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.

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

Latest on The Underground Map...

Yiewsley

Yiewsley is a large suburban village in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Yiewsley’s transition from an agrarian community began when the Grand Junction Canal was opened. Construction started in May 1793 and connected the area to the Thames at Brentford, passing through Yiewsley on its way north following the River Colne. An aqueduct was built at Cowley Lock to cross the Fray’s River. In 1794, the canal opened between the Thames and Uxbridge, and in 1795, the aqueduct over the Fray’s River was likely completed.

The following year, in 1796, Colham Wharf, Yiewsley’s first dock, was established near Colham Bridge. In 1801, the Paddington Arm of the canal opened, connecting the area to national trade routes.

The canal played a vital role in transporting Cowley stock bricks, which were made from the abundant brick-earth in Yiewsley. The bricks were transported mainly along the Grand Junction Canal and the Regent’s Canal to supply the demand for building materials in Victorian London.

By t...

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NOVEMBER

2023

South Harrow
South Harrow originally spread south and west from the hamlet of Roxeth as a result of easier access from Central London by rail In the 1890s, the Metropolitan District Railway, which later became the District Line but was operating as an independent company at the time, recognised the inadequate service to Uxbridge and Harrow. To address this, they proposed the construction of a railway line towards both towns, and this led to the formation of the Ealing & South Harrow Railway. The railway line was intended to extend to South Harrow, which was then a rural area located to the south of Roxeth.

Construction of the railway line was completed by 1899, but the District Line faced financial difficulties that delayed its opening until 1903. Consequently, South Harrow became the terminus of a line extending from Park Royal & Twyford Abbey. The location around Northolt Road subsequently developed into South Harrow’s own commercial and residential hub.

The original station building was approximately 170 metres south of the present-day station. This extension marked a significant miles...
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SEPTEMBER

2023

Great Portland Street
Great Portland Street is a London Underground station near Regent’s Park Great Portland Street station was opened on 10 January 1863 as Portland Road, renamed Great Portland Street and Regents Park in 1923 and changed to its present name on 1 March 1917.

The station’s present structure, constructed in 1930, is situated on a traffic island at the intersection of Marylebone Road, Great Portland Street and Albany Street. This building features a steel-framed design with a cream terracotta exterior. The station’s perimeter also houses shops and, in the past, included a car showroom with office spaces above it. Notably, Great Portland Street was a significant sales location for the motor industry. The station’s architectural design, credited to C.W. Fowler, earned it a Grade II listing in January 1987.

The area around Great Portland Street station offers various points of interest. Regent’s Park and the iconic BT Tower are nearby attractions. Additionally, the station’s proximity to Regen...
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SEPTEMBER

2023

Courtfield Gardens, SW5
Courtfield Gardens is named after the field beneath it, cultivated until the 19th century According to 16th-century records, Courtfield Gardens was built on a vast open meadow known as Great Courtfield. This meadow was surrounded by fertile land and small farms and was part of a large area of land that extended from Cromwell Road to The Old Brompton Road in one direction, and from Gloucester Road to Earl’s Court Road in the other direction. Great Courtfield was included in the Earl’s Court ’manor’.

During the 18th century, Earl’s Court House, a grand manor house, was constructed on the land that is now the western terrace of Barkston Gardens. This building replaced an extensive dwelling that was described in 1705 as having fountains, a marble-tiled dairy, engines for water, and impressive gates at its entrance.

In the 19th century, the area surrounding Courtfield Gardens was developed with rows of terraced houses, as the demand for housing in London grew. Earl’s Court House was demolished in the middle of th...
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JUNE

2023

Alba Place, W11
Alba Place is part of the Colville Conservation Area Originally the stable house accommodation for the main houses on Lancaster Road, the primary purpose of the Mews properties is now residential.

Alba Place is located on the site of an original Mews but has been redeveloped to a degree that it no longer contains any surviving Mews properties. It is a gated cul-de-sac off Portobello Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, almost opposite Hayden’s Place (another redeveloped Mews). It contains 16 properties used for residential purposes.

