You can reach Baillies Walk by leaving South Ealing station, crossing to Maytrees Garden opposite, walk the length of this small park and turn left at the end. You are walking along another path – Roberts Alley – which has its own tale to tell. Roberts Alley, like Baillies Walk, was an ancient lane and, rather than beginning at modern Olive Road as it does now, it was the northern extension of Claypond’s Lane (Clayponds Avenue) running up from Brentford.
Where Roberts Alley ends, Baillies Walk starts – at St Mary’s Ealing church – and is it clearly signposted.
On early 19th century maps, Baillies Walk is marked as Bailey’s Lane – a small road running east from St Mary’s before reaching a fork where the modern path makes a northward turn. It appears to have been renamed in the 1860s.
The St Mary’s architect kept the core of the former 1740 church when it was rebuilt in 1866. The church tower is very imposing – flanked by smaller pointed cupolas over the side naves, an unusual idea that is inspired by Byzantine churches. It is quite a beautiful spot. If already fatigued even after this minor exertion, the Rose & Crown pub is in sight here.
But if you wish to carry on, the first stretch of Baillies Walk as it extends east from the church retains a semi-rural feel. The former market gardens and arable fields between the walk and the Piccadilly Line were turned into the Ascott Allotments. These 12 acres are the second largest allotment site in Greater London with 310 individual plots occupied by around 240 plotholders. They were set up in 1886 as St Mary’s Allotment. Ealing boasted a first here: Ealing Dene to the west is the oldest existing allotments in what is now London, created in November 1832.
Ranelagh Road was built parallel to, and to the north of, Baillies Walk during the 1860s and the new houses had generous gardens backing onto Baillies Walk. The end garden walls of the Ranelagh Road houses survive to this day and form the northern boundary wall of the walk.
Baillies Walk turns sharply north at Queen Anne’s Gardens. Until after the First World War, the site of the Queen Anne’s Gardens was a small field between the eastern end of the allotments and the new Ascott Avenue. An ancient path ran southeast from this point and headed to Pope’s Lane. Although the route of this disappeared walkway was disrupted by the building of both the railway in 1880 and Ascott Avenue in the 1890s, the building of Queen Anne’s Gardens during the 1920s put paid to the existence of this path.
As Baillies Walk heads suddenly north, it becomes a pathway which local builders respected as a right of way. For over fifty years it marked the eastern edge of the 1860s development which stopped just beyond Richmond Road until a large house called Elm Grove was given up for building after the First World War, allowing further residential development.
The original pathway in its rural days met and ended at Guy’s Lane – Guy’s Lane became Warwick Road and the curious Baillies Walk still comes to its conclusion here. It is such an obscure thoroughfare that few folk, even from South Ealing, know of its existence.
And if you were following advice to reach Ealing Common, this is at the end of Warwick Road.
