The Underground Map is creating street histories for the areas of London and surrounding counties lying within the M25.
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.
The aim of the project is to find the location every street in London, whether past or present. You are able to see each street on a present day map and also spot its location on older maps.
There's a control which looks like a 'pile of paper' at the top right of the map above. You can use it to see how an area has changed on a series of historic maps.
Kilburn House
Kilburn House - a simple suburban villa - was notable in its role as a base for the growing WH Smith newsagent. Kilburn House and its grounds faced Edgware Road, a short distance north of today’s Victoria Road.
At the beginning of 19th century, Kilburn House was a pleasant suburban villa with extensive grounds. For most of its previous history it was leased to wealthy tenants, who usually stayed only a few years.
In 1838, Lady Elizabeth Conyngham was temporarily living at Kilburn House. She was the daughter of Joseph Denison, a wealthy banker and landowner. In 1794 she married Henry the 1st Marquis of Conyngham but had a number of affairs, including one with the young Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. In 1820 she became the final mistress of George, Prince of Wales and Prince Regent.
In 1839, William Henry Smith bought Kilburn House and the mansion became the family home. Smith made his fortune by efficient distribution of newspapers all over the country. Smith had fallen ill through overwork and the family hoped that the move to Kilburn would help h...
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La Délivrance
La Délivrance is a five metre-high bronze statue of a naked woman holding a sword aloft. La Délivrance was created as a celebration of the First Battle of the Marne, when the German army was stopped before capturing Paris in August 1914. It is the work of French sculptor Émile Oscar Guillaume (1867-1942) and was originally called ’La Victoire’. It depicts a naked female figure standing on tip-toe with both feet on a bronze hemisphere. She lifts her face to the sky and holds both arms aloft, with a sword in her right hand with the title ’Delivrance’ embossed on the hilt.
On 17 October 1919, the French newspaper Le Matin announced that 11 copies of the statue, renamed ’La Délivrance’, would be offered to 11 cities of France and Belgium, occupied or destroyed by the Germans.
The London version has been displayed at Henly’s Corner, at the bottom of Regents Park Road at the southern edge of Finchley in north London since 1927.
In 1920 Guillaume exhibited his statue at the Paris Salon, where it won the Hor...
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Wheelwright Street, N7
Wheelwright Street was built for prison wardens and other staff. In 1826 Thomas Cubitt had bought 24 acres of the then Copenhagen Fields. In the 1850s building began on Cubitt’s land. In 1853, a builder called Henry Law made up Arthur Terrace on the Caledonian Road, Ponder Street (then called Cumberland Street), the City of Rome pub and, in 1854, Pentonville Cottages. The south side of the latter street, runs along the south edge of Pentonville Prison, and was only completed in 1863.
While the whole street was at first called Pentonville Cottages, the cottages kept their name but the street got its own name - Market Street - in 1863. The cottages themselves consisted of 11 dwellings but in 1981 were demolished in an expansion of the prison.
The road was renamed again in 1938 since there were many Market Streets in London - postal workers found the jumble of similar streetnames throughout London rather confusing. It was decided in the 1930s to find distinct names for streets where possible.
Most local a...
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Bromley-by-Bow
Bromley-by-Bow is a district located on the western banks of the River Lea, in the Lower Lea Valley in east London. The area is distinct from Bow, which lies immediately to the north and east. The area has become better known as Bromley-by-Bow due to Bromley tube station being renamed to Bromley-by-Bow in 1967, to prevent confusion with Bromley railway station in the London Borough of Bromley. Over time the station’s name has become applied to the district itself.
Bromley-by-Bow was opened as a railway station called ’Bromley’ by the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway in 1858.
The construction of the Whitechapel and Bow Railway allowed the District Railway to start serving the station in 1902. Electrification of the system followed in 1905.
The District Railway was incorporated into London Transport in 1933 and the Hammersmith & City line (then part of the Metropolitan line) started operating services through Bromley on 4 May 1936.