Alba Place was Albion Place until 1937, one of the many patriotic names dating from the period immediately following the Crimean War.
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LATEST LONDON-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROJECT

Eileen Brecknock Road, N7 Added: 10 Nov 2023 09:42 GMT	Brecknock Road Pleating Company My great grandparents ran the Brecknock Road pleating Company around 1910 to 1920 and my Grandmother worked there as a pleater until she was 16. I should like to know more about this. I know they had a beautiful Victorian house in Islington as I have photos of it & of them in their garden. Source: Family history Reply
Squirrel’s Lane, IG9 Added: 6 Nov 2023 16:59 GMT	061123 Why do Thames Water not collect the 15 . Three meter lengths of blue plastic fencing, and old pipes etc. They left here for the last TWO Years, these cause an obstruction,as they halfway lying in the road,as no footpath down this road, and the cars going and exiting the park are getting damaged, also the public are in Grave Danger when trying to avoid your rubbish and the danger of your fences. Source: Squirrels Lane. Buckhurst Hill, Essex. IG9. I want some action ,now, not Excuses.MK. Reply
Christian Cornwall Road, W11 Added: 31 Oct 2023 10:34 GMT	Cornwall Road, W11 Photo shows William Richard Hoare’s chemist shop at 121 Cornwall Road. Reply
Vik Oaks Road, TW6 Added: 30 Oct 2023 18:48 GMT	Old pub sign from the Rising Sun Hi I have no connection to the area except that for the last 30+ years we’ve had an old pub sign hanging on our kitchen wall from the Rising Sun, Stanwell, which I believe was / is on the Oaks Rd. Happy to upload a photo if anyone can tell me how or where to do that! Reply
Phillip Martin Ashburnham Place, SE10 Added: 16 Oct 2023 06:25 GMT	16 Ashburnham Road On 15 October 1874 George Frederick Martin was born in 16 Ashburnham Road Greenwich to George Henry Martin, a painter, and Mary Martin, formerly Southern. Reply
Christine Bithrey Holly Park, N4 Added: 15 Oct 2023 15:20 GMT	The Hollies (1860 - 1900) I lived in Holly Park Estate from 1969 I was 8 years old when we moved in until I left to get married, my mother still lives there now 84. I am wondering if there was ever a cemetery within The Hollies? And if so where? Was it near to the Blythwood Road end or much nearer to the old Methodist Church which is still standing although rather old looking. We spent most of our childhood playing along the old dis-used railway that run directly along Blythwood Road and opposite Holly Park Estate - top end which is where we live/ed. We now walk my mothers dog there twice a day. An elderly gentleman once told me when I was a child that there used to be a cemetery but I am not sure if he was trying to scare us children! I only thought about this recently when walking past the old Methodist Church and seeing the flag stone in the side of the wall with the inscription of when it was built late 1880 If anyone has any answers please email me [email protected] Reply
Chris hutchison Broadhurst Gardens, NW6 Added: 15 Oct 2023 03:04 GMT	35 broadhurst gardens. 35 Broadhurst gardens was owned by famous opera singer Mr Herman “Simmy”Simberg. He had transformed it into a film and recording complex. There was a film and animation studio on the ground floor. The recording facilities were on the next two floors. I arrived in London from Australia in 1966 and worked in the studio as the tea boy and trainee recording engineer from Christmas 1966 for one year. The facility was leased by an American advertising company called Moreno Films. Mr Simbergs company Vox Humana used the studio for their own projects as well. I worked for both of them. I was so lucky. The manager was another wonderful gentleman called Jack Price who went on to create numerous songs for many famous singers of the day and also assisted the careers of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. “Simmy” let me live in the bedsit,upper right hand window. Jack was also busy with projects with The Troggs,Bill Wyman,Peter Frampton. We did some great sessions with Manfred Mann and Alan Price. The Cream did some demos but that was before my time. We did lots of voice over work. Warren Mitchell and Ronnie Corbett were favourites. I went back in 1978 and “Simmy “ had removed all of the studio and it was now his home. His lounge room was still our studio in my minds eye!! Reply
Sue L Battersea Added: 13 Oct 2023 17:21 GMT	Duffield Street, Battersea I’ve been looking for ages for a photo of Duffield Street without any luck. My mother and grandfather lived there during the war. It was the first property he was able to buy but sadly after only a few months they were bombed out. My mother told the story that one night they were aware of a train stopping above them in the embankment. It was full of soldiers who threw out cigarettes and sweets at about four in the morning. They were returning from Dunkirk though of course my mother had no idea at the time. I have heard the same story from a different source too. Reply

Click here to explore another London street
We now have 628 completed street histories and 46872 partial histories

MAY

2019

Barnehurst Avenue, DA7
Barnehurst Avenue runs north from Merewood Road up to the Erith Road. By 1932 development had started on the ’Mayplace Estate’ which was built by developers W.H. Wedlock Ltd. on fairly difficult terrain for building. The estate was laid out between Erith Road and Barnehurst Avenue and roads took names associated with the Lake District.

