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The Underground Map

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Featured · Slade Green ·
December
5
2020

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
1
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
25
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
24
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
23
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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NOVEMBER
30
2019

 

Yabsley Street, E14
Yabsley Street was a rebuilt Russell Street which had existed before the Blackwall Tunnell was built. The Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890 allowed local authorities in London to build their own housing. It rationalised housing and slum clearance legislation, making it much easier for local authorities to carry out clearance schemes. Under certain circumstances, the councils could also build dwellings with the dual purpose of rehousing and to increase the supply of working-class housing.

Following the Act, the London County Council almost immediately began to build new tenement blocks in Poplar and erected as a result of the construction of the Blackwall Tunnel. The tunnel caused the need for people to be rehoused but also meant the purchase of a considerable area of land for the tunnel, much of which was subsequently available for housing development.

The Council Buildings in Yabsley Street dated from 1893, Toronto Buildings and Montreal Buildings in Cotton Street dated from 1899–1901 and blocks in Prestons Road included Baffin, Hudson, Ontar...
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NOVEMBER
29
2019

 

Orme Square, W2
Orme Square is named after Edward Orme, formerly a printseller in Bond Street. Orme purchased a considerable space of ground lying to the west of Craven Hill, upon which the Square is built.

Buildings to the north-east of Orme Square were erected about 1815, called St Petersburg Place, Moscow Road and Coburg Place. The names commemorate the visit of the sovereigns in 1814.

In the centre of St Petersburg Place, Mr Orme erected a private chapel in 1818.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
28
2019

 

Lordship Lane (1893)
View along a rural Lordship Lane Looking west towards Wood Green. The Moselle river runs under the white bridge
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NOVEMBER
27
2019

 

Campden Hill Square, W8
Campden Hill Square is a residential square consisting of large family houses. In the Tudor period there was a farm called Stonehills, 20 acres in area, south of what is now Holland Park Avenue. It came into the possession of the Lloyd Family who sold it in 1823 to a developer, Joshua Flesher Hanson.

Hanson designed a square similar to Regency Square which he had built in Brighton in 1818. The new square provided terraced houses around three sides of a large garden enclosure.

Campden Hill Square was originally called Notting Hill Square but the name was changed to Campden Hill Square in 1893. It slopes steeply down to Holland Park Avenue.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
26
2019

 

East India Dock Road, E14
East India Dock Road is an important artery connecting the City of London to Essex, and partly serves as the high street of Poplar It takes it name from the former East India Docks and its route was constructed between 1806 and 1812 as a branch of the Commercial Road. The road begins in the west at Burdett Road and continues to the River Lea bridge in the east in Canning Town.

It laid within the parish of Limehouse with the western end in the former Gravel Pit Field.

The westernmost end, west of Stainsby Road and Birchfield Street was built up between 1847 and 1853 (north side) and 1850 and 1860 (south side).
»read full article


NOVEMBER
25
2019

 

Langdon Park
Langdon Park is a DLR station in Poplar which opened in 2007. Langdon Park was originally proposed to be called Carmen Street, but later took the name of the adjacent park.

Construction took just over a year at a cost of £10.5 million. The Mayor of London presided over its opening ceremony on 10 December 2007.
The station features three art installations by British artist Kate Davis.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
24
2019

 

Albany, W1S
The Albany is an apartment complex in Piccadilly, divided into apartments in 1802. The Albany was built in the years after 1771 by Sir William Chambers for the 1st Viscount Melbourne as Melbourne House. In 1791, Prince Frederick, Duke of Albany, took up residence. The Duke had lived there for only ten years when his debts and extravagance caught up with him and forced him to sell. In 1802 the Duke gave up the house and it was converted by Henry Holland into 69 bachelor apartments (known as "sets").

The main block was subdivided the main block and its two service wings, and by adding two new parallel long buildings covering most of the garden, running to a new rear gate building on Burlington Gardens.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
22
2019

 

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.
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NOVEMBER
21
2019

 

Enfield Town
Enfield Town is an alternative name for the town centre of Enfield. Enfield was noted as a small agrarian market town in 1303 based around its village green, with further hamlets spread around the royal hunting grounds of Enfield Chase. By 1572 many of the longer roads in the area were in place.

