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Featured · * ·
MARCH
19
2024
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.

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 664 completed street histories and 46836 partial histories
Find streets or residential blocks within the M25 by clicking STREETS


AUGUST
28
2016

 

Polish Social and Cultural Association
The Polski Ośrodek Społeczno-Kulturalny (POSK) is the Polish Social and Cultural Association in London. It was founded and funded in 1967 at 238-246 King Street, Hammersmith where Poles who had escaped the occupation of their country congregated in west London.

POSK promotes Polish culture and art. It houses the Library of Poland in London, which was founded in 1942, exhibitions, film screenings, theatre performances and a regular jazz club. There is also a Polish cafe and a restaurant.
»read full article


AUGUST
26
2016

 

Boreham Wood Baptist Church
The Baptist Church, situated on the corner of Furzehill Road, opened on 14 July 1911. The first baptist chapel was in Station Road, (formerly Gas Works Lane), built by members in memory of Mrs Godfrey, The small chapel was converted into a cinema and called The Little Gem and then became a public toilet and later a flower shop.

In 1911 the church was resited.

The Baptist Church was demolished to make way for Furzehill Parade.
»read full article


AUGUST
26
2016

 

68 Shenley Road
68 Shenley Road was a shop on the corner of Furzehill Road - now disappeared. Later split into three separate shops, Buckingham House covered the present addresses 60-62 Shenley Road and the now demolished number 64. Buckingham House was the name that Richard Lidstone, a drapers, called his new shop which occupied the plot and went up soon after the turn of the twentieth century.

After the Second World War, George Lilley’s was occupying the corner plot of 64 Shenley Road - 62 and 60 had split off into other premises. Lilley’s was an electrical shop which by the 1950s was selling and repairing televisions.

In 1958, the entire block of buildings along Shenley Road between Furzehill Road and Drayton Road was demolished and replaced.

Lilleys was on the corner of Furzehill then Kilbys grocers shop, Co op shoe shop then some cottages, Misses Byers sweet shop with the big tree in front amongst the cottages, Hunts Butchers shop and then Drayton Road.
»read full article


AUGUST
25
2016

 


Brent Lodge was built on land which had been part of ’Warren’s Gift’, a charitable estate, sometime between 1817 and 1824. It was a substantial property whose grounds were considerably reduced.

Nearby at Elm Park, west of Nether Street, where building had started in 1882, land was offered in 1900 for good-class villas which were said to be in great demand. By 1908 housing was continuous up to Brent Lodge, which was offered with 26 acres for immediate building.

The Finchley Co-Partnership Society was then formed to lay out a garden village like Hampstead Garden Suburb for the ’less wealthy middle classes’. In 1910 it decided to preserve Brent Lodge and to develop the 24 acres estate on a co-operative system.

The house was demolished in 1962 despite efforts by the comedian Spike Milligan.
»read full article


AUGUST
24
2016

 

Vauxhall Gardens
Vauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden, one of the leading venues for public entertainment from the mid 17th century to the mid 19th century. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, the site was believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660 with the first mention being made by Samuel Pepys in 1662.

The Gardens consisted of several acres of trees and shrubs with attractive walks. Initially, entrance was free with food and drink being sold to support the venture.

The site became Vauxhall Gardens in 1785 and admission was charged to gain its many attractions. The Gardens drew all manner of men and supported enormous crowds, with its paths being noted for romantic assignations. Tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts and fireworks provided amusement. The rococo Turkish tent became one of the Gardens' structures, the interior of the Rotunda became one of Vauxhall's most viewed attractions, and the chinoiserie style was a feature of several buildings.

Enormous crowds could be accommodated. In 1749 a rehearsal of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks attra...
»more


AUGUST
14
2016

 

Myddelton Park, N20
Myddelton Park was built by John Miles before 1882 when he erected All Saints’ Church and vicarage nearby. Extended south along the line of an existing footpath in 1903, Friern Barnet Lane and Oakleigh Road were linked only after this by Myddelton Park.
»read full article


AUGUST
9
2016

 


Newmarket Farm existed until 1855. 47 acres of Newmarket Farm were sold to St Marylebone Burial Board. The cemetery, designed by Barnett and Birch, opened in 1855. The Crematorium was not built until 1937.

To the east of Newmarket Farm, a field provided a cricket ground.

Opposite the cemetery from 1864 was the Convent of the Good Shepherd. In 1873 it became either a reformatory for former female prisoners
or a Magdalene asylum for fallen women. Following a fire in the 1970s most of the buildings were demolished and replaced by Bishop Douglass
School and the Thomas More estate.
»read full article


AUGUST
8
2016

 

Boscobel Street, NW8
Boscobel Street is named after a nearby pub called the Royal Oak. Boscobel House, Staffordshire and its Royal Oak tree became famous as hiding places of King Charles II after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

Charles’s adventure is commemorated by over 500 pubs named the Royal Oak.

The nearby Royal Oak was situated at 2 Princes Road. This pub was present from c.1830 and was demolished in 1898 to make way for the Marylebone Goods Yard, which is now the site of the Lisson Estate.

Boscobel Street was originally named Princes Street but inherited a new moniker in a mass London-wide street renaming where duplicate names were replaced.
»read full article


AUGUST
3
2016

 


Portobello Green features a shopping arcade under the Westway along Thorpe Close, an open-air market under the canopy, and community gardens. From the 1860s to the 1960s this area was occupied by 5 houses along Portobello Road from the railway embankment, numbers 277 to 287, and two round the corner on the south side of Cambridge Gardens before the entrance to Thorpe Mews. 281 Portobello Road (now the address of the Portobello Green arcade) was AJ Symons confectioner and tobacconist in the 1920s.

Anne McSweeney, who lived across the road in the early 1960s, recalls before the Westway, ‘at the junction with Cambridge Gardens was a bakers shop, where I would be dispatched to get a Farmhouse or Short Tin loaf, and there was a small newsagent shop in Portobello Road on the Cambridge Gardens side just before the railway bridge. It was called Little’s and I was told that it was run by a boxer called Tommy Little. Keep walking down the lane on the same side opposite where all the stalls are, there was a pie and mash shop where I would take a large pudding basin and they would put the pies and mash in it.’»more


AUGUST
1
2016

 

Holland Street, SE1
Today’s Holland Street was originally part of a street called Gravel Lane. George Cunningham in his survey of London’s streets, buildings and monuments gave an explanation for the name Holland Street, saying that is was the “location of the old moated Manor House of Paris Garden, subsequently notorious under the name of Holland’s Leaguer, from Holland, a procuress (an early name for a “woman who procures prostitutes”), who occupied it in Charles I’s time. The old Manor House was a favourite resort of James I and his Court, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and the nobility generally.”

Holland was Sarah, also known as Elizabeth Holland who in 1631 had been charged as an “incontinent women” and imprisoned in Newgate. The Manor House was very suitable for her needs as she said it was “near the theatres and baiting rings, with their wild beasts and gladiators”.

In 1630, as Madame Holland, had opened her first-class brothel establishment Hollands Leaguer, on the site now covered by Hopton Street an...
»more


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