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

MAY

2018

Lots Road, SW10
Lots Road, older than the surrounding streets, was once Pooles Lane which was a track leading to Chelsea Farm. From Anglo-Saxon times, the land on the northern banks of the Thames was divided into individually owned ‘lots’, and open to common pasturage after the annual harvest. In 1825 the ‘Lammas’ rights of common grazing were abolished on the ‘Lots’.

In 1544 it was recorded as lez lotte when the name discribed the lots of ground which were originally part of the manor over which the parishoners held Lammas rights. Thus bringing the words allotments into present day word.

When the Cremorne Gardens closed in the 1860s, the landowner Mrs Simpson, let the land as building plots for the construction of workers’ housing. The variety and range of materials and architectural detailing amongst the workers cottages suggests that a number of different builders constructed the housing.

Historic maps indicate that much of the land was developed within a short period of time between 1868 and 1896. Tadema Road (Tadema Street...
»more

MAY

2018

Oakleigh Park Farm
Oakleigh Park Farm was immediately south of where Chandos Avenue is now. The growing suburban demand for milk ensured that local dairy farms flourished. Oakleigh Park Farm was situated on High Road Whetstone.

Manor Farm Dairies were founded in 1875 by Joseph Wilmington Lane and joined in the 1920s with United Dairies, which had been founded in 1917. There were two farms in the group - Manor Farm, Highgate and Oakleigh Park Farm, Whetstone. The head offices were in High Street, Whetstone, and later in High Road, East Finchley. Manor farm survived until 1932. Dairying also featured on the Woodhouse estate in 1902 and on Park farm (Bibwell) for many years before 1918 until the fields were sold for building.

There were also other farms in Whetstone itself.

Blue House Farm was between the modern Chandos Avenue and The Black Bull and Brook Farm, on the eastern side of Whetstone High Road, had been acquired by Finchley UDC in 1912 to provide cricket and football pitches and allotments

There were three ...
»more

MAY

2018

Spaniards Inn
The Spaniards Inn lies in Hampstead Lane on the way from Hampstead to Highgate and on the edge of Hampstead Heath. It is believed to have been built in 1585 on the Finchley boundary, with the tavern forming the entrance to the Bishop of London’s estate – an original boundary stone from 1755 can still be seen in the front garden. Opposite it there is a toll house built in around 1710.

The Spaniards was licensed to Francis Porero, the eponymous Spaniard, in 1721. It stood at the south-west exit from Hornsey park, where a gate was marked in 1754. The building itself may be 17th century, although it has been extensively altered and refaced. It was there that the mob at the time of the Gordon Riots in 1780 was halted on its way to destroy Lord Mansfield’s house at Kenwood.

It causes a notorious traffic bottleneck. It was the site of a toll and opposite the pub lies the former toll keeper’s cottage. Both the pub and the cottage are now listed buildings and so traffic has crawl between the two. These boundaries are still relevant today – the pub is in Barn...
»more

MAY

2018

Grass Farm was developed in the late 19th century. The south-western area of Church End, Finchley was part of the Bibbesworth Manor for many centuries, named after Sir Edmund Bibbesworth whose family held it from about 1418 to 1443. The Manor was part of the Bishop of London’s estate.

Grass or Groates Farm, one of the larger farms in Finchley which stretched from Church End westwards to the Dollis Brook. The farm can be
traced back to the 14th century when the Groate family occupied it from about 1394 to the 1460s.

The farm, which covered 113 acres, was sold by auction on 15th May 1856 and was purchased by John Harris Heal, the grandfather of Ambrose Heal, founder of Heal’s of Tottenham Court Road.

Heal died in 1876 and the estate was purchased from their executors in 1894 by James Christopher Wilkinson of Elm Grange, who subsequently offered the farmland for sale for building purposes in 1906. Most of the farm was demolished in 1911 and is commemorated in Grass Park, c...
»more

MAY

2018

Fortis Green
How Fortis Green got its name is not clear. ’Fortis’ suggests a place before something, but the ’something’ is obscure. It appears in 1558 when it was considered part of Finchley Common. The green may simply have been a gap in woods and ran as far as where Muswell Hill Odeon is today.