The market was prosperous by the early eighteenth century, but fell into decline soon afterwards. Trading resumed in the 1870s and the market is still in existence, administered by the Old Enfield Charitable Trust.

The New River was built to supply water to London from Hertfordshire and runs immediately behind Enfield Town through the Town Park. The park is the last remaining public open space of Enfield Old Park.

Enfield Town station was opened on 1 March 1849 by the Eastern Counties Railways as simply ’Enfield’. It was renamed Enfield Town in 1886. A
A house which had stood on the site of the later station since the late 17th century is said to have been the birthplace of Isaac D’Israeli...
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NOVEMBER
20
2019

 

Savage Gardens, EC3N
Savage Gardens connects Crutched Friars in the north to Trinity Square in the south, crossing Pepys Street. The house of Sir Thomas Savage was located here. Savage Gardens was originally Savage Garden - the garden behind Sir Thomas Savage’s home.

In 1626 he was made ’Commissioner of Ways and Means of Increasing the King’s Revenue’, and succeeded so well in the post, selling off some of the royal estates, that Charles I created him Viscount Savage later the same year.

He died here in 1635, aged about 49, ’of the running gout’.


»read full article


NOVEMBER
19
2019

 

Heruka Buddhist Centre
Heruka Kadampa Meditation Centre (KMC) is the main New Kadampa Tradition Buddhist Centre for north & central London. It is located in Golders Green, and was founded in 1992 aiming "to provide a venue for Kadampa teachings in the London region". Roughly 20 students live and study at Heruka KMC. In addition the main meditation room, the Centre contains a small library and a shop.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
18
2019

 

Wapping Wall, E1W
Wapping Wall runs parallel to the northern bank of the Thames with many converted warehouses facing the river. The name of Wapping Wall comes from the defensive wall built to prevent the river from flooding the marshland that once covered most of this area of Wapping. Drainage of the marshland and construction of defensive walls had begun around 1327.

On the south side of the street, next to the river, is The Prospect of Whitby pub.

The Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, built in 1890 but closed in 1977 was located here. It is now run as an arts centre and restaurant.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
17
2019

 

Bell Lane, AL2
Bell Lane nowadays runs parallel to the M25, slightly south of it. It is an ancient lane connecting London Colney and Colney Street. The modern site of the McDonald’s restaurant is the former site of the Bell Inn.

Arsenal FC has its training ground near Bell Lane.

Thomas Telford’s London Road (1795) was part of his overall plan for the London to Holyhead road. It was later the A6 trunk road but when the M25 arrived, the eastern end of Bell Lane was diverted near to the Bell to accommodate the motorway.
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NOVEMBER
16
2019

 

Execution Dock
Execution Dock, on the shoreline at Wapping, was used to execute pirates, smugglers and mutineers who had been sentenced to death by Admiralty courts. The Admiralty’s legal jurisdiction was for all crimes committed at sea. The dock symbolised the jurisdiction by being located just beyond the low-tide mark in the river.

George Davis and William Watts, convicted for piracy for the Cyprus mutiny, were the final hangings at the dock on 16 December 1830.

»read full article


NOVEMBER
15
2019

 

Petersham
Petersham is a place in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames on the east of the bend in the River Thames. Petersham appears in Domesday Book as being held by Chertsey Abbey.

The village was the birthplace in 1682 of Archibald Campbell, later 3rd Duke of Argyll who went on to found the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1727. The explorer George Vancouver retired to Petersham.

In 1847 Queen Victoria granted Pembroke Lodge to John, Earl Russell, 1st Earl Russell. Lord Russell’s grandson, Bertrand Russell, spent some of his childhood there.


»read full article


NOVEMBER
14
2019

 

West London Line
The West London Line is a short railway in inner West London that links Clapham Junction in the south to Willesden Junction in the north. The Birmingham, Bristol & Thames Junction Railway was authorised in 1836 to run from the London and Birmingham Railway, near Willesden Junction station, across the proposed route of the Great Western to the Kensington Canal Basin. Construction was delayed by engineering and financial problems.