A new pub called ’The Red Barn’ was built in 1936 by Arnolds of Chelmsford.

To the east of Barnehurst Avenue, New Ideal Homesteads Ltd began their ’Barnehurst Park Estate’.
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MAY

2019

Lowder Street (1918)
Lowder Street in Wapping at the end of the First World War. Lowder Street, as imaged from Raymond Street.
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MAY

2019

Altab Ali Park
Altab Ali Park is a small park on Adler Street, White Church Lane and Whitechapel Road. Formerly known as St. Mary’s Park, it is the site of the old 14th-century white church, St. Mary Matfelon, from which the area of Whitechapel gets its name. St Mary’s was bombed during The Blitz - all that remains of the old church is the floor plan and a few graves.

The park was renamed Altab Ali Park in 1998 in memory of Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi Sylheti clothing worker, who was murdered on 4 May 1978 in Adler Street by three teenage boys as he walked home from work.

At the entrance to the park is an arch created by David Petersen, developed as a memorial to Altab Ali and other victims of racist attacks.
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MAY

2019

Bondway, SW8
Bondway is named after the late 18th century developers of the street, John and Sarah Bond. Bondway was formerly called Bond Street and runs parallel to the railway viaduct from South Lambeth Place south to Miles Street.

Thomas Hill drew up a map of Vauxhall Manor in 1681 and, on it, most of the property was owned by both John Plumer and William Freeman. Plumer sold some 20 acres to Elias Ashmole in 1686. and Thomas Cooper purchased Freeman’s lands in 1683.

Both estates descended to Cooper’s great grand-daughter Emma Miles. In 1766 she sold them to John Bond, a merchant of Crutched Friars in London and his wife Sarah. They were responsible for the development.

In 1778 they obtained a building Act and let the ground in small plots. The present Bondway, Miles Street, Parry Street and Wyvil Road were laid out to form a residential area. The subsequent arrival of the London and South Western Railway Company have completely altered the character of the neighbourhood.

The buildings here represent one of the last cohe...
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MAY

2019

Cuba Street, E14
Cuba Street was laid out by the Batson family. The West India Docks were built in 1802. Before that, there were only a few paths crossing the Island.

Robert Batson, a local shipbuilder built a rope walk within his works. His son - Robert Batson junior - started to lay out other streets in the 1810s. He named Robert Street after himself although no houses were there in 1818 and it wasn’t fully built until the 1860s.

Because of the proliferation of duplicate street names in London, the 1870s saw the streets on the former Batson estate renamed. The new street names reflected the sources of sugar imports to the West India Docks. Robert Street was renamed Cuba Street. So afterwards, the rope works were replaced by engineering factories.

According to the Survey of London, because of the long-drawn-out building process, Cuba Street, Manilla Street and Tobago Street evolved a ’ragged uniformity’.

Cuba Street had an industrial character, with industry along the north side o...
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MAY

2019

Pigott Street, E14
When the Lansbury Estate was built, Pigott Street was the final part of the plan, hosting a block of flats from 1982. Pigott Street existed before the estate and was named for Francis Pigott Stainsby Conant, whose family owned the original land. The original street dates from 1861.
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MAY

2019

Moat Lane, DA8
Moat Lane was formerly part of Whitehall Lane. The 1869-1882 Ordnance Survey showed a large farm called Sladesgreen Farm. In the south west corner of the farm was ’The Corner Pin’ beerhouse - the pub was rebuilt in 1958.

The surrounding area was affectionately known as ’Cabbage Island’ due to the market gardens located between Moat Lane and Slade Green Road (formerly Slade Green Lane).

With the arrival of the railway, Moat Lane and Whitehall Lane became separated from one another by the tracks.
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MAY

2019

Talbot Court, EC3V
Talbot Court was next to the Talbot Inn until the Great Fire of London. A ’talbot’ was a long-extinct large breed of hound and a favoured dog for tracking and hunting.

Nevertheless, there is no conclusive evidence to the origin of its name but the Talbot as it stood in Gracechurch Street was one of a whole array of inns and taverns, about ten in all, between here to Threadneedle Street.