Even into the 20th century Coldfall Woods came as far south as the present back fences of the houses on the north side of the road.

On a map of 1754, Cherry Tree Woods (then Dirt House Woods) to the south had been cleared and the land enclosed with at least two large houses. More houses were built along the road from the beginning of the 19th century.

By the middle part of the 19th century there were about 60 houses, mostly belonging to labourers, which had been erected on the green between the woods and the road.

The National Freehold Land society developed what had been Haswell Park into southern, eastern, and western Roads after 1852, with 180 plots, but development was slow. H...
»more

MAY

2018

Aberdare Road, EN3
Aberdare Road was in existence by 1903. The 1914 Ordnance Survey map shows this and adjoining roads laid out, but no houses built - nothing was built until after World War I.

All the roads on the estate are named after towns in South Wales - Glyn Road, Swansea Road and Brecon Road.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Zebra taxi
Around 1912, a zebra-pulled taxi was active on the streets of Brixton. The driver is Gustav Grais who ran a circus of zebras and baboons - the hackney cab was likely a promotion for the circus, active for a day or two only.

The photo shows the zebra-driven carriage leaving Brixton and heading for Stockwell.
»read full article

MAY

2018

London Welsh School
The London Welsh School was founded in 1958 by a group of parents who had been sending their children to Welsh lessons on Saturday mornings. After long discussions and appeals, the school finally opened with thirty pupils and now caters for up to 40 pupils.

Nearly 60 years later, the school is still going strong and in 2015 opened in its latest location: the Hanwell Community Centre.

It is an independent school which accepts students between the ages of 3 and 11. It has nursery classes.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Woodside Lane, N12
Woodside Lane dates from 1780 at the latest. In 1851 there was a regular ’bus service running from the Torrington to Charing Cross and railway connections had been established with London, first at New Southgate.

During the 1850s and 1860s Woodside Lane, Torrington Park, Friern Park, Grove Road, Finsbury Road (now Finchley Park) had all been laid out with housing. In 1872 the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway opened Torrington Park Station which was renamed Woodside Park in 1882. It was during the construction of a railway through Finchley from 1864 that a Reverend Henry Stephens opened a mission for the navvies working on the line.

A church had been constructed by 1869 which was formally opened in 1870 as Christ Church. It became a new parish in 1872. By 1874 it was said that there were 350 dwellings within this ecclesiastical parish.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Finchley Catholic High School
Finchley Catholic High School is a comprehensive boys’ secondary school with a coeducational sixth form in North Finchley. It accepts students between the ages of 11 and 18. Finchley Catholic Grammar School was founded in 1926 by the Monsignor Canon Clement Henry Parsons (1892–1980), parish priest of St. Alban’s Catholic Church, Nether Street, North Finchley. He founded the Challoner School (a fee-paying grammar school for boys who had not passed their 11+); as well as St. Alban’s Catholic Preparatory School as a feeder primary for the Grammar and Challoner schools. 1971 saw its two institutional forebears, Finchley Catholic Grammar School ("Finchley Grammar") and the Challoner School, merge to become Finchley Catholic High School). It was the sister school of the all-girls St. Michael’s Catholic Grammar School during the grammar school era.

The school started as a private initiative and parents were able to consider allowing their children to remain at school for longer. In a short time demand outgrew accommodation, the school had to extend. An appeal from the pulpit by Canon Parsons began the collection that by Christmas 1928 had ...
»more

MAY

2018

North Finchley
North Finchley is centred on Tally Ho Corner, the junction of the roads to East Finchley, Finchley Central and Whetstone. The name of the whole of the modern area covering North Finchley and neighbouring Whetstone was North End, a name first used in 1462.

The rapid enclosure of the countryside in the first years of the nineteenth century meant the end of Finchley Common in 1816, opening up North Finchley from urbanisation - this still took a while nevertheless.

