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.

Great Portland 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.

Latest on The Underground Map...

Great Portland Street

Great Portland Street is a London Underground station near Regent’s Park. Great Portland Street station was opened on 10 January 1863 as Portland Road, renamed Great Portland Street and Regents Park in 1923 and changed to its present name on 1 March 1917.

The station’s present structure, constructed in 1930, is situated on a traffic island at the intersection of Marylebone Road, Great Portland Street and Albany Street. This building features a steel-framed design with a cream terracotta exterior. The station’s perimeter also houses shops and, in the past, included a car showroom with office spaces above it. Notably, Great Portland Street was a significant sales location for the motor industry. The station’s architectural design, credited to C.W. Fowler, earned it a Grade II listing in January 1987.

The area around Great Portland Street station offers various points of interest. Regent’s Park and the iconic BT Tower are nearby attractions. Additionally, the station’s proximity to Regen...

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SEPTEMBER

2023

Courtfield Gardens, SW5
Courtfield Gardens is named after the field beneath it, cultivated until the 19th century According to 16th-century records, Courtfield Gardens was built on a vast open meadow known as Great Courtfield. This meadow was surrounded by fertile land and small farms and was part of a large area of land that extended from Cromwell Road to The Old Brompton Road in one direction, and from Gloucester Road to Earl’s Court Road in the other direction. Great Courtfield was included in the Earl’s Court ’manor’.

During the 18th century, Earl’s Court House, a grand manor house, was constructed on the land that is now the western terrace of Barkston Gardens. This building replaced an extensive dwelling that was described in 1705 as having fountains, a marble-tiled dairy, engines for water, and impressive gates at its entrance.

In the 19th century, the area surrounding Courtfield Gardens was developed with rows of terraced houses, as the demand for housing in London grew. Earl’s Court House was demolished in the middle of th...
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JUNE

2023

Alba Place, W11
Alba Place is part of the Colville Conservation Area Originally the stable house accommodation for the main houses on Lancaster Road, the primary purpose of the Mews properties is now residential.

Alba Place is located on the site of an original Mews but has been redeveloped to a degree that it no longer contains any surviving Mews properties. It is a gated cul-de-sac off Portobello Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, almost opposite Hayden’s Place (another redeveloped Mews). It contains 16 properties used for residential purposes.

Alba Place was Albion Place until 1937, one of the many patriotic names dating from the period immediately following the Crimean War.
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JUNE

2023

Canary Wharf to Canada Water walk
An unusual walk between stations on the Jubilee Line which involves asphyxiation One of my series of walks
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MAY

2023

Dunk Street
Dunk Street ran parallel to Great Garden Street (now Greatorex Street) to the west, and King Edward Street, which has also ceased to exist, to the east Dunk Street stretched approximately 200 metres from Old Montague Street to Hanbury Street, situated about 300 metres east of Baker’s Row, which is now the southern section of Vallance Road.

In 1643, Edward Montague, William Montague, and Mawrice Tresham acquired property from William Smith and others in the future Mile End New Town and Spitalfields areas.

This property comprised around forty-two or forty-three acres, which included five enclosed fields, a nursery, and a garden plot. A portion of this land would later become the southern half of Mile End New Town. Edward Montague eventually came into possession of all this land by approximately 1680.

The name Pelham Street was derived from Edward Montague’s wife, Elizabeth Pelham, who held ownership prior to their marriage.