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Finsbury Park ballooning
Finsbury Park got its facts mixed up. The platform art on the southbound Piccadilly line at Finsbury Park includes a series of six vintage balloons rising along the far platform wall.
The balloons are the work of artist Annabel Grey and was installed in 1983.
It was a case of mistaken identity. On 15 September 1784 at Finsbury Fields near Moorgate, Vincenzo Lunardi became the first human to fly in England. His hydrogen balloon ascended from an artillery ground - now the base of the Honourable Artillery Company.
Finsbury Park meanwhile has no connection to ballooning. Finsbury Park was created in 1869 by the Borough of Finsbury and was not Finsbury Fields. Wires got crossed in the London Transport artwork commissioning department.
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Stirling Way, WD6
Stirling Way was built as the 1930s began. The Barnet By Pass was finally completed in the summer of 1928. With Boreham Wood much better connected now to the road system, it became a site to consider for industry.
Stirling Way was built parallel to the new road and firms moved in. One of these new buildings became the national headquarters of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. Another notable factory was the Metal Box Company.
The name derived from Stirling’s garage at the A1/A411 junction which gave its name to both Stirling Way and Stirling Corner.
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Addle Hill, EC4V
Addle Hill, formerly Addle Street, originally ran from Upper Thames Street from Carter Lane. Addle Hill has three different theories as to the derivation of its name: one is that was once King Adele Street, from the grandson of King Alfred. Addle may derive from the Saxon word adel, meaning noble. A final theory is that that the name derives from the Old English word adela (translated variously as stinking urine or liquid manure).
In 1244 it was mentioned as Adhelingestrate; in 1279–80 as Athelingestrate.
The nearby Watling Street had the same name at this time. In 1596 it was first mentioned as Adling Hill, but in 1598 Stow wrote, ‘In Addle Street or Lane, I find no monuments.’
The descriptive Addle Hill probably coexisted with the formal Addle Street. In 1600 Dekker’s Shoemakers’ Holiday was printed by Valentine Sons who described themselves as ‘dwelling at the foote of Adling Hill, neere Bainards Castle, at the signe of the White Swanne’. After 1863 the southern end was demolished for the creation of queen Victor...
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Ashburnham Place, SE10
Ashburnham Place dates to the 16th century though most of its buildings are Victorian. An 1695 map by Travers shows a street on the exact line of Ashburnham Place. The age of this street is confirmed by subsequent old maps. Only one nearby building is marked on the 1695 map - a ‘Hospital’. This is the 1575 Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital (also known as Almshouses or College). It was rebuilt in 1819.
John Ashburnham – who came from a Sussex family of “stupendous antiquity” – acquired the land here as part of a substantial inheritance in 1755. His new set of possessions included the Chocolate House, which stood on the brow of Blackheath and had gained its name from tastings of drinking chocolate held there when the beverage first came into fashion. The Chocolate House was unimaginatively renamed Ashburnham House in 1820. From around this time the family laid out more streets and housing to the north-west of South Street, with the scheme gaining full momentum nearer the middle of the 19th century. The area between Blackheath Road, Greenwich High Roa...
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Baker Street, W1U
Baker Street was laid out in the 18th century by the builder William Baker, after whom it is named. Baker Street, in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster, stands on the Portman Estate – in 1553 Sir William Portman bought nearly 300 acres of land in the area; 200 years later development of the Portman estate began. William Baker, a "Gentleman of Marylebone", leased land from the Portman Estate, and laid out the street in 1755.
The street is most famous for its connection to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who lived at a fictional 221B Baker Street address in the northern (NW1) end of the street. The area is now mainly occupied by commercial premises, having been residential.
Running south from Marylebone Road, the W1 section of Baker Street runs through Portman Square and Wigmore Street. After Portman Square the road continues as Orchard Street.
