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.
Pereira Street, E1
Pereira Street ran north/south in Bethnal Green. Pereira Street ran from Neath Place in the north down to Bath Street at its south end.
Directly after its construction it was two streets - Duke Street north of the junction with Thomas Passage and Wellington Street to the south. The latter was the first of the two to be built - marked on the 1820 map without Duke Street. Presumably the two were named after the victor at Waterloo, one after the other.
Halfway along, the Freemasons Arms pub was situated at 45 Pereira Street.
It was swept away as part of slum clearances in Whitechapel, Limehouse and Shoreditch.
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Embankment
Embankment underground station has been known by various names during its long history - including, indeed, ’Embankment’. The station has two entrances, one on Victoria Embankment and the other on Villiers Street, adjacent to Victoria Embankment Gardens.
The station is in two parts: sub-surface platforms opened in 1870 by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR) as part of the company’s extension of the Inner Circle eastwards from Westminster to Blackfriars and deep-level platforms opened in 1906 by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) and 1914 by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR). A variety of underground and mainline services have operated over the sub-surface tracks and the CCE&HR part of the station was reconstructed in the 1920s.
After having been named both Charing Cross and Embankment, in 1974 the station was renamed Charing Cross Embankment. Then, on 12 September 1976, it became Embankment, so that the merged Strand and Trafalgar Square stations could be named Charing Cross.
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Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square Charing Cross gives its name to several local landmarks, including Charing Cross railway station and is named after the now demolished Eleanor cross that stood there, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. It was where King Edward I placed a memorial to his wife, Eleanor of Castile. It was one of twelve places where Eleanor’s coffin rested overnight during the funeral procession from Lincolnshire to her final resting-place at Westminster. At each of these, Edward erected an Eleanor cross, of which only three now remain.
The original site of the cross has been occupied since 1675 by an equestrian statue of King Charles I. A Victorian replacement, in different style from the original, was later erected a short distance to the east outside the railway station.
Formerly, until 1931, Charing Cross also referred to the part of what is now Whitehall lying between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. At least one property retains a Charing Cro...
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Pember Road, NW10
Pember Road is one of the side streets to the west of Kilburn Lane, NW10 The district around Pember Road remained completely rural until about 1850.
Kensal Green manor house, which was roughly situated where Wakeman Road joins the Harrow Road, was pulled down in the 1860s.
From about 1860 the lands to the west of Kilburn High Road began to be built upon and in the 1870s the sale of Banisters Farm led to the building of many present day streets.
By 1880, the rapid build up of the area caused official concern. Many houses had no regular sewers and privies drained into old, broken down pipes.
During the Second World War, Pember Road was the location for a aggregate night time bomb which fell during the Blitz.
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Bishop’s Bridge Road, W2
Bishop’s Bridge Road, now a main thoroughfare, began life as a footpath. The village of Westbourne Green was obliterated by mid 19th-century building, much of which consisted of streets with the prefix ’Westbourne’ and was sometimes known as ’Westbournia’. The name Westbourne did not originate with the river - rather, as a place on the west side of the stream, the river to be called after it.
The cutting of the GWR line was begun in 1836. Aince the railway obstructed the Paddington Green end of Bishop’s Walk, the footpath was replaced by Bishop’s Road.
Housing spread in the 1840s, mainly south of the railway. The eastern end of Bishop’s Road was built up and at first called Westbourne Place, where the publisher George Smith was visited by Charlotte Bronte in 1848 and 1849. Immediately to the west, where the Paddington Estate straddled the Westbourne, roads were laid out, with bridges over the railway to link them with Harrow Road.
No. 37 Gloucester Gardens, Bishop’s Road, was the London home of...
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Horbury Crescent, W11
Horbury Crescent is a short half-moon shaped street between Ladbroke Road and Kensington Park Road. In 1848 the site (which was then agricultural land) was leased by Felix Ladbroke (the heir of James Weller Ladbroke who had begun the development of the Ladbroke estate) to William Chadwick in 1848. Chadwick, although he described himself variously as an architect and a builder, was in fact what we would now call a developer, who also developed part of Ladbroke Road and several other nearby streets. Building of Horbury Crescent was in fact begun in 1855 by his heir W.W. Chadwick, and by 1857 sixteen houses were in the course of erection.