In 1691, Elizabeth Pelham obtained a private Act that allowed her to grant leases for the rebuilding of dilapidated properties on her estates i...
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LATEST LONDON-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROJECT

Sue Meyrick Road, SW11 Added: 24 Sep 2023 19:09 GMT	Meyrick Rd My family - Roe - lived in poverty at 158 Meyrick Rd in the 1920s, moving to 18 Lavender Terrace in 1935. They also lived in York Rd at one point. Alf, Nell (Ellen), plus children John, Ellen (Did), Gladys, Joyce & various lodgers. Alf worked for the railway (LMS). Reply
Michael Tyrrell Avenue, DA16 Added: 20 Sep 2023 21:10 GMT	Momentous Birth! I was born in the upstairs front room of 28 Tyrrell Avenue in August 1938. I was a breach birth and quite heavy ( poor Mum!). My parents moved to that end of terrace house from another rental in St Mary Cray where my three year older brother had been born in 1935. The estate was quite new in 1938 and all the properties were rented. My Father was a Postman. I grew up at no 28 all through WWII and later went to Little Dansington School Reply
Mike Levy Arbour Square, E1 Added: 19 Sep 2023 18:10 GMT	Bombing of Arbour Square in the Blitz On the night of September 7, 1940. Hyman Lubosky (age 35), his wife Fay (or Fanny)(age 32) and their son Martin (age 17 months) died at 11 Arbour Square. They are buried together in Rainham Jewish Cemetery. Their grave stones read: "Killed by enemy action" Reply
Lady Townshend Bridge House Added: 8 Sep 2023 16:02 GMT	Tenant at Westbourne (1807 - 1811) I think that the 3rd Marquess Townshend - at that time Lord Chartley - was a tenant living either at Westbourne Manor or at Bridge House. He undertook considerable building work there as well as creating gardens. I am trying to trace which house it was. Any ideas gratefully received Reply
Alex Britton Roding Valley Added: 30 Aug 2023 10:43 GMT	Late opening The tracks through Roding Valley were opened on 1 May 1903 by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) on its Woodford to Ilford line (the Fairlop Loop). But the station was not opened until 3 February 1936 by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER, successor to the GER). Source: Roding Valley tube station - Wikipedia Reply
Kevin Pont Roding Valley Added: 30 Aug 2023 09:52 GMT	Shhh.... Roding Valley is the quietest tube station, each year transporting the same number of passengers as Waterloo does in one day. Reply
Kevin Pont Dollis Hill Added: 30 Aug 2023 09:47 GMT	The connection with Bletchley Park The code-breaking computer used at Bletchley Park was built in Dollis Hill. Reply
Kevin Pont Hampstead Added: 29 Aug 2023 15:25 GMT	The deepest station At 58m below ground, Hampstead is as deep as Nelson’s Column is tall. Source: Hampstead tube station - Wikipedia Reply

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We now have 628 completed street histories and 46872 partial histories

OCTOBER

2015

The Brittania
The Brittania was situated on the corner of Clarendon Road and Portland Road, W11. Latterly known as "The Clarendon", it became a restaurant in the 2010s. It had been in business as a public house since about 1869.

The former Britannia public house at 123a Clarendon Road was marred by the shopfront that was added to it (which is now a restaurant), but the high late Victorian pub architecture can be seen clearly on the upper floors. The house next door at No. 121 used to be the Clarendon Mission Hall in the early 1900s.
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OCTOBER

2015

Rackham Street, W10
Rackham Street is a road that disappeared from the streetscape of London W10 in 1951. During the night of 27/8 September 1940, after Nazi incendiary bombs, the central part of Rackham Street become a huge crater (though only one person was killed).

As the Luftwaffe aimed for the railway line and gas works, the nearby Princess Louise Hospital was also bombed three times and around a hundred incendiaries hit the St Charles convent and grounds.

In the early 1950s, the rest of Rackham Street was demolished to make way for the Balfour of Burleigh estate. Rackham Street left no trace - not even a name.
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OCTOBER

2015

Adair Road junction with Southam Street (1932)
A wet day in London W10. This image shows the junction of Adair Road and Southam Street on a very wet day in 1932. The site was the future position of Southam House, built after the Second World War.
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OCTOBER

2015

Down Street
Down Street, also known as Down Street (Mayfair), is a disused station on the London Underground, located in Mayfair. It was opened in 1907 by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway. It was latterly served by the Piccadilly line and was situated between Dover Street (now named Green Park) and Hyde Park Corner stations.

