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MAP YEAR:1750180018301860190019502021Remove markers
Featured · Shoreditch ·
APRIL
12
2021

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...
Collingwood Street, E2
Collingwood Street was at the heart of the Old Nicol rookery. In 1680, John Nichol of Gray’s Inn leased just over four acres of gardens for 180 years to a London mason, Jon Richardson, with permission to dig for bricks. The land became built up piecemeal with houses. Many of the local streets were named after Nichol.

At least 22 houses were built in Old Nichol Street in 1801-2, probably on the sites of 17th-century ones.

An area of this was named Friar’s Mount probably after James Fryer who farmed it in the 1720s. Friar’s Mount was sold to Sanderson Turner Sturtevant, a tallow chandler who was leasing out ground on the west side of Turk Street by 1804. A John Gadenne was building on the west side of Mount Street in 1807. Mount Street, from Rose Street to Virginia Row, existed by 1806. Nelson Street and Collingwood Streets ran west from Mount Street by 1807.

A garden - Kemp’s Garden - was taken for building at about the same time. Mead built nine houses in Mead Street in 1806 and others were un...

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MARCH
31
2021

 

Howard Street, WC2R
Howard Street ran from Surrey Street to Arundel Street until 1974 Norfolk Street and Howard Street were built over the grounds of Arundel House which had been the property of the Howard family, Dukes of Norfolk.

Howard Street was demolished in the 1970s to build Arundel Great Court.
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MARCH
30
2021

 

Ayres Street, SE1
Ayres Street was formerly known as Whitecross Street Ayres Street changed name in tribute to Alice Ayres - also immortalised in Postman’s Park in the City. Ayres lost her life whilst saving three children from a fire in Union Street in 1885.

John Strype mentions Whitecross Street in his 1720 ’Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster’. He called it "a pretty clean Street, but ordinary Built and Inhabited." It is unknown how long before 1710 that the street was built.

The White Cross Cottages were built in 1890 by social reformer Octavia Hill and designed by Elijah Hoole, as model social housing. They include a hall with interior decoration by Walter Crane.

The dense grain of local small buildings was in part eroded after the Second World War. As redevelopment occurred, larger blocks, occupied by single uses, replaced the Georgian and Victorian houses, shops and warehouses. This is particularly evident in the area between Ayres Street and Southwark Bridge Road.
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MARCH
29
2021

 

Alpha Grove, E14
Alpha Grove runs from Strafford Street to Tiller Road Alpha Grove ran right through to the West India Dock fence dock - its cranes can be seen at the end of the road. When built in the 1800s, Alpha Road followed a section of the old Island path, Dolphin Lane.

Albert Terrace and Alfred Terrace were rows of houses in Alpha Road.

Alpha Road was renamed Alpha Grove in 1939, and was seriously damaged during WWII.

In 1964 the LCC declared this site as the Manilla Street Clearance Area, and this north end of Alpha Grove became a part of Manilla Street in the Barkantine Estate.

Alpha Road Methodist Chapel (Wesleyan Chapel, Alpha Grove Community Centre) was built in 1887. An additional hall was added in 1926. The buildings were converted into a community centre in the 1970s.
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MARCH
28
2021

 

Aldgate High Street, EC3N
Once the route to one of the six original gates of the Wall of London, Aldgate High Street has an important place in medieval London’s history Aldgate High Street was closely located to where the eastern part of the original Roman Wall, and in the medieval period, it led to town of Colchester in Essex.

Because of its connection to places outside London, Aldgate High Street was vital to the geography of medieval London. Unfortunately, any archaeological remnants of the Roman gate have been obscured, and there is no evidence of its precise location, but is believed to have straddled Aldgate High Street, the gate’s northern edge beneath the pavement of current address of 1-2 Aldgate High Street, and its southern edge beneath 88-89 Aldgate High Street.

There is some dispute over the etymology and meaning of "Aldgate," but various historians have provided some theories. The earliest record of Aldgate has it listed as East Gate, which makes sense, given its location as the easternmost gate on the Wall.

Another interpretation of its current name, "Ale Gate," indicates that an ale-ho...
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LATEST LONDON-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROJECT



   
Added: 11 Apr 2021 20:03 GMT   

North Harrow
The North Harrow Embassy Cinema was closed in 1963 and replaced by a bowling alley and a supermarket. As well as the cinema itself there was a substantial restaurant on the first floor.

