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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We now have 557 completed street histories and 46943 partial histories
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JANUARY

2022

Summerhill Road, N15
Summerhill Road runs from Philip Lane to West Green Road. The earliest map of Tottenham came out in 1619 and had the land mapped out in to plots. The biggest landowner marked upon it was a Mrs Candler.

The piece of land on which Summerhill Road now stands was marked as ’Redlands’, an orchard and owned by a Mr Lack. The surrounding roads were Blackhope Lane (now West Green Road) and Philip Lane.

Blackhope Lane was renamed Blackthorn Lane at the turn of the nineteenth century. On a contemprary map, a factory covered some of the site of the future Summerhill Road and Clyde Road but mostly it was meadowland hereabouts.

By the 1850s, both Summerhill Road and Janson’s Road had been constructed on 36 acres of meadow between Philip Lane and West Green Road. The first terraces of Summerhill Road were built in 1856 and 1859. Nearby Bathurst Road (now Lawrence Road) had a floor cloth factory at the same time.
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JANUARY

2022

Spital Square, E1
Spital Square was started in 1733. Robert Seymour’s edition of Stow’s Survey of London remarked that "in place of this hospital (St Mary Spital) ... are now built many handsome houses for merchants and others".

Spital Square was mainly a residential area. The houses were originally occupied by silk merchants and master weavers. In 1751 it was said that there were twelve coaches kept in Spital Square, two by weavers and the rest by silk merchants and brokers. At least nine of the thirteen Spitalfields silk manufacturers who in 1828 resolved not to grant an advance of wages to weavers on strike lived in the Square.

Tallis described the Square in about 1838 as ’a small quadrangle consisting of respectable private residences and wholesale warehouses - mostly in the Silk trade’ In 1842 it was described as mainly inhabited by silk manufacturers, ’the humble operatives living for the most part eastward of this spot’. Nine of the fourteen trustees for ...
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JANUARY

2022

Doughty Street, WC1N
Doughty Street is a broad tree-lined street in the Holborn district. The southern part is a continuation of John Street, off Theobalds Road. The northern part crosses Guilford Street and terminates in Mecklenburgh Square.

Doughty Street consists of (mainly grade II listed) Georgian houses which were built between 1790 and the 1840s. Many of the houses have been converted into legal offices though in the last few years, many have been converted back to family homes.

In the nineteenth century, Doughty Street was an exclusively residential and had portered gates at either end to restrict entry.

One notable resident was Charles Dickens. On 25 March 1837, Dickens moved with his family into number 48 on which he had a three-year lease at £80 a year.

He remained here until December 1839 and wrote Oliver Twist in the house. The address has housed the Charles Dickens Museum since 1925.

The London Post Office Railway passes underneath the street, but is now disused.
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JANUARY

2022

Selby Square, W10
Selby Square is a walkway in the Queen’s Park Estate It lies between buildings in the Queen’s Park estate with the walkway lying almost opposite the entrance to Onslow Close and connects Severn Avenue and Dowland Street.

There is a small playground here.
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JANUARY

2022

Chapel House Street, E14
Chapel House Street was named after a medieval chapel and later farm which was located approximately at the corner of the Whiteadder Way and Spindrift Avenue. The chapel (first mentioned in the twelfth century) was located at the highest point of the Island - one of the few areas naturally above the level of the tidal Thames. Chapel House Farm was built on the same spot but during the 1860s, Chapel House Farm was demolished to make room for Millwall Docks.

A short Chapel House Street, a cul-de-sac, arrived about 1895. In 1904, Chapel House Street was extended to link Westferry Road to East Ferry Road. No houses were yet built along it. A short section of the 1895 street would be renamed Chapel House Place (now Julian Place).

After the First World War, Chapel House Street became the centre of the Chapel House Estate.