In 1940 the headquarters of the Special Operations Executive moved to 64 Baker Street, they were often called the "Baker Street Irregulars" after Sherlock Holmes’ gang of...
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Barn Elms Farm
Barn Elms Farm sported majestic elm trees - hence the name. Barn Elms was recorded in 1540 and was formerly the manor house of Barnes. The land and manor belonged to St.Paul’s Cathedral and in 15th century was the home of Sir John Saye, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The manor house was later the home of Elizabethan spymaster Sir Frances Walsingham. The house was rebuilt by Thomas Cartwright in 1694.
Barn Elms Farm was variously the residence of William Cobbett (a political writer), Abraham Cowley (a poet) and of Heidegger (Master of the Revels to George II). Jacob Tonson lived in the old house called "Queen Elizabeth’s Dairy". He placed here a gallery for the Kit-Cat Club.
William Cobbett was an innovator of cultivation - experimenting with the growing of maize and the practice of self-supporting husbandry.
He saw himself as a champion of traditional rural society against the transformation due to the Industrial Revolution.
The Lobjoit family, Huguenot refugees, ha...
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St Albans Close, NW11
St Albans Close is a small cul-de-sac serving St Albans Church.
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Eastcastle Street, W1D
Eastcastle Street was originally called Castle Street East. Eastcastle Street belongs historically to two freehold estates: the Cavendish–Harley or Portland estate west of Wells Street, and the Berners estate to its east. Some forty years separate the two phases of its development, as the former properties were built up from the 1720s, the latter not until the 1760s. Today that difference counts for little, as all the early buildings have gone.
William Thomas, steward of the Marylebone estate had a difficult job in the 1720s and 1730s. The local streets were being built and he had many issues with their builders. He had further problems with more noble personages in the form of the Duke of Chandos who had to be rebuked about the location of his sewers, as well as about a smelly dunghill on his land north of Cavendish Square.
He wrote of his exasperation with managing the estate and one of his main antagonist was William Long who was extracting gravel north of Oxford Street. Long stubbornly kept his pit going and...
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Haines Street, SW8
Haines Street was named after the speculating solicitor, Frederick Haines, who built it. Haines Street ran south east from Nine Elms Lane from its construction 1862 until 1970.
Two side streets came off of the street: Tweed Street and Arden Street. It had one notable pub, the Prince Alfred situated at 15 Haines Street. The eastern boundary of the street was the vast London Gas Light & Coke Co. works.
In 1971, the New Covent Garden Market was sited on top of the old street and it ceased to be.
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Aylesford Street, SW1V
Aylesford Street was built in 1848. Aylesford Street, like the now-demolished Pulford Street, served the works of the Equitable Gas Company which had been established in 1830.
Geraldine Mitton in 1902 noted the St Saviour’s Mission House, built by the Duke of Westminster at a cost of £4000 which also served also for parochial meetings.
The gas works closed between the wars and the Tachbrook estate was built.
During the 1920s between demolition of the gas works and the building of the estate, Victoria Bus Station was located on the works site.
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Colney Hatch Lane, N11
Colney Hatch Lane, so called from 1846, was called Halliwick street in 1398 and Muswell Hill Lane in 1801. A new manor house was built in 1601 by John Trott Lord of the Manor. By 1900 it was a girls’ school. It stood on the west side of Colney Hatch Lane till 1930 when it was demolished. From the 15th century the manor was a copyhold under Hornsey Manor held by the Bishop of London.
When Hornsey recorded its boundaries in 1887, the most northerly point where Hornsey meets Friern Barnet and Clerkenwell Detached, at the junction of today’s Goodwyn’s Vale and Colney Hatch Lane was recorded as 399 ‘New Post marked 18 feet E’ beside first cottage.
Today’s division of the road, splitting it between two postcodes, is the North Circular Road. North of it lies N11.