21 cottages were built in Lodge Lane during 1824 and by the 1830s there were other houses - even a chapel by 1837.

By 1839 North Finchley had a blacksmith (on Lodge Lane and not the High Road).

In 1851 there was a regular bus service from the ’Torrington’ to Charing Cross and next came the local railway lines. Christ Church was opened in 1870 and a new parish was formed in 1872.

In 1905 the Metropolitan Electric Tramways started a route between Highgate and Whetstone - a tram depot was opened in Woodberry Grove. Trams and buses together promoted North Finchley’s development.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Allerton Road, WD6
Allerton Road is named after Allerton Mauleverer - a village in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire. Allerton Mauleverer lies five miles east of the town of Knaresborough. The A1(M) runs through the area connecting London and Edinburgh.

Back in Borehamwood, the Catholic church - SS St.John Fisher and Thomas More - is on corner of Rossington Avenue and Allerton Road.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Queensbury
Queensbury was a made-up name for a new area north of the existing Kingsbury. The name ’Queensbury’ came about since a new Underground station was being built in a green field area with no existing settlement. The new name was coined by analogy with Kingsbury, one station south. It had been selected by way of a newspaper competition.

The parade of shops and houses built beside the station form a large crescent with a public space in the centre. Queensbury was developed in the 1930s and the architecture reflects this. Until May 2008 a roundabout in front of the station featured a prominent 1930s-style mast bearing the London Underground emblem.

Queensbury station opened on 16 December 1934 originally as part of the Metropolitan line. The Stanmore branch was transferred to the Bakerloo line in 1939, and then the Jubilee line in 1979.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Young Street, W8
Young Street, named after the developer of Kensington Square, was in use as a road by 1685.

Running perpendicular to the square, it was the only thoroughfare leading into it from Kensington High Street until the opening of what is now Derry Street in the mid-1730s.

As with development at Kensington Square, the street was parcelled up into lots and let or sold to developers and builders. Young retained the freehold of the area on the west side, immediately north of no.16, and probably erected two houses there by 1695. Unlike Kensington Square this area was much more socially diverse in character, with occupants connected to the court of William III sharing the length of the street with resident tradesmen and shopkeepers. There were also several Huguenots attracted to residences here.

Little remains from this time. Going by the photographs taken in the 1860s, the street was largely unaltered. Bomb damage from the Second World War, however, and before that the construction of Kensington Square Mansions on the west side of Young Str...
»more

MAY

2018

Angell Town, SW9
Angell Town is a large, municipally-built housing complex on the Brixton/Stockwell border. Angell Town takes its name from the eccentric landowner John Angell, who died in 1784. His grandfather, Justinian, had acquired the property by marriage. Brixton remained undeveloped until the beginning of the 19th century.

Angell Town was laid out in the 1850s on the east side of Brixton Road. The church of St John the Evangelist was built in 1852–3, designed by Benjamin Ferrey in the Perpendicular style.

Most of the old town was replaced in the 1970s by a council estate that combined 1960s-style blocks with the newer concept of overhead walkways and linking bridges, some of which were later removed in an attempt to prevent robbers and vandals making easy getaways. A bridge was supposed to cross Brixton Road to the social facilities on the Stockwell Park estate, but it was never built.

Angell Town soon gained a reputation for neglect and decline and became stigmatised as a sink estate. In a scheme notable for the high degree of residents...
»more

MAY

2018

Victoria Road stadium
The Victoria Road stadium, under various sponsorship names, is the home ground of Dagenham & Redbridge F.C. The site on Victoria Road has been a football ground since 1917, when it was used by the Sterling Works side, whose factory was situated alongside it. It was not fully enclosed until the summer of 1955, when Briggs Sports moved out to Rush Green Road, and Dagenham F.C. moved from the Arena. During that summer they levelled and re-seeded the pitch, removed the stones from the playing surface and extended the banking and the terracing. The only cover was a tiny wooden stand, which was steep and narrow and had a few rows of seating on the far side of the ground. The main stand was built in the autumn of 1955 and was opened on 7 January 1956 by J.W. Bowers, chairman of the Essex County Football Association. During the summer of 1956 the turnstile block at the Victoria Road side of the ground and the men’s toilets situated at the Victoria Road were added. In the summer of 1958 the cover over the far side was erected at a cost of £1,400. The first floodlit match at Victoria Road was ...
»more