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JANUARY

2022

Mudchute
Mudchute is a Docklands Light Railway station on the Isle of Dogs. The name of the area refers to the engineering overspill when Millwall Dock was created. Mudchute station was originally intended to be called Millwall Park. Local people were concerned that visiting Millwall FC fans would travel to the station in error - not realising that the club’s ground is on the other side of the river. Consequently, the name Mudchute was suggested and agreed. Spoil from the excavation of Millwall Dock had been dumped on nearby land, creating "The Mudchute" in the 1840s. This established itself as a wildlife habitat.

The original station was on the route of the disused Millwall Extension Railway. The original (elevated) station opened on 31 August 1987. When the line was extended south under the River Thames to Lewisham, the station was rebuilt close to the tunnel entrance and opened on 20 November 1999.
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JANUARY

2022

Thermopylae Gate, E14
Thermopylae Gate is part of the Chapel House Estate. Houses in the Chapel House Estate were built on land acquired partly from the Charteris Estate and partly from the Strafford Estate by Poplar Council and designed in a ’Neo-Georgian’ style by Sir Frank Baines.

The houses were built by local building contractor, Griggs & Sons whose premised were located on the current location of Island Gardens DLR station.

Poplar Council agreed to provide one fruit tree for each garden with the planting being done by unemployed ex-servicemen.

Work began in December 1919 and in January 1920, George Lansbury the mayor of Poplar, ceremonially cut the first turf.

The estate was complete at the end of 1921.

The estate survived the Second World War remarkably unscathed. Not a single house on the estate was destroyed or seriously damaged.
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JANUARY

2022

Emmett Street, E14
Emmett Street originated in the early 19th century. Emmett Street provided a link from Three Colt Street to Bridge Road along the back of the buildings constructed along the river front.

The east, (non river) side of the road, was only partially developed before the 1802 opening of the West India Docks.

As the West India Dock Company was keen to divert public traffic away, the land owning Emmett family in 1807 built Bridge Road and Garford Street. The triangle of property bounded by the three roads was developed slowly during the nineteenth century.

About 1830, the informal road became known as Emmett Street.

It was largely given over to public housing in the 1930s and the thoroughfare was lost as part of the 1980s redevelopment of the area around Canary Wharf.
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JANUARY

2022

Warwick Dene, W5
Warwick Dene skirts the western edge of Ealing Common. The road called Warwick Dene faces a small enclosed garden area in the southwest corner of Ealing Common, also called Warwick Dene.

The garden dated from shortly after the Ealing Board’s acquisition of Ealing Common and it was the result of a land swap in 1895 between Ealing Council and the Rothschild family. Leopold De Rothschild exchanged Warwick Dene for land near Ealing Common station to provide a road. The Rothschilds owned much of the land between Ealing Common and Acton Town station, which they then developed for housing.

The council created a ’Rest Garden for the Aged and Blind and Those Requiring Rest’. The area is enclosed with railings of cast iron and a gateway with the words ’Fraser Patent Disinfecting Apparatus’ over it. It has now become a play area for children.

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JANUARY

2022

Ealing Common
Ealing Common is an area of open space which became prominent at the time of the enclosures of the late eighteenth century. Ealing Common was consolidated after the purchase of the common land by the Ealing Local Board.

The Common is a large area with avenues of horse chestnut trees, most of which were planted in the late Victorian period. Charles Jones was the Ealing borough surveyor and responsible for the nineteenth-century layout. The northern part of the common has a notably large oak tree as its highlight. London plane trees are also found with horse chestnuts around the perimeter of the common.

Ealing Common station was opened on 1 July 1879 by the District Railway on a new extension from Turnham Green to Ealing Broadway.

Between 1886 and 1910 the station was called Ealing Common and West Acton after which it changed to its current name.
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JANUARY

2022

The Ring
The Ring was a boxing stadium which once stood on Blackfriars Road in Southwark. Established as a boxing venue in 1910, the building itself dated from 1783 established by the Reverend Rowland Hill as the Surrey Congregational Chapel. Hill opted for the circular design to dissuade the devil from hiding in corners.

The chapel was used for 75 years before the lease expired and the congregation moved to another site.