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Parkway, NW1
Parkway is one of Camden Town’s older roads - originally called ’The Crooked Lane’. Parkway, a tree-lined street, was developed from Crooked Lane in the 1820s and 1830s with three-storey houses on both sides. Until 1938, Parkway was known as Park Street.
Just after the Second World War, a Camden Town local reminisced:
“Park Street, which we now call Parkway, was full of shops instead of architects’ offices and estate agents as it is now. By eight in the morning the shop boy was busy cleaning the windows and polishing the outside brasses, sweeping and burnishing inside ready to open at nine and close twelve hours later for seven shillings and sixpence a week. Shops were graded. Fenn’s, the grocers at the corner of Delancey Street and Park Street, was a cut above the others, wrapping all purchases in brown paper, while most used newspaper.”
The street now has a mix of retail and restaurant uses with some small businesses.
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Adair Road, W10
Adair Road is a street on the Kensal Town/North Kensington borders. Adair Road was laid out during the second wave of the development of Kensal Town in the decades before the turn of the twentieth century. The parts of Kensal Town further west date from much earlier in the 1800s. The laying out of Golborne Road meant building pressure on this area.
The already-developed part of Kensal Town had been in another parish - a detached part of Chelsea, miles from the rest of Chelsea. But development halted where Kensington began, just west of where Bosworth Road was laid out. The obscure boundary can be seen on the 1900 map.
After the Second World War, the street was redeveloped with the two tower blocks, Hazlewood Tower and Adair Tower put up in side streets off of Adair Road.
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Downham
The Downham Estate dates from the late 1920s. The Downham Estate arrived on the scene in 1926, but its name originates in 1914 when the London County Council (LCC) agreed to build three large housing estates. The land was acquired in 1920. Downham covered the lands of two farms, Holloway Farm to the west and Shroffolds Farm to the north. Before the Estate was built, there had been little building south of Whitefoot Lane - many local residents took weekend walks over the ’Seven Fields’.
The name ’Downham’ derives from Lord Downham who, as William Haynes Fisher was a former chairman of the LCC. Many of the road took their names from Tennyson’s ’Idylls of the King’. Other roads took their names from places in Devon.
By summer 1930, 6000 houses had been completed by builders Holland, Hannen & Cubbits. An additional section of just over 1000 houses was developed at Whitefoot lane in 1937 by builders Higgs & Hill and generally known as ’North Downham’. On completion, some 30 000 people l...
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Lithos Road, NW3
Lithos Road is a part of the NW3 postal area which lies west of the Finchley Road. Stone Yard power station was once situated in Lithos Road - it was the power station for Hampstead Borough.
The supply of electricity had been managed initially by the Council’s predecessor the Hampstead Vestry through its Electric Lighting Committee. Hampstead Metropolitan Borough Council Electricity Undertaking was authorised under the Hampstead (London) Electric Lighting Order 1892. The foundation stone was laid in 1892 and a Central Supply Station and Head Offices were built in 1893 at the Vestry’s Stoneyard,
Supply began in 1894 of single-phase high-tension alternating current. From 1921 the bulk supply of electricity was taken from Saint Marylebone Borough Council, and Lithos Road ceased to generate in 1922.
The Borough Council Bathing Station, also in Lithos Road, closed in 1960
Nowadays in Lithos Road, the Lithos Road Estate is there, built in 1991 with high and low rise blocks bordered on each side by railwa...
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Abbey Road, NW6
A small section of the north of Abbey Road lies in NW6. Abbey Road was a track leading from Lisson village to Kilburn Priory. Until dissolution in the 1500s, Kilburn Priory was attached to the Abbey of Westminster, which owned the fields through which the path ran. These were known as the Abbey Fields so the path became Abbey Road in the early nineteenth century. An offshoot of Abbey Road was named Abbey Gardens in 1880.
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Harold Hill
Harold Hill is an area in the London Borough of Havering and a district centre in the London Plan. The name Harold Hill refers to Harold Godwinson who once held the manor of Havering-atte-Bower. Romford was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1937 and governed by Romford Borough Council, which was the local authority during the construction of the Harold Hill estate.
