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

MARCH

2016

22 Maxilla Gardens, W10
22 Maxilla Gardens is a now-demolished property.
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MARCH

2016

24 Maxilla Gardens, W10
24 Maxilla Gardens was an address along Maxilla Gardens.
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MARCH

2016

Dollis Hill House
Dollis Hill House was an early 19th-century farmhouse located on the modern-day northern boundary of Gladstone Park. It was built as a farmhouse in 1825 by the Finch family and later occupied by Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, who subsequently became Lord Tweedmouth. In 1881 Lord Tweedmouth’s daughter and her husband, Lord Aberdeen, took up residence. They often had Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone to stay as a guest. Other guests at the house included Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Rosebery, and Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Winston Churchill.

In 1897 Lord Aberdeen was appointed Governor-General of Canada and the Aberdeens moved out. When Willesden Urban District Council acquired the house and land in 1899, they named the park Gladstone Park after the old Prime Minister who had died the previous year.

Newspaper proprietor Hugh Gilzean-Reid occupied the house after the Aberdeens moved out, and his guests included the American author Mark Twain, who stayed at Dollis Hill house in the summer of 1900. Twain wrote that he had "never seen any place that was so satisfa...
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MARCH

2016

Butchers Lane (1923)
Photographed in 1923, this stretch of Butchers Lane would soon become Hendon Central Circus and have Watford Way built along the route of the old lane. Taken at the junction of Queens Road, this photograph is taken on more or less the same spot as a 1928 photo (though viewing east rather than north).
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MARCH

2016

Hendon Central (1928)
Photographed in 1928, this stretch of Watford Way at Hendon Central Circus had recently been built along ancient Butchers Lane and shops were rapidly lining its sides. The United Dairies occupied the domed building, a prestigeous site. Further up Hendon Way you can see an island site between the two carriageways with a pond and war memorial. The houses here were demolished in the 1940s.

Taken at the junction of Queens Road, this photograph is taken on more or less the same spot as a 1923 photo.
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MARCH

2016

City Racing
City Racing was an artist-run space in Kennington, South London which was active between 1988 and 1998. It was a cooperative by five artists Matt Hale, Paul Noble, John Burgess, Keith Coventry and Peter Owen. They set up the gallery in a former betting shop near The Oval Cricket Ground, hence the derivation of the gallery name. City Racing became an important and renowned exhibition space; its openings provided a networking opportunity for many artists.

In its later years, City Racing was accepted to some extent by the art establishment, and was viewed by some as a route for artists to other more commercial and established galleries.

Read the City Racing entry on the Wikipedia...
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MARCH

2016

The Royal School, Hampstead
The Royal School, Hampstead, was an independent girls’ day and boarding school. The school educated girls aged 3-16. The Royal School was founded in 1855 as the Soldiers’ Infant Home before becoming the Royal Soldiers’ Daughters’ School on this site in 1867. It was established "to nurse, board, clothe and educate the female children, orphans or not, of soldiers in Her Majesty’s Army killed in the Crimean War".

Old Vane House previously stood on the site - the residence of Sir Harry Vane of the Commonwealth, and later of Bishop Butler. The Home stood on the site of the south wing of this building, and included no part of it.

As the Daughter’s School, as described in 1902: "At the back a large extent of grass playground stretched out westward, and at the end of this there was a grove of trees. On one side of the grass is a large playroom built in 1880 by means of an opportune legacy, and on the other a covered cloister which led to the school, standing detached from the house at the other end of the playground. An old pier burdened with a mass of ivy stood up ...
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MARCH

2016

Kemplay Road, NW3
Kemplay Road is a street in Hampstead. In 1873 the contractor John Culverhouse was allowed to enclose waste on the south side of Willow Road, from Willow Cottages to Downshire Hill. The strip was enfranchised and conveyed in 1875 to the British Land Co., which also acquired the Carlile estate, enfranchised in 1873, between Gayton Road and Crescent, Willow Road, and Downshire Hill.

All the roads (Denning, Willoughby, Kemplay, and Carlingford roads and Rudall Crescent) had been laid out on the estate by 1878, and houses there and on the Willow Road frontage were complete by 1886.
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MARCH

2016

Willoughby Road, NW3
Willoughby Road is a street in Hampstead. In 1873 the contractor John Culverhouse was allowed to enclose waste on the south side of Willow Road, from Willow Cottages to Downshire Hill. The strip was enfranchised and conveyed in 1875 to the British Land Co., which also acquired the Carlile estate, enfranchised in 1873, between Gayton Road and Crescent, Willow Road, and Downshire Hill.

Carlile House made way for Willoughby Road in 1876.
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MARCH

2016

Rudall Crescent, NW3
Rudall Crescent was laid out by a builder John Culverhouse in 1878. In 1873 the contractor John Culverhouse was allowed to enclose waste on the south side of Willow Road. Rudall Crescent was laid out on the estate in 1878.
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MARCH

2016

Carlingford Road, NW3
Carlingford Road runs between Pilgrim’s Lane and Willoughby Road. In 1873 the contractor John Culverhouse was allowed to enclose waste on the south side of Willow Road, from Willow Cottages to Downshire Hill. The strip was enfranchised and conveyed in 1875 to the British Land Co., which also acquired the Carlile estate, enfranchised in 1873, between Gayton Road and Crescent, Willow Road, and Downshire Hill.

All the roads (Denning, Willoughby, Kemplay, and Carlingford roads and Rudall Crescent) had been laid out on the estate by 1878, and houses there and on the Willow Road frontage were complete by 1886.
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MARCH

2016

Hampstead Hill Gardens, NW3
Hampstead Hill Gardens is a street in Hampstead. North of Pond Street was a small estate owned by George Crispin, who built Hampstead Hill Gardens in 1873. Most of the houses, nos. 3-21 (odd) and 2-6 (even), were designed for ’gentleman artists’ by Batterbury & Huxley from 1876 as ’rosered villas’ with rubbed-brick ornaments.
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MARCH

2016

Chester Terrace, NW1
Chester Terrace is the longest unbroken facade of the neo-classical terraces in Regent's Park. Chester Terrace takes its name from one of the titles of George IV before he became king, Earl of Chester.

As with Cornwall Terrace and York Terrace, the architectural plans were made by John Nash but subsequently altered almost beyond recognition by Decimus Burton, who was responsible for the existing design, which was built by his father James Burton in 1825. Nash was so dissatisfied with Decimus's design that he sought the demolition and complete rebuilding of the Terrace, but in vain.

All 42 houses are Grade I listed buildings. At each end there is a Corinthian arch bearing at the top the terrace name in large lettering on a blue background, probably the largest street signs in London. Five houses are semi-detached. One of these, Nash House (3 Chester Terrace, although the main entrance is on Chester Gate), has a bust of John Nash on its west side.
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MARCH

2016

Queensdale Road, W11
Queensdale Road is a long road stretching from west to east, containing terraces of Victorian houses. Most of the houses consist of 3 storeys and a basement. The houses are painted in different pastel colours. There is a cheerful and bright atmosphere to the street.
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