After years as a place of worship, the church was converted into a warehouse. The man most responsible for the final transformation was Dick Burge, who had been an English middleweight boxing champion from Cheltenham when he was younger.

The person responsible for overseeing the chapel’s final conversion was Dick Burge, a former English middleweight champion from Cheltenham. The former place of worship had become a warehouse. Local homeless people helped Dick and his wife, Bella Burge, transform the building into a boxing venue.

The Ring - named after its shape - opened on 14 May 1910, wi...
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JANUARY

2022

Horse Guards Avenue, SW1A
Horse Guards Avenue stretches from Whitehall to the Embankment. Horse Guards Avenue is within the area once occupied by the Palace of Whitehall. The palace was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1698 apart from the Banqueting House.

Here was a narrow street called Whitehall Yard - on this stood a number of houses, notably Carrington House, demolished in 1896 to make room for the widening of Whitehall Yard so that the War Office building could be built.
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JANUARY

2022

St Marks Road, W5
St Marks Road runs off The Common and incorporates Vine Place. Known by both names, Vine Place and St Marks Road, the pretty artisan cul-de-sac dates from around 1880.

The Vine Place cottages are of another vintage - dating from the early nineteenth century before the road was formed.
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JANUARY

2022

Beasley’s Yard, UB8
Beasley’s Yard is an old alleyway in Uxbridge town centre. Beasley’s Yard leads now to Beasley Court, a block.

Beasley’s Yard is named after Thomas Ebenezer Beasley, the minister of the nearby church between 1790 and 1824.

The Old Meeting Congregational Church may have been founded in the 1660s. Meetings were held in the homes of church members until 1716 when their first meeting house was erected. This is now called Watts Hall, rebuilt in 1883.
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JANUARY

2022

Bostall Farm
Bostall Farm was a smallholding to the east of Plumstead. . Bostall Farm had a history dating back to 1800 at the latest.

At its quarterly general meeting in 1886, the committee of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society was given the go-ahead to purchase the 52 acre Bostall Farm and bought it for £6200, the following year. The neighbouring 122½ acre Suffolk (Place) Farm followed in 1899.

Three old cottages were pulled down at Bostall Farm, a new cottage was erected and the existing cowsheds were converted into piggeries. Two greenhouses were built for the production of cucumbers and tomatoes, The farm started to provide vegetables for the Co-op shops.

By 1899 Plumstead was expanding and development was moving in the direction of Bostall Heath. Land values rose sharply.

By late 1900, the building of the Bostall Estate had begun.

The part of Bostall Farm which lay over the future Bostall Gardens was left as unused farmland with farm buildings and a thatched tithe barn. ...
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JANUARY

2022

Ruislip
Ruislip is a London Underground station in Ruislip in north London. The station is on the Uxbridge branch of both the Metropolitan line and Piccadilly line, between Ruislip Manor and Ickenham stations. Ruislip was formerly a parish in the county of Middlesex covering the neighbouring areas of Eastcote, Northwood, Ruislip Manor and South Ruislip. The parish appears in the Domesday Book, and some of the earliest settlements still exist today, designated as local heritage sites. The parish church, St Martin’s, dates back to the 13th century and remains in use.

The buildings at the northern end of Ruislip High Street form the core of the original village square and are now Grade II listed. It originally featured a central water pump which was moved out of the road in the 1970s as a result of increased traffic.

The Metropolitan Railway (Harrow and Uxbridge Railway) constructed the line between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Uxbridge and commenced services on 4 July 1904 with, initially, Ruislip being the only intermediate stop. At first, services were operated by steam trains, but track electrification was completed in the subsequent months and electric trains...
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JANUARY

2022

Harefield Road, UB8
Harefield Road has been the main road leading northeast out of Uxbridge since the eighteenth century or before. Beyond Uxbridge and the Western Avenue, Harefield Road leads ultimately to the village mentioned in its name.

Harefield Road - in its section beyond the A40 - was a proposed Underground station on the branch of the Central line beyond its West Ruislip terminus set up due to the 1935–1940 New Works programme.