The housing development of Harold Hill was conceived in the Greater London Plan of 1944 in order to alleviate the housing shortages of Inner London. Before construction of the estate - completed in 1958 - it was the location of Dagnam Park house and grounds.
Most of the land for the estate was purchased in 1947 by the London County Council. The area was within the designated Metropolitan Green Belt, but an exception was made for the development because of the housing need in London following the Second World War.
Construction of 7631 permanent homes, housing 25 000 people, began in 1948 and was complete by 1958.
The development is fairly low density with ...
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Alexandra Crescent, BR1
Alexandra Crescent was known for its 1926 ’Downham Wall’. Alexandra Crescent was built as a private (unadopted) road in late 1925 by the developer Albert Frampton. In a last-minute change of name, it was called after Queen Alexandra of Denmark who had just passed away in November of that year.
As the Downham Estate was being built to the north in 1926, those who were just moving into the new Alexandra Crescent appointed Frampton to build a dividing wall. The private home owners wished to prevent the working class people of Downham from accessing their neighbouring middle-class area. The Alexandra Crescent residents also wanted to prevent the development of an access route into the centre of Bromley.
Frampton made a formal application to Bromley Council on 16 February 1926 to build the dividing wall. The council refused to take a decision but the seven-foot-high brick wall was built nonetheless. It was constructed across Valeswood Road at its junction with Alexandra Crescent.
The ’class wall’ ...
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Addiscombe Road, CR0
Addiscombe Road first appeared on a map dated 1594. Addiscombe Road connecting Croydon with the hamlet of Addiscombe (roughly on the site of today’s Sandilands tram stop) to its east.
It was known as Upper Addiscombe Road in the 19th century to contrast with Lower Addiscombe Road - water from a spring ran down the hill.
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Mortlake
Mortlake lies on the south bank of the River Thames between Kew and Barnes. Historically it was part of Surrey and until 1965 was in the Municipal Borough of Barnes. The Stuart and Georgian history was economically one of malting, brewing, farming, watermen and a great tapestry works.
The Waterloo to Reading railway line runs through Mortlake - the station opened on 27 July 1846.
The University Boat Race finishes at Mortlake every March/April.
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Gloucester Road, SW7
Gloucester Road is a main street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Gloucester Road runs north-south between Kensington Gardens (at which point it is known as Palace Gate) and the Old Brompton Road at the south end. At its intersection with Cromwell Road is Gloucester Road underground station, close to which there are several pubs, restaurants, many hotels and St Stephen’s Church (built in 1867 and, notably, the church warden of which was the poet T. S. Eliot).
In 1612 or earlier it was called Hogs Moor or Hogmire Lane. It was a ’lane through marshy ground where hogs are kept’, a name that was still used until about 1850. and it was the site of an ultimately unsuccessful pleasure garden (and for a while a pick-your-own fruit and flower farm) in the late 18th century. At that time most of the vicinity was filled with nurseries and market gardens.
The road is now named after Maria, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh who built a house there - Villa Maria (later Orford Lodge) - in 1805, on part of the pleasure garden�...
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Argyle Road, N12
Argyle Road runs from Nether Street to Dollis Brook after which it is named Lullington Garth. It follows the line of an old footpath which crossed the brook at what was called Frith Bridge.
The very short stretch of road between Nether Street and a footbridge over the railway was created in 1872 with the road beyond this bridge having been an early twentieth century construction.
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Brickfield Cottages, WD6
Brickfield Cottages lie between Theobald Street and the railway. Brickfield Cottages were built in 1858 by Charles Morgan, who owned the brickfield next door.
Further cottages were built in 1868 for railway workers but of interest to their further story is a parallel story of local Henry Robinson. who came into possession of some of them.
