Until the 20th century, there were only two major roads: the road from the district towards Harefield (later Park Road) and Long Lane running south from Ruislip and Ickenham to the London road east of Hillingdon village.

Ickenham village was situated at the junction of the modern Swakeleys Road and Long Lane. At this junction Long Lane widened to form a roughly triangular village centre for Ickenham. Until the 1930s most of the local houses were grouped around this spot.

Ickenham began to change after the sale of most of the Swakeleys estate in 1922. By 1934, larger dwellings and blocks of flats had been built along Long Lane.

Early 20th-century expansion was to transform the formerly distinct settlements of the area. By 1934 private housing estates and access ways covered much of the triangular area between Hillingdon village, Colham Green, and Goulds Green. Further private building was concentrated north of Hillingdon village along Long Lane and the east side of Vine Lane. More than 1500 private dwellings were erected in Hillingdon and Cowley between 1931 and 1933, and the total had exceeded 5000 by 1939.

The rapid expansion in population and building is partly explained by a significant improvement in communications after 1900. Work on the Metropolitan line began in 1901. A terminus was built at Belmont Road, Uxbridge, and a station, Hillingdon (Swakeleys), to serve the northern part of the parish was constructed in 1923 on Long Lane just inside the boundary with Ickenham.

The most spectacular improvement in road communications was the opening in 1934 of the Western Avenue, the London-Oxford arterial road. By 1933, when the road had been constructed as far as Hillingdon Circus, speculative building south of the roundabout had already begun. Improvements to Long Lane (it was widened by 1935), Uxbridge Road, Cowley Road, and, after the Second World War, the completion of Western Avenue and the reconstruction of Colham Green Road completed the modern network of arterial roads.