This part of Bayswater was first developed as a residential suburb in the early nineteenth century. The road at its southern end was maybe of Roman or earlier origin. The route continuing west from Oxford Street past Marble Arch, was known by the end of the eighteenth century as Uxbridge Road. It, in time, became Bayswater Road.
This road became a turnpike and a tollbooth was situated here. With traffic having to stop to pay the charge, a number of inns and other businesses became established before the 1830s.
The area at the bottom of Queensway (1829)
Running north from Uxbridge/Bayswater Road was a country track known as Black Lion Lane/Blackman Lane. With the coming of the Great Western Railway and later the Metropolitan Railway at Royal Oak, the area began to urbanise from the north. Black Lion Lane, as it gained buildings, was renamed Queen’s Road in honour of Queen Victoria. She had been born in nearby Kensington Palace. With a trend in London to help our postal workers with the confusing duplicate names for streets, Queen’s Road became Queensway later.
The first department store in London was opened by William Whiteley on the street in 1867. It was awarded a Royal Warrant by Queen Victoria in 1896.
The facade of the store dates from 1911 – the building itself was demolished and rebuilt in 1989 and became the multi-storey Whiteleys Shopping Centre.
Queensway became a centre for the entertainment and leisure industry – London’s biggest ice rink, the Queen’s Ice & Bowl was built here.
Queensway and Westbourne Grove are identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
Both Bayswater and Queensway stations are located on the street. Despite being on different lines, Bayswater and Queensway are extremely close to one another. Bayswater had opened in the 1860s and became a District Line station. Queensway opened on 30 July 1900, as Queen’s Road, and was renamed after the street on 9 September 1946.
The building is a survivor of the buildings designed for the Central London Railway (the Central Line) by Harry Bell Measures. It was built with a flat roof so that commercial development could take place above. A hotel was built.
Queen’s Road Station, Bayswater (c. 1916) by Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942)
A 1916 oil painting of Bayswater tube station, when known as Queens Road (Bayswater), was painted by Walter Sickert. It features a man seated in a recess and an arrangement of colourful advertisements along a fictional depiction of a platform which mixed up the look of Queensway and Bayswater stations.
