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.

Kenway Road (1970)
Credit: British History Online

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...

Kenway Road, SW5

Kenway Road was, after 1803, called North Row. Kenway Road was originally part of a country track linking the Manor House at Earl’s Court with Kensington village, via what are now Wright’s Lane and Marloes Road. It may be an abbreviation of ’the Way to Kensington’.

In 1797, one Thomas Smith bought a local piece of land called ’Pound Field. At Earl’s Court Smith began building in 1803 along established thoroughfares - today’s Kenway Road and Hogarth Place.

In 1856, Charles William Wallgrave (of King’s Road, Chelsea) invested in a plot of land at Earl’s Court. Four years later he decided to build Wallgrave Road but wrote to the local Parish Vestry to say that the drains at Earl’s Court appeared to be blocked, since all the sewage from the cottages in Kenway Road was overflowing onto his ground. The vestry replied that this was not surprising, since there were no sewers at Earl’s Court. Nor did they intend to do anything ab...

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SEPTEMBER

2022

George Lane, E18
George Lane is the main road of South Woodford South Woodford’s original name was Church End. This continued as the electoral ward for the part of South Woodford north of the Central Line railway.

There were five inns in Woodford in 1753: The George, The White Hart, The Ship and Castle, New Wells, and Old Wells. The George at Church End, already existed as Horns Inn in 1657. It faces High Road at the junction with George Lane - the road is named after the inn.

In the early 19th century, the upper and lower roads of Woodford, together with Snakes Lane and George Lane were the only thoroughfares through the parish.

George Lane originally crossed the railway with a level crossing immediately to the north of the station. This was closed and the road split into two when the line was electrified.

The first cinema in the district was the South Woodford Cinema, opening in 1913 at 170 George Lane.

George Lane station became a Central Line underground station ...
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SEPTEMBER

2022

Agincourt Road, NW3
Agincourt Road dates from 1881 Thomas E. Gibb, a developer from Kentish Town, purchased a large area of land and proposed to build 120 small houses for middle-class residents (at ’the lower end of middle-class respectability’), as well as a sewer. He laid out several roads, including Cressy Road, Agincourt Road, and Lisburne Road - Agincourt and Cressey were both notable battles.

However, the closure and reopening of a local smallpox hospital caused land values to decrease, and little housing was built initially.

In 1886, the Church Commissioners recognised the social change and allowed Gibb to build 215 houses on the remaining land. This led to the construction of Constantine Road in 1887, which provided a direct route from Gospel Oak and Kentish Town to South End Green and the heath. Building then began, and after Gibb’s death in 1894, his successors built an additional 153 houses in Constantine Road, Cressy Road, and Mackeson Road.
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SEPTEMBER

2022

The Adelphi
The Adelphi is a small district surrounding the streets of Adelphi Terrace, Robert Street and John Adam Street The Adelphi district gets its name from the Adelphi Buildings, a collection of 24 neoclassical terrace houses located between The Strand and the River Thames in the parish of St Martin in the Fields. The buildings were constructed between 1768-72 by the Adam brothers (John, Robert, James, and William Adam) and also included a headquarters building for the "Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce," now known as the Royal Society of Arts. The Greek-derived name of the buildings honors the Adam brothers’ architectural design. The ruins of Durham House were removed to make way for the Adelphi Buildings. The nearby Adelphi Theatre takes its name from the Adelphi Buildings. Robert Adam was inspired by his visit to Diocletian’s Palace in Dalmatia, and some of that inspiration is reflected in the design of the Adelphi Buildings.

The Adelphi district is not strictly defined by boundaries, but generally, it is considered to be situated betwee...
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SEPTEMBER

2022

Ainsty Street, SE16
York Street until 1873, Ainsty Street was one of a group of Rotherhithe Streets commemorating royal names Built in the early 19th century, York Street - before it was Ainsty Street - was named for George III’s second son, the Duke of York.

It was typical of many other streets of workers’ terraces.

Destroyed in the Blitz, Ainsty Street originally ran to what is now Albatross Way. It was redeveloped when the Ainsty Estate was built.
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LATEST LONDON-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROJECT

Christine D Elliott Blockhouse Street, SE15 Added: 20 Mar 2023 15:52 GMT	The Blute Family My grandparents, Frederick William Blute & Alice Elizabeth Blute nee: Warnham lived at 89 Blockhouse Street Deptford from around 1917.They had six children. 1. Alice Maragret Blute (my mother) 2. Frederick William Blute 3. Charles Adrian Blute 4. Violet Lillian Blute 5. Donald Blute 6. Stanley Vincent Blute (Lived 15 months). I lived there with my family from 1954 (Birth) until 1965 when we were re-housed for regeneration to the area. I attended Ilderton Road School. Very happy memories of that time. Reply
Pearl Foster Dukes Place, EC3A Added: 20 Mar 2023 12:22 GMT	Dukes Place, EC3A Until his death in 1767, Daniel Nunes de Lara worked from his home in Dukes Street as a Pastry Cook. It was not until much later the street was renamed Dukes Place. Daniel and his family attended the nearby Bevis Marks synagogue for Sephardic Jews. The Ashkenazi Great Synagogue was established in Duke Street, which meant Daniel’s business perfectly situated for his occupation as it allowed him to cater for both congregations. Reply
Dr Paul Flewers Hawthorne Close, N1 Added: 9 Mar 2023 18:12 GMT	Some Brief Notes on Hawthorne Close / Hawthorne Street My great-grandparents lived in the last house on the south side of Hawthorne Street, no 13, and my grandmother Alice Knopp and her brothers and sisters grew up there. Alice Knopp married Charles Flewers, from nearby Hayling Road, and moved to Richmond, Surrey, where I was born. Leonard Knopp married Esther Gutenberg and lived there until the street was demolished in the mid-1960s, moving on to Tottenham. Uncle Len worked in the fur trade, then ran a pet shop in, I think, the Kingsland Road. From the back garden, one could see the almshouses in the Balls Pond Road. There was an ink factory at the end of the street, which I recall as rather malodorous. Reply
KJH Andover Road, N7 Added: 7 Mar 2023 17:14 GMT	Andover Road, N7 (1939 - 1957) My aunt, Doris nee Curtis (aka Jo) and her husband John Hawkins (aka Jack) ran a small general stores at 92 Andover Road (N7). I have found details in the 1939 register but don’t know how long before that it was opened.He died in 1957. In the 1939 register he is noted as being an ARP warden for Islington warden Reply
The Queens Head Added: 2 Mar 2023 13:50 GMT	The Queens Head Queens Head demolished and a NISA supermarket and flats built in its place. Reply
Mike Elia Street, N1 Added: 28 Feb 2023 18:09 GMT	6 Elia Street When I was young I lived in 6 Elia Street. At the end of the garden there was a garage owned by Initial Laundries which ran from an access in Quick Street all the way up to the back of our garden. The fire exit to the garage was a window leading into our garden. 6 Elia Street was owned by Initial Laundry. Reply
Fumblina Whitfield Street, W1T Added: 21 Feb 2023 11:39 GMT	Error on 1800 map numbering for John Street The 1800 map of Whitfield Street (17 zoom) has an error in the numbering shown on the map. The houses are numbered up the right hand side of John Street and Upper John Street to #47 and then are numbered down the left hand side until #81 BUT then continue from 52-61 instead of 82-91. Reply
P Cash Woburn Place, WC1H Added: 19 Feb 2023 08:03 GMT	Occupants of 19-29 Woburn Place The Industrial Tribunals (later changed to Employment Tribunals) moved (from its former location on Ebury Bridge Road to 19-29 Woburn Place sometime in the late 1980s (I believe). 19-29 Woburn Place had nine floors in total (one in the basement and two in its mansard roof and most of the building was occupied by the Tribunals The ’Head Office’ of the tribunals, occupied space on the 7th, 6th and 2nd floors, whilst one of the largest of the regional offices (London North but later called London Central) occupied space in the basement, ground and first floor. The expansive ground floor entrance had white marble flooring and a security desk. Behind (on evey floor) lay a square (& uncluttered) lobby space, which was flanked on either side by lifts. On the rear side was an elegant staircase, with white marble steps, brass inlays and a shiny brass handrail which spiralled around an open well. Both staircase, stairwell and lifts ran the full height of the building. On all floors from 1st upwards, staff toilets were tucked on either side of the staircase (behind the lifts). Basement Floor - Tribunal hearing rooms, dormant files store and secure basement space for Head Office. Public toilets. Geound Floor - The ’post’ roon sat next to the entrance in the northern side, the rest of which was occupied by the private offices of the full time Tribunal judiciary. Thw largest office belonged to the Regional Chair and was situated on the far corner (overlooking Tavistock Square) The secretary to the Regional Chair occupied a small office next door. The south side of this floor was occupied by the large open plan General Office for the administration, a staff kitchen & rest room and the private offices of the Regional Secretary (office manager) and their deputy. First Dloor - Tribunal hearing rooms; separate public waiting rooms for Applicants & Respondents; two small rooms used by Counsel (on a ’whoever arrives first’ bases) and a small private rest room for use by tribunal lay members. Second Floor - Tribunal Hearing Rooms; Tribunal Head Office - HR & Estate Depts & other tennants. Third Floor - other tennants Fourth Floor - other tennants Fifth Floor - Other Tennants except for a large non-smoking room for staff, (which overlooked Tavistock Sqaure). It was seldom used, as a result of lacking any facities aside from a meagre collection of unwanted’ tatty seating. Next to it, (overlooking Tavistock Place) was a staff canteen. Sixth Floor - Other tennants mostly except for a few offices on the northern side occupied by tribunal Head Office - IT Dept. Seventh Floor - Other tenants in the northern side. The southern (front) side held the private offices of several senior managers (Secretariat, IT & Finance), private office of the Chief Accuntant; an office for two private secretaries and a stationary cupboard. On the rear side was a small kitchen; the private office of the Chief Executive and the private office of the President of the Tribunals for England & Wales. (From 1995 onwards, this became a conference room as the President was based elsewhere. The far end of this side contained an open plan office for Head Office staff - Secretariat, Finance & HR (staff training team) depts. Eighth Floor - other tennants. The Employment Tribunals (Regional & Head Offices) relocated to Vitory House, Kingsway in April 2005. Reply

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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.
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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.
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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.
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