The station would have been built alongside the existing Great Western tracks between West Ruislip and Denham as the penultimate station on the Central line extension.

The construction of the station was intended to stimulate new housing development but, after the Second World War, green belt legislation was introduce. The area beyond West Ruislip fell within this area and so the extension beyond West Ruislip was cancelled.
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JANUARY

2022

Kilburn Vale, NW6
Kilburn Vale leads to the Kilburn Vale estate. In 1819, Fulk Greville Howard bought the Kilburn Priory estate and began the development of Kilburn Vale.

After the Second World War, in 1947, the London County Council (LCC) announced a scheme of 104 flats in Kilburn Vale. The building of this estate (opened 1951) involved the demolition of some of the earliest buildings in the area.

The former length of Kilburn Vale was seriously curtailed.
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JANUARY

2022

Chenies
Chenies is a village in Buckinghamshire on the border with Hertfordshire, east of Amersham and north of Chorleywood. Until the 1400s, the village name of Chenies was Isenhampstead. There were two settlements here: Isenhampstead Chenies and Isenhampstead Latimers, distinguished by two lords of the manors. In the 19th century the prefix was dropped and the two villages became known as Latimer and Chenies.

The parish church of St Michael includes the Bedford Chapel, burial place of many notable members of the Russell family.

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JANUARY

2022

Badric Road, SW11
Badric Road was laid out in 1868 as Urswicke Road. Urswicke Road became Badric Road in 1937 and disappeared completely during the 1960s to make way for the Badric Court Estate.

Badric Road referred to Beaduric, the reputed Anglo-Saxon founder of Battersea.

By the early twentieth century, the area had become poor. Many houses were subdivided between two or three families with rooms sublet to lodgers to help make ends meet.

Second World War bombing damaged the area although some housing survived into the 1960s. It was eventually condemned to be replaced by Battersea Council’s York Road Stage II estate. The scheme - also known as the Badric Court Estate - was devised in 1964 while Battersea Borough Council was still in existence. At its centre, Badric Road was to be obliterated.

In 1967, William Ryder & Associates were appointed architects and produced sketches for 309 dwellings with one large quadrangular block called Badric Court and a 21-storey tower to be calle...
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JANUARY

2022

Onslow Square, SW7
Onslow Square, a garden square, was started by Charles James Freake, to designs by architect George Basevi. Onslow Square lies just south of South Kensington Underground station. Alongside the main square, the name also covers the street which turns into Onslow Gardens and the street that meets Pelham Street beside South Kensington tube station.

Both Onslow Square and Onslow Gardens are part of an 84-acre estate which Alderman Henry Smith of the City of London left in trust in 1627.

The conditions of the Trust were for both "the poorest of my kindred" and "the relief and ransom of poor captives being slaves under Turkish pirates".

When the estate was developed, its streets were all named after current aristocratic Trustees of the Smith trust - Viscount Cranley (eldest son of the Earl of Onslow), the Hon. Rev. John Evelyn, Viscount Sydney, William Holme Sumner, George Walton Onslow, Charles Lennox (the 6th Duke of Richmond), the Honorable Francis Egerton and Henry Pelham (the Earl of Chichester).

As the last of Alderman Smith&rsqu...
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JANUARY

2022

Blandford Square, NW1
Blandford Square was largely demolished to make way for Marylebone Station. On the east side of Lisson Grove were three squares: Blandford Square, Harewood Square and Dorset Square.

Blandford Square was built at the northern point of the Portman Estate and was named after family property near Blandford Forum, Dorset. Though it was laid out around 1828, it took around thirty years to be completed.

The area remained intact throughout the Victorian years until the Great Central Railway built its London extension in 1894. The line cut through to the east side of Blandford Square which was demolished to build Marylebone Station.

In Blandford Square, the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy could be found - this was established in 1844 and for a few years carried on works of charity.