Source: Embassy Cinema in North Harrow, GB - Cinema Treasures

Reply
Lived here
KJ   
Added: 11 Apr 2021 12:34 GMT   

Family
1900’s Cranmer family lived here at 105 (changed to 185 when road was re-numbered)
James Cranmer wife Louisa ( b.Logan)
They had 3 children one being my grandparent William (Bill) CRANMER married to grandmother “Nancy” He used to go to
Glengall Tavern in Bird in Bush Rd ,now been converted to flats.

Reply
Comment
charlie evans   
Added: 10 Apr 2021 18:51 GMT   

apollo pub 1950s
Ted Lengthorne was the landlord of the apollo in the 1950s. A local called darkie broom who lived at number 5 lancaster road used to be the potman,I remember being in the appollo at a street party that was moved inside the pub because of rain for the queens coronation . Not sure how long the lengthornes had the pub but remember teds daughter julie being landlady in the early 1970,s

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Graham O’Connell   
Added: 10 Apr 2021 10:24 GMT   

Lloyd & Sons, Tin Box Manufacturers (1859 - 1982)
A Lloyd & Sons occupied the wharf (now known as Lloyds Wharf, Mill Street) from the mid 19th Century to the late 20th Century. Best known for making tin boxes they also produced a range of things from petrol canisters to collecting tins. They won a notorious libel case in 1915 when a local councillor criticised the working conditions which, in fairness, weren’t great. There was a major fire here in 1929 but the company survived at least until 1982 and probably a year or two after that.

Reply
Born here
Joyce Taylor   
Added: 5 Apr 2021 21:05 GMT   

Lavender Road, SW11
MyFather and Grand father lived at 100 Lavender Road many years .I was born here.

Reply
Born here
Beverly Sand   
Added: 3 Apr 2021 17:19 GMT   

Havering Street, E1
My mother was born at 48 Havering Street. That house no longer exists. It disappeared from the map by 1950. Family name Schneider, mother Ray and father Joe. Joe’s parents lived just up the road at 311 Cable Street

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Comment
Fumblina   
Added: 27 Mar 2021 11:13 GMT   

St Jude’s Church, Lancefield Street
Saint Jude’s was constructed in 1878, while the parish was assigned in 1879 from the parish of Saint John, Kensal Green (P87/JNE2). The parish was united with the parishes of Saint Luke (P87/LUK1) and Saint Simon (P87/SIM) in 1952. The church was used as a chapel of ease for a few years, but in 1959 it was closed and later demolished.

The church is visible on the 1900 map for the street on the right hand side above the junction with Mozart Street.

Source: SAINT JUDE, KENSAL GREEN: LANCEFIELD STREET, WESTMINSTER | Londo

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Comment
Fumblina   
Added: 27 Mar 2021 11:08 GMT   

Wedding at St Jude’s Church
On 9th November 1884 Charles Selby and Johanna Hanlon got married in St Jude’s Church on Lancefield Street. They lived together close by at 103 Lancefield Street.
Charles was a Lather, so worked in construction. He was only 21 but was already a widower.
Johanna is not shown as having a profession but this is common in the records and elsewhere she is shown as being an Ironer or a Laundress. It is possible that she worked at the large laundry shown at the top of Lancefield Road on the 1900 map. She was also 21. She was not literate as her signature on the record is a cross.
The ceremony was carried out by William Hugh Wood and was witnessed by Charles H Hudson and Caroline Hudson.

Source: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/1623/images/31280_197456-00100?pId=6694792

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FEBRUARY
28
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.
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FEBRUARY
28
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.
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FEBRUARY
28
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
28
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
28
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...
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FEBRUARY
27
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.
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FEBRUARY
23
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.
<...
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FEBRUARY
19
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.
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FEBRUARY
17
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.

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FEBRUARY
16
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...
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FEBRUARY
15
2017

 

Maxilla Gardens, W10
Maxilla Gardens was a former street in London W10. It was demolished to make way for the Westway.
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FEBRUARY
15
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 ...
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FEBRUARY
15
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.
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FEBRUARY
14
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.
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FEBRUARY
10
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.



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FEBRUARY
5
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.
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FEBRUARY
3
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.
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