Robinson built the ’Red Road’ bridge over the railway - this linked Parkfield to Theobald Street and additional gave access for Tilehouse Farm to reach some of its fields cut off by the new line.
Robinson owned much of the land in Borehamwood and in 1871 built a parade of shops in Theobald Street almost opposite the entrance to Brickfield Cottages. The shops became known locally as ’Robinson’s Folly’ - they expected the venture to fail. But the venture didn’t and the shops remain in existence today.
Robinson gave two of the Brickfield Cottages to his daughter as part of her dowry.
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Bounds Green
Bounds Green is an area in the London Borough of Haringey with a station on the Piccadilly Line. Bounds Green was originally an overnight stop for travellers, being just short of the tollgate at Turnpike Lane. The name is derived from the former Bounds Green Farm near Cline Road.
Nowadays Bounds Green is a residential suburb, just north of Wood Green.
Bounds Green underground station opened in 1932 in an area previously known as Bowes Park - there is also a Bowes Park railway station.
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Land of Promise, N1
The Land of Promise - a short cul-de-sac - got its curious name from its former existence as a piece of land. The Land of Promise formed a part of the estate of Richard Haryong in the sixteenth century. The plan of the Land of Promise shows that at the south-west corner it did not reach Hoxton Street - the boundary ran to a point 75 feet from the street.
In 1545, Richard Haryong bequeathed a life interest in his lands to Margaret. He also bequeathed a legal title to his daughter, Alice Marowe. In 1557, Alice and her husband sold on to Thomas Cudsden and Alice Haddon. After the death of Margaret, of a messuage, two barns, a stable, a garden and three acres of Hoxton land came into their ownership. By 1626, Richard Middleton owned the property and land.
In 1633, Middleton sold it to the parish of Shoreditch as three tenements and three acres of land. In 1776, an existing lease was surrendered. A fresh lease was granted for the western part of the property, and the eastern portion used for the provision of a workhouse. On the expiry of the western lease in 1847 th...
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Fitzjohn’s Avenue, NW3
Fitzjohn’s Avenue links Hampstead with Swiss Cottage. Before Fitzjohn’s Avenue was built, Hampstead was bounded to the south by a broad belt of green meadows, known as the Shepherds’ or Conduit Fields, across which ran a pathway sloping up to the southwestern corner of the village, and terminating near Church Row. On the eastern side of these fields wass an old well or conduit, called the Shepherd’s Well, the source of the River Tyburn.
In the early 1870s, it was proposed by some of the inhabitants of Hampstead to purchase a portion of these grassy slopes, and to devote them to public use as a park.
However, in 1871 F. J. Clark had suggested a new road direct to Hampstead and in 1872 Spencer Maryon Wilson was hoping to create a "truly imposing road". In 1875 he contracted with John Culverhouse, who since 1871 had been the tenant at will of the two main demesne farms, to make Fitzjohn’s Avenue, from College Crescent off Finchley Road to Greenhill Road, and to plant ornamental trees.
I...
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Greatorex Street, E1
Greatorex Street was formerly called High Street. Daniel Greatorex was a clergyman and for 40 years was chaplain to the Sailor’s Home in Dock Street. He was at the same time vicar of St Paul’s Whitechapel. Greatorex Street is named after him.
Little is known about the earliest developments but the district’s growth seems to have started along the High Street (Greatorex Street), an early means of access from Whitechapel and ’The Church Way’ (now part of Hanbury Street). The latter ran eastward from Spitalfields towards Mile End. By the late seventeenth century, the settlement was divided from east to west by the Common Sewer, a drainage ditch which later formed the boundary between the two estates into which Mile End New Town was divided. As late as 1838 the Common Sewer was still an open ditch.
Building development seems to have begun shortly after 1680. New streets were laid out at this early stage, but building was slow and spasmodic.
High Street (Greatorex Street) was closed a...
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The Underground Map is creating street histories for the areas of London and surrounding counties lying within the M25.