Kensington Temple was originally a Congregational chapel called Horbury Chapel after Horbury in Yorkshire, the home town of its deacon in the 1850s, and this name was also given to Horbury Crescent and Horbury Mews.
Originally, the houses were numbered consecutively, starting from the Ladbroke Road end and running along the western side and then back along the eastern side (so the present 13 was No. 1), but in 1863 it ...
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Poplar High Street, E14
Until the late nineteenth century Poplar High Street was the district’s principal street. The commercial importance of Poplar High Street declined rapidly from the 1860s, and in the late 1880s it was reported that ’many shops have been empty for years’.
Nearly two-thirds of a mile in length, and on average only a little over 30ft in width, Poplar High Street contained 327 houses when it was renumbered in 1865. Most were narrow, with an average width of under 17ft. Extending along the southern edge of the river-terrace flood-plain gravel, it provided an indirect approach to Blackwall, and, perhaps as important, access to the ways which extended down from its south side into the rich pasture of the Isle of Dogs. The house-sites on this south side of the street sloped sharply downward and this was sometimes thought the less salubrious side. In 1863 the sewer behind the public house at No. 270 was still an open ditch of ’water carried away at every tide’. It was on this ill-drained south side, however, that a clear if discontinuous line of ’bac...
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Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus was built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly. The junction has been a very busy traffic interchange since construction, as it lies at the centre of Theatreland and handles exit traffic from Piccadilly, which Charles Dickens, Jr. described in 1879: "Piccadilly, the great thoroughfare leading from the Haymarket and Regent-street westward to Hyde Park-corner, is the nearest approach to the Parisian boulevard of which London can boast." The circus lost its circular form in 1886 with the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue.
Piccadilly Circus tube station was opened 10 March 1906, on the Bakerloo Line, and on the Piccadilly Line in December of that year. In 1928, the station was extensively rebuilt to handle an increase in traffic.
The intersection’s first electric advertisements appeared in 1910, and, from 1923, electric billboards were set up on the facade of the London Pavilion. Traffic lights were first installed on 3 August 1926, at the junction.
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Pi...
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Vauxhall Cross, SW8
Vauxhall Cross is now known as the site of the MI5 headquarters. The area in front of the bus station was formerly a large junction known as Vauxhall Cross. Upper Kennington Lane was a major thoroughfare linking Vauxhall Bridge with the Elephant and Castle with Vauxhall Cross the junction formed with roads coming from the south.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was the site of a turnpike.
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Oxford Circus
Oxford Circus, designed by John Nash in 1811. Oxford Circus, the busy intersection of Oxford Street and Regent Street, was constructed in the beginning of the 19th century, and was designed by John Nash. Regent Street had been commissioned by Prince Regent, who was later to become King George IV, as a grand scheme to connect the Princes home at Carlton House with his newly acquired property at Regents Park. Nash designed a wide boulevard with a sweeping curve that became a clear dividing line between the less respectable Soho and the fashionable squares and streets of Mayfair. Born from the concept of Nash’s layout of the New Street in 1812, frontage alignments remain, with the rebuilt listed architecture of 1920s buildings.
The surrounding area contains important elements of the Nash heritage. All frontages on the Circus are Grade II Listed. The entire of Regent Street is also listed and sits within a conservation area.
The circus is served by Oxford Circus tube station, which is directly beneat...
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Trundleys Road, SE8
Trundleys Road combined the northernmost section of Woodpecker Lane (later Woodpecker Road) and Trundley’s Lane. The road is split over two postcodes - SE8 and SE14. The SE14 section (also Trundley’s Lane) was previously part of Coney Hall Lane (now Rolt Street). The larger area was owned by the Haberdasher’s livery company but leased to the Holcombe family. During its previous industrial incarnation, there were constant complaints about the many noxious works there - a horse slaughterhouse and a catgut factory. Later, parkland has lent a greener aspect to the road.
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Wharf Road, E14
Wharf Road is now part of Ferry Road but had an independent history. Wharf Road ran parallel to the river and had various wharves along its length: the Port of London Wharf, Millwall Boiler Works and a horse shoe makers on the Millwall side. On the Cubitt Town side there was more industry.