From 1860 to 1865 Mary Anne Evans (the novelist George Eliot) lived at 16 Blandford Square. Wilkie Collins lived at no.38 with his mother and brother from 1848 to 1850.

The area never achieved the social standing o...
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JANUARY

2022

Circus, EC3N
Circus was built between 1768 and 1774 to the designs of George Dance the Younger. The land here was owned and managed by the City Lands Estates of the Corporation of London. They might have been in use as allotment gardens.

London was enjoying an economic boom in the late 18th century partly due to trade with the Americas. There was a demand for quality housing for wealthy merchants.

Sir Benjamin Hammett, a city alderman and property developer acquired the lease for this land. He commissioned the architect George Dance the Younger (1741-1825) to design a speculative residential development to appeal to merchants to reside in the City, near the docks.

It was successful and other architects, such as John Nash’s proceeded to link circuses, crescents and squares in the same way in the West End.

America Square and Crescent were built at the same time as Circus. George Dance was probably influenced by John Wood’s development at Bath and was responsible for the introduction into London of squares, cir...
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JANUARY

2022

River Way, SE10
River Way is a short street with a long history. River Way dates ultimately from 1801 with the first appearance in the Greenwich rate books with occupants in 1804.

The site had been owned by George Russell (died in 1806). He was a soap maker of Blackfriars but had been using this part of the Greenwich Marsh as a brickfield.

In 1800, William Johnson of Bromley, Kent, had patented a tidal water wheel but lacked a site for it. In September 1801, he came to an agreement with George Russell and applied to the Commission of Sewers for ’permission to open the sea wall’.

Ceylon Place was built and the extension of the cottages to the Thames were called River Terrace and the road (eventually) River Way leading to the "Causeway in Bugsby’s Hole", licensed to Russell in 1801.

The land around quickly industrialised at the dawn of the twentieth century, River Way becoming sandwiches between a power station and a steel works.
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JANUARY

2022

Normanby Road, NW10
Normanby Road is a road within the Dudden Hill Estate. The Dudden Hill Estate was planned in 1899 and was to consist of 14 roads each starting with a different letter of the alphabet. This alphabetical plan largely came off with a few omissions such as I and J.

By 1911 the area was largely built up and that year the ’Dudden Hill Estate Association’ was formed.
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JANUARY

2022

The 1912 streets of Spitalfields
The fascinating story of one man’s random walk in 1912 On Saturday 20 April 1912, a man by the name of C.A. Mathew - a resident of Brightlingsea, Essex - came out of Liverpool Street Station carrying his camera. There’s no telling why he decided to walk the streets of Spitalfields and take photographs on that day - it may well have been a commission but, over a hundred years later, nobody really knows.

NOTE: Many writers about C.A. Mathew’s tour of Spitalfields, including the gentle author, have assumed Liverpool Street station’s involvement in the story. This is a safe assumption - the London terminus of the route from Brightlingsea but is not a definite! But we’ll run with it too...

Matthew only took up photography in 1911, the previous year. Eleven years later, he died. He produced no other known work and little else is known about him.
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JANUARY

2022

Furzehill Road, WD6
Furzehill Road runs from Shenley Road to Barnet Lane. Several roads in Boreham Wood including Barnet Lane, Furzehill Road, Shenley Road, Allum Lane and Theobald Street, were created as a result of the Enclosure Act of 1776, whereby the 684 acres of Borehamwood Common were divided up amongst various landowners, including the Church, and in return new roads were laid out which were to be sixty feet wide including verges.

Old photos from the nineteenth century show this verge intact and it can still be seen to the south of the junction with Brownlow Road.

In 1910 the Council handed over four acres of allotment land for the building of Furzehill School, and the plot-holders were awarded £1 each in compensation. The Council then purchased another four acres for £300.00 for allotment land, and a further 7 acres in 1924, just off Furzehill Road, for the sum of £157.1s.4d.

At the southern end of Furzehill Road was the Home of Rest For Horses until the 1970s.