Talbot Court is cobbled as it leaves Gracechurch Street through a modern square archway, turning southwards at a right angle to link with Eastcheap.

The Ship public house has now taken over dominance in the Court, a very popular resort on summery evenings when crowds of ale-swilling workers congregate and block the way.
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MAY

2019

Meridian Water
Meridian Water station on the Lea Valley Lines in Edmonton opened on 20 May 2019. It is located 580 metres south of Angel Road railway station, which it replaced.

In 2016/17, Angel Road, opened in 1840, was the least-used station in London, with an estimated 33,500 passenger entries/exits.

The London Borough of Enfield announced in 2014 that a new station, being an integral part of the proposed Meridian Water development, would be constructed.

Under the proposals, Angel Road station would close on 19 May 2019 and Meridian Water station opened the following day.
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MAY

2019

Woodcock Hill, HA3
Woodcock Hill Lane until the 1920s, the road leads south from the crossroads of Kenton Lane and Kenton Road. WoodcockHill is associated with a farm of that name existing since the mid-17th century as ’Ruff Leas Farm’. The farm buildings were demolished in the late 1950s to be replaced by 60 and 62 The Ridgeway.

Before 1930, two footpaths provided alternative routes to Woodcock Hill Lane. One started from Kenton Grange, crossed open meadows for a mile before ending at a stile in neighbouring Preston. The other turned westwards before reaching the location of Woodcock Dell, and then across fields to Harrow on the Hill - now the route of The Ridgeway and Northwick Avenue.

Fields on the lane were well-stocked with small game and the area was known for poachers. Drag hunting was organised at Christmas and some farmers arranged clay pigeon shoots during seasonal breaks. Clay pigeons were ejected from the top of a wooden tower sited to the south of a position between Kenton Station and Woodcock Hill.

Well into the 1920s, Woodcock Hill continued to ...
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MAY

2019

Vandon Passage, SW1H
Vandon Passage probably dates from the fifteenth century. Cornelius Van Dun, a Dutchman and Yeoman of the Guard to Henry VIII, built a row of almshouses in 1575 for the well being of eight deprived women of the district. Not content with this singular generous deed, he provided the cash for the building of twelve more at St Ermin’s Hill - now around the back of St James’s Park Station.

At the time the almshouses were built, Petty France had already been in existence for about 100 years as a continuation of Tothill Street, the main west road from the Abbey. For those living in the alleys to the south of here, Vandon Passage was a vital link with civilisation, long before the roadway of Buckingham Gate was constructed and when the line of Victoria Street was still a dusty track. Vandon Street, still almost as narrow as it was 400 years ago, is a survivor of one of these alleys and marks the southern limit of the plot purchased by Van Dun.

During the day the Passage reclines in an almost hushed withdrawal from ...
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MAY

2019

Southgate
Southgate village originated as a tiny hamlet, which grew up in the north-west corner of Edmonton parish, along the southern boundary of Enfield Chase. The name derived from the south gate of Enfield Chase, which stood roughly where Chase Road now joins Winchmore Hill Road. The area was originally very heavily wooded, with large estates of oak coppice woods; the last remains of the woodland can be seen in Grovelands Park. Enfield Chase was enclosed in 1777. On the 1803 enclosure map, the settlement is called Chase Side after its main thoroughfare, and what is now Southgate Green is called Southgate. On this map, the four roads which form the crossroads – Chase Side, Bourneside, Chase Road and High Street – are quite densely developed near the junction, with long narrow frontage plots and more generous larger houses in substantial grounds.

Much of the land formed part of the large Grovelands and Arnos estates. The early railways in the mid 19th century gave Southgate a wide berth because of its hilly terrain and, until the arrival of the Piccadilly line extension, the nearest station to Southgate town centre was Pal...
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MAY

2019

Kilburn Grange Park
Kilburn Grange Park is a three hectare open space adjacent to Kilburn High Road. The park takes its name from a large mansion - The Grange - which was built in 1831 and stood facing Kilburn High Road where the Grange Cinema eventually stood.

The Grange, at the end of its time, stood at the centre of the poorest and most crowded part of Kilburn. The streets were the only open space outside the playgrounds of the Council schools.

The first hopes that the space could be made into a public park were raised in 1901 when the owner, Ada Peters, decided that she didn’t want a school built on the edge of her grounds, in Kingsgate Road. She encouraged local residents in the belief that they could purchase the grounds as a park. However, the London School Board had already bought the land in 1892, renting it back to the Peters family until the school was needed.

