By 1557, West Drayton village had already taken on the approximate shape which it presented when the first detailed maps were made, at the beginning of the 19th century, with its houses and cottages grouped around Town Street, where the Green now stands, and Mill Lane (now Money Lane).

Some 16th century building survives, notably the Old Shop at the north-east corner of the Green. One wing of Avenue House, by the Green, dates from the 16th century, though the main part of the house is of the 18th century.

There are indications that the 16th century was a period of expansion for the village. Thus the ’new field’ and the ’new row’ were mentioned about 1517 in transactions of the manor court.

A number of buildings around the Green date substantially from the 17th and 18th centuries.

There were five inns at West Drayton by 1749. In 1689, the ’Crown’ is mentioned: it was then known as the ’Tiger’. It stood at the north end of the Green, on the west side, and was apparently a private residence by 1958. The ’Swan’, which was still an inn in 1958, stood slightly to the north.

As late as 1826 West Drayton was still a lightly populated agricultural parish with its village grouped compactly round the Green, and with only isolated farm-houses and residences elsewhere. The transport developments - canal and rail - of the first half of the 19th century ended the virtual isolation of the village and created the prerequisites for an industrial development.

The railway encouraged horticultural specialization for the metropolitan market, brick manufacture became important on both sides of the canal, which offered the necessary facilities for cheap bulk transport. Established in West Drayton by 1845 at the latest, brick-making helped to transform the aspect of the parish. A visitor in 1876 found his pleasure in its rustic charm marred by ’sulphurous and manury smells from brickfields, canals, and wharves’, while another considered in 1887 that although ’a parish of market gardens rather than of brickfields’ West Drayton wore ’the sordid air of an industrial village’.

The influx of labourers for the horticultural and brick-making industries contributed towards the doubling of the number of inhabited houses between 1801 and 1881, and to a rise in the population to more than a thousand over the same period. Many of the new families were housed in mean cottages, on the Green and in the other old parts of the village, which were not cleared until 1935, and only one new street, Old Farm Road, was built between 1864 and 1894. The rural aspect of the village gradually faded. In 1838 the first railtrippers from London could still see geese, pigs, and donkeys grazing on the Green, but the annual fair was abolished in 1880.




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