Renamed the West London Railway (WLR) the line opened on 27 May 1844. The low number of passengers became such a regular target of Punch magazine that the line was called Punch’s Railway. After only six months it closed on 30 November 1844.

An Act of 1845 authorised the GWR to take a joint lease of the WLR - the line was used only to carry coal, and a passenger service was not re-introduced.

An Act in 1859 granted rail companies to construct the West London Extension Joint Railway on the filled-in canal south from the Kensington Basin to the bridge under the Kings Road, to bridge the Thames and to connect near Clapham Junction to railways south of ...
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NOVEMBER
13
2019

 

Ham
Ham is a suburban district in south-west London which has meadows adjoining the River Thames. Ham lies east of a bend in the river that almost surrounds it on three sides and lies south of Richmond and north of Kingston upon Thames. It is connected to Teddington across the river by a footbridge at Teddington Lock. During the summer months, a pedestrian ferry links Ham to Marble Hill House, Twickenham.

Ham is bounded on the west, along the bank of the Thames, by ancient river meadows called Ham Lands.

Ham is bounded to the east by Richmond Park.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
12
2019

 

Parkleys, TW10
The Parkleys estate was built in the mid-1950s and was Grade-II listed in 1998. The road runs around flat-roofed blocks in either a three-storey H-plan configuration with a central entrance stairwell or a two-storey terraced configuration, enclosing shared courtyards.

The flats have large timber windows which span the length of the flats and distinctive concrete tile-hanging.

The estate is lushly planted with retro-looking foliage and despite the styling being very much of its time, the quality of the design means it holds up today as a fine example of preserved modernist architecture.
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NOVEMBER
11
2019

 

Aldford Street, W1K
Aldford Street is named after Aldford, a property on the Grosvenor family’s Cheshire estates. It was formerly known as Chapel Street before 1886, as it led to the Grosvenor Chapel.

Building originally dated from 1730. Sir Richard Grosvenor agreed with Grosvenor Chapel builders - Benjamin Timbrell, Robert Scott, William Barlow and Robert Andrews - that in consideration of their ’hazard and expense’, he granted them additional land nearby at low ground rents.

They jointly received two blocks on the west side of South Audley Street opposite the chapel. Building continued westward during the next few years, the four partners’ holding being slightly enlarged in 1737.
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NOVEMBER
10
2019

 

Sans Walk, EC1R
Sans Walk was named after Edward Sans in 1893, who was then the oldest member of the local parish vestry. The thoroughfare was created from two public rights of way - Short’s Buildings and St James’s Walk. The pathway seems date originally from the late eighteenth century - it is missing from the Rocque map of the 1750s but appears on the 1799 map.
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NOVEMBER
9
2019

 

Campden Hill Gardens, W8
Campden Hill Gardens runs northwards from Aubrey Walk. During the reign of Elizabeth I, a 20 acre farm named Stonehills lay south of (the now) Holland Park Avenue. Its owner Sir Walter Cope sold it to Robert Horseman in 1599 and it became the possession of the Lloyd Family.

A grocer from New Bond Street, Evan Evans, bought a section of the Lloyd Estate before he died in 1825. His great nephew Robert Evans inherited it.

In 1870, Robert Evans decided to develop the estate and granted leases to local builders John Reeves and George Butt. They bought the freeholds of most of the plots from him and built most of the houses.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
8
2019

 

Slade Green
Slade Green was originally called Slades Green. The area was sparsely populated and Slades Green had only 66 people in 1848 but in 1849 the North Kent Line was built. Slades Green gained a National School in 1868 and St Augustine’s Church opened in 1899.

Sladesgreen Farm was the centre of a market gardening area known locally as ’Cabbage Island’ located between Moat Lane (formerly Whitehall Lane) and Slade Green Road.

Slade Green railway station was opened on 1 July 1900 to serve the developing local community following the construction of a rail depot designed to service steam locomotives for South Eastern and Chatham Railway. It was at first called ’Slades Green’ and it was not until 1953 that this was changed to Slade Green.

