Rayners Lane - the road - had been used for transporting grain to the mill on Pinner Green during the Middle Ages. Previously called Bourne Lane, during the first half of the nineteenth century the area was in the hands of the farming Rayner family and the road was renamed after them.

The Metropolitan Railway opened a branch to Uxbridge in 1904 and Rayners Lane station opened as Rayners Lane Halt on 26 May 1906.

Until then mostly rural, a 1930s development originally named Harrow Garden Village was planned. This was one of Metroland’s flagship projects. The area was suddenly built up as a result between 1929 and 1938 by Harrow’s biggest interwar housebuilder T.F. Nash, who created a shopping parade on Alexandra Avenue. Nash constructed a temporary narrow gauge railway sidings at High Worple to bring in materials for the project.

A now-listed, but now closed, Art Deco cinema was opened in 1935 featuring a curved projection on the front, resembling an elephant’s trunk. It was built be F.E. Bromige as the Grosvenor but later became the Odeon.