A local Grange Open Space Committee was formed in April 1901 to resist the ’mutilation’ of the grounds: the short-lived campaign gained popular support befo...
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MAY

2019

Islington
Islington grew as a sprawling Middlesex village along the line of the Great North Road, and has provided the name of the modern borough. Some roads on the edge of the area, including Essex Road, were known as streets by the medieval period, possibly indicating a Roman origin, but little physical evidence remains. What is known is that the Great North Road from Aldersgate came into use in the 14th century, connecting with a new turnpike up Highgate Hill. This was along the line of modern Upper Street, with a toll gate at The Angel defining the extent of the village. The Back Road - modern Liverpool Road - was primarily a drovers’ road where cattle would be rested before the final leg of their journey to Smithfield. Pens and sheds were erected along this road to accommodate the animals.

The first recorded church, St Mary’s, was erected in the twelfth century and was replaced in the fifteenth century. Islington lay on the estates of the Bishop of London and the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls. There were substantial medieval moated manor houses in the area, principally at Canonbury and Highbury. In 1548, t...
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MAY

2019

Hodgson’s Farm
Hodgson’s Farm stood nearly at today’s meetingpoint of Chapter Road and Park Avenue. Hay was the major crop on the farm, owned by a Robert Hodgson.

In the accompanying photo, the farm and farmyard are seen from across a field at the very start of the 20th century. Shortly afterwards it disappeared as the whole of Willesden Green was developed.
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MAY

2019

Parliament Hill Fields
Parliament Hill is an area of open parkland in the south-east corner of Hampstead Heath. In 1875 Hampstead Heath was acquired for the people by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Thirteen years later Parliament Hill was purchased for the public for £300 000 and added to Hampstead Heath. It has been administered by the City of London Corporation since 1989.It is a popular place that is used by walkers, runners and kite flyers.

Parliament Hill is 98 metres high and notable for its excellent views of the capital’s skyline - to Canary Wharf, the Gherkin, the Shard and St Paul’s Cathedral.

It is known particularly as a cross-country running venue and hosted the 2009 English National Championships. The 2012 English National Cross Country Championships were also staged at Parliament Hill.
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MAY

2019

Upper Woodcote Village, CR8
Upper Woodcote Village was the first area of the Webb Estate to be completed. Chartered surveyor William Webb designed his 260-acre estate as a concept of co-operation between architect and gardener. The estate was built around the imaginative use of of plants and shrubs, with each road having a different character.

Webb had bought the Foxley estate in 1888 and planted trees, flowers and hedgerows that were allowed to mature. Only in 1901 with the coming of the local tram service, were homes were built and offered for sale.

Upper Woodcote Village surrounds a green of four acres. When the green was first laid out, Webb introduced a flock of geese to a pond he had built in one corner. The pond was eventually filled in.

Webb was a Quaker and the Lord Roberts Temperance Inn - named after Field Marshall Lord Roberts - was a "pub with no beer." It was later a coffee shop and post office.

Most of the inner roads of the estate were laid out from 1907 and the plots were developed between 1912 and 1920.
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MAY

2019

Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, is one of the world’s greatest churches. According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site, then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island), in the 7th century, at the time of Mellitus (d. 624), a Bishop of London. The island was a marshy retreat from the City of London, flanked by two channels of the Tyburn River, which flowed where Downing Street and Great College Street now run. Construction of the present church was begun in 1245, on the orders of Henry III.

It is a designated World Heritage Site and ‘Royal Peculiar’, which means the Dean is directly answerable to the monarch. The coronation of Kings and Queens has taken place here since 1066, and many of the nation’s Kings and Queens are buried in the Abbey. Principal among them is St Edward the Confessor, King of England from 1042 to 1066, whose shrine is at the heart of the Abbey. The Abbey has hosted many royal weddings.

Apart from the royal graves, there are many famous commoners interred her...
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MAY

2019

Bridge House
Built around 1705 and demolished in 1950, Bridge House in George Row was once surrounded by the Jacob’s Island rookery. Jacob’s Island was immortalised by Charles Dickens’s novel ’Oliver Twist’, in which the principal villain Bill Sikes meets a nasty end in the mud of ’Folly Ditch’.