MAY

2018

Cremorne Gardens
Cremorne Gardens, with a vestige existing today, was in its prime between 1846 and 1877. From Anglo-Saxon times, the tract of land on the northern banks of the Thames was divided into individually owned ‘lots’, and open to common pasturage after the annual harvest.

Later, in the 17th Century, Chelsea Farm was constructed and the area was used for market gardening plots, supplying central London. In 1778, Lord Cremorne bought Chelsea Farm and Cremorne House was built along with Ashburnham House and Ashburnham Cottage.

Fifty years later in 1825 the ‘Lammas’ rights of common grazing were abolished on the ‘Lots’. In 1830 Charles Random de Berenger, a colourful character implicated in financial fraud during the Napoleonic War, purchased Cremorne House. He was a keen sportsman and opened a sports club know as Cremorne Stadium for ‘skilful and manly exercise’ including shooting, sailing, archery and fencing.

In 1846, De Berenger’s Cremorne Stadium was transformed into a pleasure garden which became a popular and nois...
»more

MAY

2018

Ball Street, W8
Ball Street was created by the Kensington Improvement Scheme of 1868-71, carried out by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Ball Street ran parallel and one street back from the High Street. It was planned as another less busy shopping thorughfare.

Ball Street eventually became service space for the grander high street shops and was ultimately redeveloped as the service yard for John Barkers company in 1927. A fire station once stood on the corner of Ball Street and Derry Street.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Mildred Avenue, WD6
Mildred Avenue is a curious road, being in two halves. The road was laid out in two different periods.

There was a "posh end" as first built when Mildred Avenue was a pre-First World War cul-de-sac. Houses were large with names such as Furze Lodge, Beaulieu and Islip House.

As Boreham Wood urbanised between the wars - about 1936 the second half of Mildred Avenue was built from the newly-constructed Cardinal Avenue. These were more standard houses.

It is unclear why the decision was made to keep the two halves of Mildred Avenue apart but a barrier of vegetation exists to this day make two effective cul-de-sacs. The first part of the avenue is still an unadopted road - the only one in the town.
»read full article

MAY

2018

The Gaumont Finchley opened on 19 July 1937 and was built as a replacement for the Grand Hall across the road. It was a magnificent building designed by the architect W Trent and had 2,000 seats, a café restaurant and a Compton organ. The organ was removed in 1967.

The exterior signage and the elaborate stone mural depicting the shooting of a film, the entrance foyer with its walnut panelling, and the light fittings in the auditorium all remained unaltered. It represented an intact cinema of W E Trent’s later period.

The auditorium had survived intact because it was very wide and the circle only extended over the rear stalls for a few rows. This ruled out an inexpensive conversion to create smaller cinemas downstairs.

The Gaumont exhibited a certain sense of style with a final performance, booking The Last Picture Show as its last picture show in 1980.
»read full article

MAY

2018

Rosslyn Hill, NW3
Rosslyn Hill is a road connecting the south end of Hampstead High Street to the north end of Haverstock Hill. It is the site of the Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, St. Stephen’s Church and the Royal Free Hospital. It is served by the bus routes N5, C11, 46 and 268. Pond Street links it to Hampstead Heath railway station.

Haverstock Hill, Rosslyn Hill, and Heath Street, Hampstead together constitute one long hill 2.8 km long, rising 99 m, with an average grade of 3.5% (maximum 8.5%).
»read full article

MAP YEAR:	1750	1800	1810	1820	1830	1860	1900	1950	2024	Show map without markers
	TIP: To create your own sharable map, right click on the map

PREVIOUSLY ON THE UNDERGROUND MAP...