The station was little used and trains often passed through it without stopping. Its lack of patronage coupled with its proximity to other stations resulted in its closure in 1932. During the Second World War it was used as a bunker by prime minister Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet. The station building survives today and is close to Down Street’s junction with Piccadilly. Part of it is now converted to a retail outlet.
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OCTOBER

2015

Cherwell Street, SW8
Cherwell Street was built by Frederick Haynes in the mid-Victoria era. In 1862, a speculator called Frederick Haines moved to build on a plot of land called "9/10 Cross Road Shot". Five parties were involved: Joseph Clarke, Riverhill near Sevenoaks; Arthur Pott of Tunbridge Wells; William Williams of Lincolns Inn Fields; Henry Stevenson, Shepherds Bush; and Francis Woodgate, captain in the Life Guards, of Sevenoaks.

There was no expense in laying out roads, although drainage would of course have been required. Houses were then built on plots by builders.

1-6 Culvert Road were leased to George Bateman, a Brixton builder, in Nov. 1862 to March 1863. An extra house - la - was inserted and leased to Robert Rice on 23 December 1867.

1-5 Carlton Cottages in the main road were leased to Henry Hunt, builder on 20 January 1866.

Haines acquired two parcels of enclosed land, occupied by Henry Shailer and Graham on 16 April 1862, involving the same parties as at Culvert Road.

The estate pla...
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OCTOBER

2015

1879 Royal Agricultural Society Show
Washout summers are not only a modern phenomenon The 1879 Royal Agricultural Society of England’s annual show was held on an area which later became Queen’s Park.

The Kilburn show was opened on 30 June 1879 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The 100 acre site was chosen for its proximity to the railway network, Queen’s Park Station having opened on 2 June 1879 on the main line from London to Birmingham, just in time to facilitate the movement of heavy machinery and stock.

By the 1870s the annual shows had become major events and the Kilburn show was to be the largest every held. It saw an entry of 11,878 implements, 2879 livestock entries and over 187,000 visitors. There were many international entries and there was a Royal Box which was part of an arena seating 3000 people, the winning cattle and horses were paraded here every day.

The Royal Agricultural Society of England was formed in 1838 to promote the potential of science for raising agricultural productivity. Annual agricu...
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OCTOBER

2015

Royal Garden Hotel
Royal Garden Hotel is a 5 star hotel in London, England. It is located in the heart of Kensington, on Kensington High Street, overlooking Kensington Palace and gardens. The palace, Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall can all be seen from the hotel.

What is now the Royal Garden Hotel was originally built in the 1800s under the name of the Palace Hotel with a completely different image and layout. As part of the war effort in the 1900s it was taken over and used as the headquarters for the Woman’s Royal Voluntary Service.

In the 1960s, the hotel was demolished and completely rebuilt under the design of Colonel Richard Seifert. After five years of construction the hotel re-opened in 1965 under the Royal Garden Hotel brand, as it stands today. In 1966 it hosted the official reception celebrating England’s victory in the World Cup final.

Read the Royal Garden Hotel entry on the Wikipedia...
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OCTOBER

2015

Chrisp Street Market
Chrisp Street Market is the central marketplace and town centre of Poplar. It was the first purpose-built pedestrian shopping area in the United Kingdom, rebuilt as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain. It features shops, a prominent clock tower, pubs, cafes, flats, and 80 market stalls.
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OCTOBER

2015

Ellerdale Road, NW3
Ellerdale Road was added to the streetscape of Hampstead in 1874. The architect T. K. Green built no. 2 Ellerdale Road, ’a defiantly Gothic house’ for himself in c. 1890. Several houses in Ellerdale Road have a sunflower motif, including no. 6 which Richard Norman Shaw built for himself in 1875 and occupied until his death in 1912.
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OCTOBER