By 1910 a complete ’railway village’ of 158 houses had been built. The significance of the village had increased by 1905 and that it had absorbed historically important Howbury Manor.

Explosions at a former Trench Warfare Filling Fact...
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NOVEMBER
7
2019

 

Aberdeen Lane, N5
Aberdeen Lane was originally called Ivy Grove Mews. Ivy Grove Mews - later Aberdeen Mews and built at the back of large houses in Aberdeen Park, became Aberdeen Lane by 1916. The street was lengthened in 1924 and 1930.

There had been a project, abandoned in the 1850s, to lay out a 500 acre public park which would have been bigger than Hyde Park. The park would have been bounded by Balls Pond Road, Seven Sisters Road, the Stoke Newington reservoirs and the Great Northern Railway.

The failed park earmarked the area to development with Aberdeen Park and Aberdeen Lane dating from the 1850s.
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NOVEMBER
6
2019

 

Elm Park Gardens, SW10
Elm Park Gardens links Fulham Road with Elm Park Road. It is built around the gardens of the same name.

Once a large Chelsea park together with a grand Chelsea mansion house called Chelsea Park Lodge which was surrounded with cedars, mulberries and elms - hence the name.

The existing development was laid out in 1885 by George Godwin.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
5
2019

 

Mayplace Road East, DA1
Mayplace Road East runs west-east through the DA1 and DA7 postcodes. The road dates from before the suburbanisation of the area, as Mayplace Lane and then Mayplace Road. Mayplace Farm lay along its side as the lodge to Martens Grove was also on the road.
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NOVEMBER
4
2019

 

Hockley-in-the-Hole
Hockley-in-the-Hole was an area where bear-baiting and duelling took place in the 18th century. Hockley-in-the-Hole was situated roughly where the Ray Street Bridge stands, north of the junction of Clerkenwell Road and Farringdon Road.

It stood in the valley of the Fleet and its name seems to have been derived from the frequent flooding of the Fleet - Hockley, in old English, meaning ’a muddy field’. By 1756 the locality was narrow, and surrounded by bad housing. Soon after that, the road was widened, raised and drained.

On the later site of the ’Coach and Horses’ in Ray Street, stood the Bear Garden, which, in Queen Anne’s time, rivalled the Southwark Bear Garden of Elizabethan days. The earliest advertisement of the ’amusements’ here occurred in the Daily Post dated 10 July 1700.

In 1774 the notorious name of Hockley-in-the-Hole was formally changed to that of Ray Street.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
3
2019

 

St Augustine Watling Street
St Augustine, Watling Street was an Anglican church which stood just to the east of St Paul’s Cathedral. First recorded in the 12th century, it was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666 and rebuilt to the designs of Christopher Wren. This building was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War, and its remains now form part of St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School.





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NOVEMBER
2
2019

 

Bowes Park
Bowes Park is named after an old manor called Bowes. The Bowes Park area urbanised in the 1880s though the name is recorded in 1274 - by 1822 Bowes Farm was visible on one of the first Ordnance Survey maps in 1822 and 1877. Bowes is ultimately derived from Latin. The first owner of the manor was John de Arcubus (Latin for ’of the bows or arches’). John de Arcubus was one of many of his family who lived around St Mary-le-Bow church in the City of London.

Bowes Park is a centred around Myddleton Road which houses a number of shops.

Bowes Park railway station was first opened by the GNR in 1880 and is now a short walk from Bounds Green Underground station.
»read full article


NOVEMBER
1
2019

 

Airlie Gardens, W8
Airlie Gardens is named after the 5th Earl of Airlie (1826-1881), who lived on nearby Campden Hill at Holly Lodge. Holly Lodge - sometimes called Airlie Lodge - was the house where Lord Macaulay spent the last years of his life. It later became part of Queen Elizabeth College.

William Cooke was a Paddington builder who built Airlie Gardens in 1878 on the land of Elm Lodge. That year the Grand Junction Water Works Company surrendered the lease of the lodge. Some of its extensive grounds became the communal gardens for the new houses of Airlie Gardens.
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