The Millwall Extension Railway opened a station called North Greenwich but the site of the station split Wharf Road into two parts. The railway company ran a subway between the vestigial Wharf Road and the cut-off - and much longer - section which eventually became Saunders Ness Road from 1937.
Wharf Road dated from the 1850s and its housing dated from the following decade. Three cross streets were built: Barque Street, Ship Street (later Schooner Street) and Brig Street.
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Arras Avenue, SM4
Arras Avenue is named after a First World War battle. The medieval Ravensbury Manor dated back to the thirteenth century. After the opening of Morden underground station in 1926, development pressure in Morden increased. In 1929 Mitcham, Merton and Morden Councils purchased part of the former Ravensbury Manor gardens and opened the site as Ravensbury Park.
Housing was built in the rest of the land, including Arras Avenue. The St Helier estate was built between 1928 and 1936 by the London County Council as a garden city, with landscaping by the landscape architect Edward Prentice Mawson.
The Wimbledon to Sutton railway line opened a station at St Helier in 1930. Services provided rapid links into central London for the residents.
Arras Avenue is one of a number of interwar London-region roads named after victories in the First World War - there are Verduns, Mons and Marnes in other areas of the capital.
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Milkwood Road, SE24
Milkwood Road is a main thoroughfare running north from Herne Hill station. Though a cause later taken up by the more successful Artisans, Labourers and General Dwellings Company, the Suburban Village and Dwellings Company (SVDC) was a philanthropic venture to attempt workers’ housing in a high-quality and thought-our design style. The purpose of the Suburban Village and General Dwellings Company was “to provide at the most rapid rate possible, healthy, pleasant, and comfortable abodes, for the over-crowded population of the metropolis. The company will purchase estates in all the suburbs near to and having direct railway connexion with London, and erect thereon complete villages.” The SVDC built Milkwood Road, Brixton in 1868.
Until the middle of the 17th century this area was woodland though the trees were uprooted during the Commonwealth. In 1711 a lease was granted to William East of the Middle Temple, whose descendants continued as tenants until 1837. The lease was surrendered to Rice Richard Clayton but when that expired in 1865, th...
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Abbey Road, E15
Abbey Road has a name derived from the Cistercian abbey of Stratford Langthorne. The abbey was founded about the year 1135 by Walter de Montfichet. It was a ’daughter house’ of the monastery of Savigney, France. The Cistercian Monks here were known as the ’white monks’ due to their white habits. The pathway which is now Abbey Road may even predate the abbey - it became a route from the church in West Ham Church to the abbey.
The abbey had a particular responsibility for the upkeep of the nearby bridge over the River Lea.
Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith wrote a history of East London in 1939 and discussed the nursery rhyme ’London Bridge Is Falling Down’. The verses in the rhyme about repairing the bridge with bread, iron, gold and silver applied to the Lea bridge nearby he proposed as the monks used these very items in their time.
Henry VIII dissolved the abbey and the duty to drain the marsh was passed to the new owners of the lands that once belonged to the abbey.
Abbey Road (by then Abbey Lane)...
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Dennington Park Road, NW6
About 1881 Dennington Park Road was constructed on the line of Sweetbriar Walk, the old path to Lauriston Lodge. 58 houses were built in Dennington Park Road and in Kingdon Road between 1883 and 1888, mostly by James Gibb.
A synagogue was built at the eastern end of Dennington Park Road in 1891.
Three blocks of flats were named Dene Mansions after Little Dene, a former large house in West Hampstead and home to the Ripley family. The flats replaced Lauriston Lodge in 1904.
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Willesden Junction
Willesden Junction station is both on the Bakerloo line and London Overground. The West Coast Main Line Willesden Junction station was opened by the London & North Western Railway on 1 September 1866 to replace the London and Birmingham Railway’s Willesden station of 1841 which was half a mile to the north west. Passenger services ended in 1962 when the platforms were removed during electrification to allow the curvature of the tracks to be eased.
The High-Level Willesden Junction station was opened by the North London Railway in 1869. By 1897 199 passenger and 47 goods trains passed through the High Level station each day. The Willesden New Station (’Low-Level station’) on the Watford DC Line was opened in 1910 to the north of the main line.
