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

Click here to explore another London street
We now have 628 completed street histories and 46872 partial histories

DECEMBER

2015

Hanger Lane Farm
Hanger Lane Farm stood on St Ann’s Road (then known as Hangers Lane). The farm was just to the west of Black Boy Lane - around where Chestnuts Primary School is today.

By the 13th Century much of the Parish of Tottenham, including the St Ann’s Road area, was occupied by farmland following the deforestation of areas of the Middlesex Forest. Most of the area was covered by open farmland, owned by a few large estates. Between 1229 and 1264 the Hospital of St Lawrence at Clayhanger was recorded to have occupied a site on Hangers Lane.

By the end of the 18th century most of the woodland within the Parish of Tottenham had been cleared and replaced by pasture and arable farmland. Hanger’s Green had been laid out as a small open space linking Hanger Lane to Black Boy Lane. During the same period a cluster of houses were also developed in the area. Rose Cottage, was on the north side of Hanger Lane and was to become known as Hanger Lane Farm by 1894.
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DECEMBER

2015

Kensington Park Hotel
The KPH is a landmark pub on Ladbroke Grove. The Kensington Park Hotel (KPH), standing on the corner of Ladbroke Grove and Lancaster Road and the pub which Timothy Evans - executed in place of John Christie - was fond of drinking in. It is a traditional public house right on the edge of Portobello Market and Notting Hill with untouched original features and beautiful Victorian décor.

Steeped in history, The KPH was the favoured watering hole of the English politician Oswald Mosely and a place where Tom Jones performed for the huge fee of £10 during the early days of his career.

The KPH Theatre Bar was also home to the Kensington Park Theatre Club in 1986, it reopened in 1988 as the Chair Theatre and then finally changed its name to the Grove Theatre in 1990 which hosted many years of performances.
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DECEMBER

2015

Eaves Housing for Women
Eaves Housing for Women (Eaves) was a charitable company based in London. It provided support to vulnerable women, including female victims of domestic violence, sex trafficking or domestic servitude, and campaigned against prostitution. The organisation also conducted research and lobbying.

Eaves was the umbrella organisation for a number of projects including: "The Poppy Project", "The Scarlet Centre", "The Serafina Project" and "The Lilith Project".

The charity closed in October 2015.

Read the Eaves Housing for Women entry on the Wikipedia...
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DECEMBER

2015

The Grange
The Grange was a large mansion situated on Kilburn High Road until the turn of the twentieth century. The Peters family lived in the Grange from 1843 until its demolition.

Thomas Peters was a successful and wealthy coach builder who made coaches for Queen Victoria. The final occupant was Mrs Ada Peters, the widow of his son John Winpenny Peters. Ada died in the house on 5 February 1910.

The Grange was the last of Kilburn’s large houses. Suburban building surrounded the property, leaving the house and its extensive grounds marooned in a sea of small streets and tight terrace housing.

After Ada’s death, the land was parcelled out - much of it became Kilburn Grange Park.

Meantime the house contents were disposed of in a 50 page catalogue, and the sheer volume of goods meant the auction lasted three days.

On 12 April 1910 more than 300 items of furniture went under the hammer, followed by 600 paintings, clocks and bronzes the next day. Finally there were around 1000 items of less valuable plate, c...
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DECEMBER

2015

Kilburn Lane Farm
A farm existed in Kilburn Lane until the 1860s, by which time it had been disrupted by the railway line. The name of the farm is as yet unknown as it appears on old mapping without a label.

In the late 1830s, the Hampstead Railway was built across the landscape cutting the farmhouse off from some of its land.
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DECEMBER

2015

Princess Road, NW6
Princess Road was once known as Alexandra Road. Alexandra Road was laid out about 1860 and aimed at a better class of clientelle.

Quite uniquely in Kilburn, this aim came to pass. By 1871, Alexandra Road saw half of its houses employing servants. This is contrasted with Granville Road, just one street south which became one of the poorest streets of nineteenth century Kilburn Park.

In the late nineteenth century, it was renamed Princess Road.
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DECEMBER

2015

Granville Road, NW6
Granville Road, NW6 was formerly Pembroke Road. At the turn of the 1860s, builders laid out Granville Road, then called Pembroke Road in Kilburn Park. Being so close to the Edgware Road, with its good connections to central London, they hoped to attract a higher class of purchaser.

But by 1871 Kilburn was socially mixed - not as high-class as the builders had hoped but still including a few large houses like Kilburn House and streets like Alexandra (later Princess) Road where more than half the houses employed servants.

Commercial travellers, salesmen, and shopkeepers were among the inhabitants. There was still a strong middle-class, mainly professional and commercial, element in the population.

From early on, however, the working classes predominated and contemporaries noted the horrifying conditions in which many of Kilburn’s inhabitants lived. The overall density of 8 persons to a house in 1875 concealed streets like the newly built Pembroke Road in Kilburn Park where each house c...
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DECEMBER

2015

3 Acklam Road
From the 19th century up until 1965, number 3 Acklam Road, near the Portobello Road junction, was occupied by the Bedford family. In the early 1970s the house was taken over by the North Kensington Amenity Trust and became the Notting Hill Carnival office before its eventual demolition.

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DECEMBER

2015

Political meeting (1920s)
Meeting in front of the Junction Arms situated where Tavistock Road, Crescent and Basing Road met. The banners include the National League of the Blind, the North Kensington Branch of the Street Traders Union, and the Union of General Workers Kensal Green.

Portobello market became official with licensed stalls and market inspectors in 1927. John Recordon recalled in ‘Going Down the Lane’: “There was a lot of political activity around Portobello market in the 20s and 30s, I was a Young Communist. Most of the meetings were on bread and butter issues, unemployment and the atrocious housing conditions. They were good humoured, though there was a lot of heckling. The costermongers tended to object. Our meetings didn’t interfere with their trade, it was more their politics – they were strongly patriotic Tory.”

In the 1970s the Junction pub at 92 Tavistock Road became the Point Community Action Centre, thus described in Tony Allen’s Corrugated Times: ’First it was a pub, the Junction Arms, then a Labour Exchange, then a clini...
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DECEMBER

2015

White Lion
The White Lion dates from 1700 or even earlier. The original name for the White Lion was The Dirt House. In 1712 a toolbooth was set up outside to pay for improvements to the High Road.

’Street manure’ (effluent from the streets and cesspits of London) was brought to Finchley to be used on the hay fields. The carters of the manure did not want to pay the extra cost of the toll so stopped at the inn. They would then return to London with hay.

By the 1830s railways made the High Road less important. The toll ceased in 1862 and the tollgate was removed in 1903.
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