2015

University College School
University College School, generally known as UCS, is an independent school charity situated in northwest London. The school was founded in 1830 by University College London and inherited many of that institution’s progressive and secular views. According to the Good Schools Guide, the school "Achieves impressive exam results with a relaxed atmosphere." UCS moved away to new purpose-built buildings in Frognal in Hampstead in 1907, which were opened by HM King Edward VII with the Archbishop of Canterbury in attendance on July 27.
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OCTOBER

2015

St Mary’s Town and Country School
St. Mary’s Town and Country School was an independent, non-denominational, co-educational progressive day and boarding school. It was founded in Belsize Park, London in 1937. It closed at the end of 1982.

The school was owned and run by Mrs Elisabeth Paul PhD (née Selver), assisted by her husband Henry Paul, both of German-Jewish origin. In 1937 they bought the school, originally called St. Mary’s School, at 1 Belsize Avenue. The school curriculum was biased toward the learning of languages and the arts from an early age, and the pupils, aged 4 to 18 years, were primarily the children of artists, musicians, writers, film producers and actors.
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OCTOBER

2015

Wembley F.C.
Wembley Football Club is an English semi-professional football club. They currently play in the Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division. They play in red and white and are nicknamed "The Lions". This is due to the lion in the centre of the coat of arms for the old Borough of Wembley.

The club was formed in 1946 in the post-Second World War football boom, as many in the area felt it wrong that the area which held the English National Stadium didn’t have its own senior football team. It was formed from two local Junior clubs: Sudbury Rangers and Sudbury Ratepayers. As a result of their efforts, the club took the motto "A Posse Ad Esse" ("From Possibility To Reality").

Read the Wembley F.C. entry on the Wikipedia...
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OCTOBER

2015

Upper Richmond Road, SW15
Upper Richmond Road has long connected Putney with areas around Richmond. Putney village, originally clustered around the church near the bank of the River Thames, developed very rapidly during the nineteenth century. In 1849 it was said to be only partly paved - although as early as 1656 thirteen parishioners of Putney petitioned Cromwell to be allowed to pave the High Street, which they said was long and broad and could not be made by gravelling.

The westward continuation of Putney High Street, which lies at right angles to the river, is called Putney Hill, and ascends towards Wimbledon Common. High Street is crossed above Putney station by Upper Richmond Road, which leads from East Putney station to Sheen and Richmond, being joined at Barnes Common by Lower Richmond Road.

East Sheen along the road from Putney became a manor in its own right around 1500. East Sheen village was centred around Milestone Green, which lay where Upper Richmond Road now crosses Sheen Lane. The village had only 26 houses in 1617.

Aro...
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OCTOBER

2015

St Stephen’s Church
St Stephen’s is a former church building, sited on Rosslyn Hill at its junction with Pond Street, a steep slope adjacent to the Royal Free Hospital. It was designed in the Neo Gothic style by Samuel Sanders Teulon and he considered it the best of the 114 churches he designed, calling it his "mighty church" – it was also the most expensive of them. He accepted the commission to design it after Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, Lord of the Manor of Hampstead, offered Hampstead Green to be the site for a new church in 1864. From 1864 to 1867 funds were raised (the projected cost was estimated as £7,500; the final sum was actually £27,000).

Work began in January 1869, with the foundation stone being laid May that year and consecration by John Jackson the Bishop of London occurring on 31 December. It was fully complete by 1870, but was continually prone to subsidence due to its hilly site.

It held up to 1200 worshippers at its peak.

By the later 1960s concerns had been raised on structural grounds and, with maintenance costs rising and its congregation declining, it was closed for worship in 197...
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OCTOBER

2015

St Mary’s Church
St Mary’s Chapel, now known as St Mary’s Church, is a Grade II* listed Roman Catholic church. St Mary’s was the first Catholic church to be built in Hampstead after the English Reformation of the 16th century. The Abbé Jean-Jacques Morel, a refugee from the French Revolution, was its first pastor. The little chapel was completed in less than a year and opened its doors to worshippers for the first time in August 1816.