Dickens was taken to this then-impoverished and unsavory location by the officers of the river police, with whom he would occasionally go on patrol. When a local politician attempted to deny the very existence of Jacob’s Island, Dickens gave him short shrift, describing the area as the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London. The area was once notoriously squalid and described as The very capital of cholera and The Venice of drains by the Morning Chronicle of 1849.

The ditches were filled in the early 1850s, and the area later redeveloped as warehouses.
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MAY

2019

Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace is a royal residence set in Kensington Gardens. It has been a residence of the British Royal Family since the 17th century. The palace is the official London residence of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, while the Duke and Duchess of Kent reside at Wren House.

Kensington Palace, earlier known as Nottingham House, has its origins in a Jacobean mansion built in 1605. Shortly after William and Mary assumed the throne as joint monarchs in 1689, they began searching for a residence better situated for the comfort of the asthmatic William. In summer 1689, William and Mary bought Kensington Palace from Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham.

George I spent lavishly on new royal apartments from 1718. William Kent painted a staircase and some ceilings. In 1722 he designed the Cupola Room, the principal state room, with feigned coffering in its high coved ceiling; in 1819, the Cupola Room was the site of the christening of Princess Alexandrina Victoria, who had been born at Kensington, in the apartments of the ...
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MAY

2019

Chartist meeting, Kennington Common (1848)
On 10 April 1848, William Kilburn took daguerrotypes of the Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common – taken from the top of The Horns tavern were the first ever photos of a crowd scene. William Kilburn opened his portrait studio on London’s Regent Street in 1846. He was commissioned to make daguerreotype portraits of the Royal Family between 1846 and 1852 as the Royal Photographer, and was awarded a prize medal for his photographs at the 1851 Great Exhibition.

The Chartists who took their name from Magna Carta were the first British national working class movement. Their meetings had a carnival-like atmosphere.

Tensions were high on that April morning – there were those who feared that civil strife would break out. Between 6-10 April, extra troops were brought to the capital and the authorities enlisted 170 000 special constables. However, on 10th, instead of the half million expected, only about twenty to thirty thousand Chartists demonstrated, and there was little violence.
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MAY

2019

Kensington Canal
The Kensington Canal was a canal, about two miles long, opened in 1828 in London from the River Thames at Chelsea, along the line of Counter’s Creek, to a basin near Warwick Road in Kensington. It had one lock near the Kensington Basin. It was not commercially successful, and was purchased by a railway company, which laid its line along the route of the canal.

Counter’s Creek was a minor tributary of the Thames running south from Kensal Green to join the main river west of Battersea Bridge.

Lord Kensington, William Edwardes, seeing the success of the Regent’s Canal, asked his surveyor William Cutbush in 1822 to draw up plans to convert the creek into a canal, with the object of bringing goods and minerals from the London docks to the Kensington area, then a rural district isolated from London.

After some modifications, Cutbush’s plan obtained Parliamentary sanction in 1824, and the Kensington Canal Company was incorporated in that year. William Edwardes and a group of his friends were the proprietors; the cost of construction had been estimated as £7,969. The share capital of the company was £10,000 in one hun...
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MAY

2019

Coldharbour Farm
Coldharbour Farm, which was active in Hayes until the 1950s, was once the property of the Minet family. Properties in Hayes, Middlesex, acquired piecemeal by the Minet family, were collectively known as the Minet Estate. The Minets were a French Huguenot family who came to England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1686.

At its height the Minet Estate comprised a very large portion of the eastern side of the parish of Hayes.

Not only did they own Coldharbour Farm but Hayes Court Farm, Hayes Bridge Farm, East Acton Brickworks, Victoria Sawmills, Wistowe, Porch House, Townfield and the Grange.
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MAY

2019

Mops and Brooms
Nelson Cottage, Well End, is a two storey two bay timber framed house dating from c1600. It became a beer house in 1841. It was bought by Hertford Brewers McMullen’s in 1912 and was known as the Lord Nelson.

It closed in 1932 and the building reverted back to a dwelling house, McMullen’s building the new Lord Nelson on an adjacent plot of land.

For some time the pub had been affectionately known by locals as The Mops and Brooms. The name supposedly derived from a fight between gypsies, farm labourers and poachers who frequented the pub and who used the travellers wares of mops and
brooms in a mighty punch up.

When McMullen’s decided to officially change the name to The Mops & Brooms the original sign, a portrait of Lord Nelson, was replaced by one depicting the fight. The old sign now hangs over a fireplace in the pub.
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