Apart from the Barnet Lan...
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JANUARY

2022

Hatton Garden, EC1N
Hatton Garden is a street and area noted as London’s jewellery quarter and centre of the UK diamond trade. The name ’Hatton Garden’ is derived from the garden of Ely Place, the London residence of the Bishop of Ely, which was given to Sir Christopher Hatton by Elizabeth I in 1581, during a vacancy of the see.

The area surrounding Hatton Garden has been the centre of London’s jewellery trade since medieval times. The old City of London had streets, or quarters, dedicated to types of business, and the area around Hatton Garden became a centre for jewellers and jewellery. Nearly 300 businesses in Hatton Garden are in the jewellery industry and over 55 shops represent the largest cluster of jewellery retailers in the UK. The largest of these companies is De Beers, the international family of companies that dominate the international diamond trade. De Beers has its headquarters in a complex of offices and warehouses just behind the main Hatton Garden shopping street. The area also plays host to a large number of media, publishing and creative businesses, includi...
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JANUARY

2022

Westway, W10
Westway is the A40(M) motorway which runs on an elevated section along the W10/W11 border. On 28 July 1970 the Westway, A40 Western Avenue Extension flyover between White City and Paddington, at two and half miles, the longest elevated road in Europe at the time, was opened by Michael Heseltine, the parliamentary secretary to the transport minister. The opening ceremony was famously accompanied by a protest over the re-housing of the last residents alongside the road. As demonstrators disrupted the ribbon cutting, a banner was unfurled on Acklam Road, looking on to the flyover, demanding: ‘Get Us Out of this Hell. Re-house Us Now’.

When the Portobello farmhouse was painted in 1864, shortly before its demise, the only other building on the lane north of the newly opened Hammersmith and City railway line was the Notting Barn Lodge at the future junction of Cambridge Gardens. Florence Gladstone wrote in ‘Notting Hill in Bygone Days’: ‘There seems to be a natural break where the railway embankment crosses Portobello Road. At this point the old l...
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JANUARY

2022

South Hill Park, NW3
South Hill Park is a road on the edge of Hampstead Heath. In 1878, landowner the Dean of Westminster made a building agreement with Joseph Pickett, the tenant of South End Farm, and John Ashwell, a Kentish Town builder, for the 15 and a half acres north of the Hampstead Junction Railway. South Hill Park Road (later Parliament Hill Road) and Nassington Road were laid out in 1878 and 90 houses built between 1879 and 1892.

The planned extension of the roads into Lord Mansfield’s lands in St. Pancras was halted by the addition of Parliament Hill Fields to the heath in 1889. Tanza Road was made instead, to connect the existing roads, and building began there in 1890. Ashwell withdrew in 1881 and Pickett, who by then described himself as a master builder and lived in South Hill Park, was under-financed and built cheaply, mostly semi-detached and terraced tall but cramped redbrick houses for the middle class.

The last woman to be hanged in Britain, Ruth Ellis, was sentenced to death for a murder committed on Sou...
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JANUARY

2022

Russell Square, WC1B
Russell Square was laid out from 1800 by James Burton following the demolition of Bedford House, which originally stood on the site surrounded by gardens and fields. Its name comes from the family name of the Dukes of Bedford.

The east side was the first to be built, between 1800 and 1817; the south side followed, then the gardens, and finally, the west and part of the north side were built.

Bolton House predated the development of the square; it was built in 1759 as Baltimore House and renamed after a later occupant, the Duke of Bolton and after the Square was developed, it became integrated into its numbering scheme

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, further houses were built on what had been the gardens to the north of Bolton House; these were nos 68–70 Russell Square

It was a prestige development of big houses in a very large square - larger than any residential square previously built in London.
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JANUARY

2022

Macdonald Road, N19
Macdonald Road is notable for a McDonald’s restaurant featuring on a corner. Before 1938, it was called Brunswick Road - the ’Brunswick’ public house retained the name before the creation of a park swept it away.

Above its road sign is a plaque commemorating three World War One soldiers that died in the conflict and who lived on this street.
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