By this time with the final defeat of Napoleon, the majority of French refugees in Hampstead had returned to France and the congregation numbered about a hundred on a regular basis although these numbers were increased in the summer months by itinerant Irish hay-makers who worked in the fields around the village. Education was a priority for the Abbé Morel and he undertook the religious education of both boys and young women at several private Catholic schools in Hampstead. Sometime after the building of the chapel in Holly Place, two schools, one for boys and the other for girls, were set up next to the presbytery and was supported by subscrip...
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OCTOBER

2015

St John, Hampstead
St John-at-Hampstead is a Church of England parish church dedicated to St John the Evangelist. Hampstead was granted to the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey by charter in 986 but, though it is unlikely they did not place a church there soon afterwards, the first concrete record of one comes from 1312 (when it was recorded that John de Neuport was its priest) and 1333 (through a mention of a Chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary). On the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Abbey was replaced by the Bishop of Westminster, with its first and only holder Thomas Thirlby also serving as St John’s rector. Thirlby appointed Thomas Chapelyne to be St John’s vicar in 1545, but the see was abolished in 1551 by Edward VI, with the manor and benefice of Hampstead being granted to Sir Thomas Wrothe. The church of this era was part in stone and part in timber, and also had a minor wooden tower.

As Hampstead grew in popularity and size as an out-of-town health resort, the small existing church grew less and less adequate and derelict, being finally declared unusa...
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OCTOBER

2015

South Hampstead High School
South Hampstead High School is an independent day school. The school was founded and is still supported by the Girls’ Public Day School Trust (GPDST). It is a through school for girls from 4 – 18 and operates over three sites. The Senior School is currently housed on a temporary campus whilst a brand new state-of-the-art building is under construction. The Junior School operates from two old houses nearby and the Sixth Form has its own building, Oakwood House. Entry into the school is selective at ages 4+,7+,11+ and 16+ and there is always a high demand for places.

The school was founded in 1876 as the ninth school established by the Girls’ Public Day School Trust (the largest group of independent schools in the UK). It started life as the St John’s Wood School with only 27 pupils. From 1946 until the late 1970s it was a girls’ direct grant grammar school, whereby around half the intake were paid for by the local council. It opened in its present form on 30 September 1980.
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OCTOBER

2015

Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel
The Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel is a place of worship and a member of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, the umbrella organisation for British Unitarians. The chapel, which stands on Rosslyn Hill, was at first a simple wooden structure. Said to have been built in 1692 by Isaac Honeywood who lived in the adjoining mansion, the Red Lion Hill meeting house was first replaced in 1736 and then, having become unsafe, rebuilt in brick on roughly the same site in 1828.

The current building (using the old brick chapel as its hall) was built from 1862 to 1885 in the Neo Gothic style. Two of the building’s stained-glass windows are by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris and another is by Henry Holiday. It holds four John Flaxman reliefs and plaques to previous congregants, such as Helen Allingham (the first woman artist admitted to the Royal Academy). Its stone arches and pointed ceiling vault give it an excellent acoustic, making it a popular recording venue.
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OCTOBER

2015

Queen’s Crescent Market
Queen’s Crescent Market is one of London’s oldest street markets, and is still held every Thursday and Saturday. The market sells food, discounted clothing and a wide variety of household products. It has capacity for more than 90 stalls.

Many traders run stalls that have been passed from generation to generation. This is in contrast to the nearby and considerably more famous Camden markets, which primarily attract tourists and those from other parts of London (Inverness Street Market was a traditional produce market in Camden Town for a century, but in 2013 the last produce stall closed, leaving only tourist stalls like the other Camden markets). Aesthetically Queen’s Crescent market is a mixture, with pretty plain white houses sitting side by side with large council estates, some of which sit in beautifully landscaped grounds.
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