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.

Baker Street

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.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence

Click here to explore another London street
We now have 666 completed street histories and 46834 partial histories
Find streets or residential blocks within the M25 by clicking STREETS

FEBRUARY

2016

Sellon’s Farm
To the east of Harlesden, there were still several farms, Elmwood, Haycroft, Upper Roundwood, and Sellon’s until the late 1890s. Sellon’s Farm stood at the current location of the point where Springwell Avenue meets Park Parade.
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FEBRUARY

2016

High Road, N11
High Road was formerly Betstyle Road. Between 1867 and 1896 New Southgate underwent a growth spurt. The area between High Road and Station Road had been completely developed, and workmen’s housing was beginning to appear in the shadow of the gasworks. Late Victorian and Edwardian lower middle-class housing was under construction in Springfield Road, Palmers Road, and The Limes Avenue.

Betstyle Road, once a country lane leading to Wood Green, had become New Southgate’s High Road and boasted in excess of ninety shops. High Road is now merely an insignificant backstreet. Until a phase of redevelopment began in 1974, it was the main road from Betstyle Circus, the large roundabout, through to Bounds Green Road and the North Circular Road. Victorian shopping parades, virtually all of which have now gone, lined both sides of the road.

The Northern Star opened in the 1860s and last century boasted a skittles alley, which was removed when the pub was refurbished in 1898. The Sir John Lawrence, an...
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FEBRUARY

2016

An introduction to Hampstead by G.E. Mitton (1902)
This text originates from "The Fascination of Hampstead" by Geraldine Edith Mitton (published 1902) The name of this borough is clearly derived from "ham," or "hame," a home; and "steede," a place, and has consequently the same meaning as homestead. Park, in a note in his book on Hampstead, says that the "p" is a modern interpolation, scarcely found before the seventeenth century, and not in general use until the eighteenth.

Lysons says that the Manor of Hampstead was given in 986 a.d. by King Ethelred to the church at Westminster, and that this gift was confirmed by Edward the Confessor; but there is an earlier charter of King Edgar of uncertain date, probably between 963 and 978. It granted the land at Hamstede to one Mangoda, and the limits of the grant are thus stated: "From Sandgate along the road to Foxhanger; from the Hanger west to Watling Street north along the street to the Cucking Pool; from the Cucking Pool east to Sandgate."

Professor Hales, who thinks, whether genuine or not, this charter is certainly of value, interprets Sandgate as North...
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FEBRUARY

2016

29 Rackham Street, W10
29 Rackham Street lay about halfway along on the north side of the street. Frank Hatton, who lived at 29 Rackham Street remembers:

Our house, and its neighbours, were known as tenement houses, in that each floor of the four story house was occupied by different families. There was a front door to which each family had a key. There were no door bells in those days, but each front door had a ’knocker’, and if you wished to call on the family on the first floor, you would knock once, if it was for the second floor, you would knock twice, and three times for the third floor, and four for the fourth or top floor.. There were just two toilets to serve the whole house, and the families would take turns in keeping them clean. There was no bathroom at all, so each family would have a large moveable metal bath, and once a week this would be be filled with hot water, which was boiled up in the kettle (no running hot water in those days) and it took around 20 to 30 kettles to fill the bath, and then the whole family would take turns to use the same...
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FEBRUARY
11
2016

Exmoor Street, W10
Exmoor Street runs from Barlby Road to St Charles Square, W10 St Charles Hospital was built in Exmoor Street in 1879.

The hospital was built by the Board of Guardians of the Poor Law Union of St. Marylebone as an infirmary for the sick poor of that parish, no site being then available in St. Marylebone itself.

Until 1922 it was known as St. Marylebone Infirmary. In 1923 it was renamed St. Marylebone Hospital, and when it was taken over in 1930 by the London County Council under the Local Government Act of the previous year it was given its present name of St Charles Hospital.
»read full article

FEBRUARY
10
2016

Silvester Mews, W11
Silvester Mews was a mews off of Basing Street, W11. On the 1900s Charles Booth map, Silvester Mews was marked as extremely poor. By the tme that the 1950 Ordnance Survey was released, the Mews had been redeveloped and replaced by Silvester House.
»read full article

FEBRUARY
9
2016

Golden Mews, W11
Golden Mews was a tiny mews off of Basing Street, W11. It was redeveloped in the twenty first century and renamed "Golden Cross Mews", becoming a gated community.
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FEBRUARY
8
2016

Blackburn Road, NW6
Blackburn Road is a cul-de-sac off of West End Lane. It was first laid out by the builder it was named after in 1885, a Mr. Blackburn.

F. R. Napier, had opened a plating shop behind West Hampstead fire station in 1919, took the site for his Hampstead Plating Works, which was founded in 1940.
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Bangor Street (1911)
Bangor Street was a street in Notting Dale which disappeared after the Second World War. This photo of the people of Bangor Street was featured in the London City Mission magazine from 1911:.
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Acklam Road protests
Acklam Road was the centre of much action during the building of the Westway. Flats in the Acklam Road section of the Western Avenue Extension are decorated with banners put up by residents, protesting against the new road, on the day of the opening ceremony at Paddington Green.
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

The Crown
Acklam Road was the centre of much action during the building of the Westway North Kensington was, for a while in the early 1970s, a centre for activist graffiti.
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Fowell Street, W11
Fowell Street, W10 was redeveloped in the 1970s. James Fowell a builder from Gray’s Inn Road, moved to Ponders End with the profits from Fowell Street, which he built.
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Corner of Caird Street and Lancefield Street (1910)
The corner of Caird Street with Lancefield Street. This is a notable junction on the Queen’s Park Estate.
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Corner of Bangor Street and Sirdar Road
The location became the Dolphin Pub. This picture is captioned in the London City Mission magazine
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Counters Creek sewer
The effluent society Although the march of new housing was approaching North Kensington by the 1820s, there was a serious practical impediment to development. The upper classes no longer expected to throw their human and household waste out of the windows, or into local streams. Closed sewers were an essential requirement for a successful building enterprise, but they were expensive to create.

However, a piece of good fortune came along. In 1836 the Birmingham Bristol and Thames Junction Railway was set up to provide a railway line between Willesden and the Thames. Railways were the “internet bubble” of the age and started up and went bust in rapid succession. The proposed route ran just to the west of the Norland Estate and through the Holland Estate near Addison Road. This happened to be the route of Counter’s Creek, a stream which served as the local sewer and rubbish dump. The Commissioners of Sewers insisted the railway company had to divert the stream and build a covered sewer f...
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FEBRUARY
1
2016

Bangor Street (turn of 20th century)
The St Agnes soup kitchen was situated on the corner of Bangor Street that this photo was taken from. The precise date of the image is unknown.
»read full article

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