the 1820s. The name Dupont Street replaced Burn Street before 1912 though on the 1900 map, both names appear simultaneously. The street contained a pub - the Devonshire Arms - at 10 Dupont Street.

Well into the twentieth century, Dupont Street was a classed as a slum.

During the 1990s, Dupont Street was replaced by Shaw Crescent which was built over the top of it.

»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

The Holly Bush
The Holly Bush was an Elstree pub. The site of The Holly Bush has been occupied since at least medieval times, with the present building dating from around 1450.

The first reference to it as an inn was in 1786, when it was also owned by Thomas Clutterbuck, and managed by a John Green.

It closed in the 2010s.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

The Green Dragon
The Green Dragon was situated at 12-15 High Street, Elstree. At Nos. 12-15 The High Street stood a long, timber-framed building dating from c1500 and there was an inn there as early as 1656.

No 12 was separated from the others, faced in brick and called The Green Dragon during the 18th century.

By 1939 it had reverted to retail but survived the demolition of Nos. 13 – 15 in the late 1960s.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Red Lion Hotel
The Red Lion Hotel stood on the east side of the High Street on the corner of Barnet Lane. The Red Lion Hotel, a timber framed building, in Elstree High Street, was first mentioned in 1656. In 1833 it was run by John Billings (born 1809) who was described in 1839 as a ‘coachman running the posting house’.

By 1845 he was known as a ‘coach proprietor’ his license allowing him to carry four inside and five on top. The route was London –Edgware – Shenley Hill, a distance of 17 miles.

It departed from Blue Posts Holborn at 4 pm, Shenley at 8 am, the journey time being 3 hours!

John retired to be a farmer at aged 71, the 1881 census shows him and his wife Sarah at ‘Smug Oak Farm’ Frogmore, Herts, employing four men to manage 168 acres.

He died in 1885, and the Red Lion was demolished in 1934 to make way for improvements to the dangerous corner at the junction of the High Street and Barnet Lane.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

The Plough
The Plough was a pub next to Elstree crossroads. Elstree Village once boasted around seven pubs in the main street.

The Plough was called The Swan in the mid 17th Century and acquired by Thomas Clutterbuck, a brewer of Stanmore, just before 1816.

The present building dates from 1830/40 and in the 1930s, when under contract at the film studios, Alfred Hitchcock was a regular patron.

Elstree was a popular stop over along Watling Street on journeys to and from London. A victualler’s billing of 1756 stated that the White Horse had two beds and five horses, the Plough one bed and one horse and the Green Dragon one bed and no horses. By 1833 four major stage coaches called at Elstree daily.

In the early twenty first century, the Plough became a restaurant rather than a pub.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Abbey Place, WC1H
Abbey Place was in the centre of Bloomsbury, off what was originally the west side of Little Coram Street and directly behind the Russell Institution on Great Coram Street. Abbey Place was also known as Tavistock Mews, the adjacent street to which it actually led.

It was built in 1801 on a green field site. Rather intriguingly, Horwood’s map of 1799, which has some of the proposed streets and squares laid out, shows a circle at this point, and a street leading from here all the way to the burial grounds on the line of what became Henrietta Street.

It appears separately as Abbey Place, rather than as Tavistock Mews, on the first Ordnance Survey map of 1867–1870. The origin of its rather grandiose name is unknown; the site was not near any abbey

The name was current by 1829, when a young man advertised himself as porter or driver from “7 Abbey-place, Little Coram-street, Tavistock Square” (The Times, 19 February 1829)

It rapidly became one of the very few slum areas on the Bedford ducal estate. In 1862, a 19-year-old labourer named Edward Donnelly lived at no. 6; he was charged with taking...
»more

FEBRUARY

2017

Shepherd’s Bush Market
Shepherd’s Bush Market is a street market located on the east side of the railway viaduct for the Hammersmith and City Tube line. The market dates back to the early part of the twentieth century, when the present layout of the Hammersmith and City tube line was fixed. The market opened for business in around 1914, with shops lining the railway viaduct. Individual market vendors sell a wide variety of goods, including fresh produce, cooked food, music CDs, household goods and clothing. Individual vendors rent their stalls from Transport For London, who own the land on which the market sits.

With a wide variety of fresh produce, fabrics, household goods and furnishings the market has long stood as a one stop shop for the local community, gaining a reputation as one of the most diverse locations this side of London. Many traders in the market have passed their sites down for generations.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Baker Street
Baker Street tube station is a station on the London Underground at the junction of Baker Street and the Marylebone Road. The station lies in Travelcard Zone 1 and is served by five different lines. It is one of the original stations of the Metropolitan Railway (MR), the world’s first underground railway, opened in 1863. Baker Street station was opened by the MR on 10 January 1863 (these platforms are now served by the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines). On 13 April 1868, the MR opened the first section of Metropolitan and St John’s Wood Railway as a branch from its existing route. This line, serving the open-air platforms, was steadily extended to Willesden Green and northwards, finally reaching Aylesbury Town and Verney Junction (some 50 miles/80 km from Baker Street) in 1892.

Over the next few decades this section of the station was extensively rebuilt to provide four platforms. The current Metropolitan line layout largely dates from 1925, and the bulk of the surface buildings, designed by architect Charles Clark, also date from this period.

The Baker Street & Waterloo Railway (BS&WR, now the Bakerloo line) opened on 10 March 1906; Baker Street was the temporary northern terminus of the line until it was extended to Marylebone station on 27 March 1907.
<...
»more

FEBRUARY

2017

Horse Hospital
Built as stabling for cabby’s sick horses, The Horse Hospital is now a unique Grade II listed arts venue in Bloomsbury WC1 The Horse Hospital is the only existing unspoilt example of a two-floor, purpose-built stable remaining for public access in London.

It is situated at the corner of Herbrand Street and Colonnade – a working mews immediately behind the Hotel Russell, midway between London’s West End and Spitalfields arts district. Built originally in 1797 by James Burton, the building may have been redeveloped sometime after 1860.

The shell is constructed with London Stocks and red brick detail, whilst the interior features a mock cobbled herringbone pattern re-enforced concrete floor. Access to the both floors is by concrete moulded ramps. The upper floor ramp retains hardwood slats preventing the horses from slipping. Each floor has five cast iron pillars and several original iron tethering rings.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Tee Shaped Wood
Tee Shaped Wood was a woodland in the fields of Boreham Wood. Originally a footpath from Boundary Oak in Theobald Street to Green Street passed through this point. The wood was quite dense in places and stretched all the way down to the modern Gateshead Road.

Near to Crown Road, the greenery still has a few large oak trees from the wood.

»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Furzehill Road, WD6
Furzehill Road runs from Shenley Road to Barnet Lane. Several roads in Boreham Wood including Barnet Lane, Furzehill Road, Shenley Road, Allum Lane and Theobald Street, were created as a result of the Enclosure Act of 1776, whereby the 684 acres of Borehamwood Common were divided up amongst various landowners, including the Church, and in return new roads were laid out which were to be sixty feet wide including verges.

Old photos from the nineteenth century show this verge intact and it can still be seen to the south of the junction with Brownlow Road.

In 1910 the Council handed over four acres of allotment land for the building of Furzehill School, and the plot-holders were awarded £1 each in compensation. The Council then purchased another four acres for £300.00 for allotment land, and a further 7 acres in 1924, just off Furzehill Road, for the sum of £157.1s.4d.

At the southern end of Furzehill Road was the Home of Rest For Horses until the 1970s.

Apart from the Barnet Lan...
»more

FEBRUARY

2017

Maxilla Gardens, W10
Maxilla Gardens was a former street in London W10. It was demolished to make way for the Westway.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Ebury Farm
Ebury Farm was a simple marshy farm whose lands later became the richest real estate in London. Ebury Farm covered 430 acres in total with its farmhouse laying just to the south of where Victoria coach station now stands.

Earlier, there was a manor called Eia in the Domesday survey but later known as Eye, from which Eybury or Ebury derives. The manor probably occupied the territory between the Roman road along the present course of Bayswater Road and Oxford Street on the north, the Thames on the south, the Westbourne river on the west, and the Tyburn on the east.

After the Norman Conquest Geoffrey de Mandeville obtained possession of the manor, one of many which he took in reward for his services in the Conqueror’s cause. Before the end of William’s reign de Mandeville had given the manor to the Abbey of Westminster and it remained in the Abbey’s ownership until 1536 when it was acquired by Henry VIII. During this long period two areas came to be distinguished from the main manor. The areas were Hyde in the north-west corner, now incorporated ...
»more

FEBRUARY

2017

Willesden Green Farm
Willesden Green Farm, owned by All Souls College, Oxford, was south of the High Road, opposite Willesden Farm. By 1738 farmhouses and cottages were clustered all round Willesden Green.

The soil of Willesden Green was a strong, wet clay - naturally suited to grass, and a cart could fetch a load of dung from the metropolis twice a day. By 1833 the Willesden Green Farm, had been much improved by manuring.

Londoners were often directly involved in farming and All Souls Willesden Green Farm was leased to a St Marylebone jobmaster between 1828-45.

Building began in 1895 on land belonging to All Souls and on the college’s land south of High Road in 1899 - Willesden Green farmhouse had gone by 1904. In that year 125 houses were being built on the college estate at Willesden Green in addition to 55 already built.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Westminster Under School
Westminster Under School is an independent school and preparatory school for boys aged 7 to 13 and is attached to Westminster School. The school was founded in 1943 in the precincts of Westminster School in Little Dean’s Yard, just behind Westminster Abbey. In 1951 the Under School relocated to its own premises in Vincent Square. Due to rising numbers of pupils in the 1960s and 1970s, the school moved again in 1981 to its present site (which was a former hospital) overlooking the Westminster School playing fields in Vincent Square. The school has a strong musical tradition and provides choristers for St Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey. It also excels in sport, drama, chess and Latin. Most boys attending the school move on to Westminster School after the completion of either Common Entrance or Scholarship examinations.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

North Greenwich Pier
North Greenwich Pier is a pier on the River Thames. North Greenwich Pier was originally built in the 1880s as a coaling jetty for the former Greenwich gasworks before this closed in the late 1980s. Most of the original jetty was demolished in 1997 to make way for the new passenger pier; however eight of the original cast iron caisson columns were retained to secure the new floating pier. Antony Gormley’s ’Quantum Cloud’ statue stands on the downstream group of four caissons.

The new pier was designed by architect Richard Rogers Partnership with Beckett Rankine as the engineer and Costain as main contractor. The most striking feature of the pier is its 87 metre long, 160 tonne, bowstring canting brow which, unusually, is supported on three bearings.

The pier is served by river boat services.

»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

White City bus station
White City bus station serves the Westfield London shopping centre. It was opened on 29 November 2008 to serve the Westfield London and the White City area. The station was built around the Grade II listed Dimco Buildings, originally the power station for the Central London Railway which date from 1898.
»read full article

FEBRUARY

2017

Honourable Artillery Company Museum
The Honourable Artillery Company Museum opened in 1987. Its collection includes uniforms, armour, medals and weapons. The archives date from 1537 and are of particular interest for 17th and 18th century militia and items about the City of London history.

It is associated with the Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest regiment in the British Army. Entrance is free, although it is only open to the public by appointment.
»read full article

The Underground Map

PREVIOUSLY ON THE UNDERGROUND MAP...