In 1896 staff totalled 271, including 79 porters, 58 signalmen (in 14 signal boxes) and 58 shunters and yard foremen. Many of them were housed in what is now the Old Oak Lane Conservation Area, built by the LNWR in 1889 and which included an Institute, reading room and church.
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Powis Street, SE18
Powis Street was laid out in the late 18th century and was named after the Powis brothers, who developed most of the land in this part of the town. Up to the late 18th century, the area that presently forms the commercial heart of Woolwich - south of Old Woolwich, around Powis Street, Beresford Square and General Gordon Square - was still largely rural, with a small cluster of cottages around Green’s End and Woolwich New Road. To the north and east of the future Powis Street were the Royal Ropeyard and some gardens. As the town was growing rapidly - from 6,500 in 1720 to almost 17,000 in 1811 - the need arose for a new town centre and the obvious location was the area south of the ropeyard.
In 1782, the Powis brothers - two Greenwich brewers - took a lease of 43 acres of these fields which were then part of the Bowater Estate. Shortly afterwards a road was laid out here. It connected Green’s End and the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, providing an alternative to the High Street.
As the lease that the Powis brothers took out was only for 22 years, the land was not profitable for development a...
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The Elms
The Elms - also known as Elm Lodge - stood at the junction of Kilburn High Road and Willesden Lane. From around the 1750, The Elms was under the ownership of a number of people. Mr and Mrs Pickersgill were in occupation between 1829 and 1832. The husband, Henry William Pickersgill, was an eminent portrait painter. Mrs Pickersgill ran a school for ‘female education’.
From 1832 John Ebers, a widowed theatre manager with two daughters moved into The Elms. He moved into the world of publishing.
Next, the writer William Harrison Ainsworth lived in the house (his wife was Fanny Ebers, daughter of John). Here he began writing his novel ’Rookwood’, about the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin. John Ebers published the book. Although the inn where Dick Turpin met his accomplices is based on The Cock in Kilburn, the story is fictitious and there’s no historical evidence to link Turpin to Kilburn.
The Elms stood on the site of the later Gaumont State Cinema.
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Kenton
Kenton is a neighbourhood that forms the eastern part of Harrow. Kenton hamlet was first recorded as ’Keninton’ in 1232 with the name deriving from the personal name of the Saxon ’Coena’ and the Old English ’tun’ (a farm).
The Plough public house was the first in Kenton, opening in the early 18th century - the current building is not the original. The nearby ’Windermere’ pub, built in 1938, is Grade II listed and situated in Windermere Avenue.
Before the 20th century, the settlement was concentrated around in what was Kenton Lane (the easternmost part of which remains as Old Kenton Lane) and is now part of the present day Woodgrange Avenue and Kenton Road.
Kenton station was opened by the London and North Western Railway on 15 June 1912. The Metropolitan Railway’s nearby Northwick Park and Kenton station (later renamed Northwick Park) followed on 28 June 1923.
Kenton’s centre moved towards the Wealdstone direction after the opening of Kenton station - Kenton had grown ...
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Coldharbour Lane, SW9
Coldharbour Lane leads south-westwards from Camberwell to Brixton. A possible derivation of the Coldharbour Lane name is ’Cool Arbour Lane’, dating from Camberwell’s rural past. According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, a ’cold harbour’ was an uninhabited shelter for travellers, often along a well-known route. Coldharbour Lane was also formerly known as Camberwell Lane.
Former British Prime Minister John Major lived in a flat at 144 Coldharbour Lane when a child.
In 2003, journalist David Cohen described Coldharbour Lane as "the most dangerous street in the most dangerous borough in London". The situation has dramatically improved since then.
The road is now a mixture of residential, business and retail buildings - the stretch of Coldharbour Lane near Brixton Market contains shops, bars and restaurants. Along the road between the junctions of Coldharbour Lane and Denmark Hill (Camberwell) and up to Denmark Road lies part of the boundary between Lambeth and Southwark boroughs. The other end of Col...
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Harrow & Wealdstone
Harrow & Wealdstone is served by London Underground Bakerloo line, London Overground, London Northwestern Railway and Southern services. The station was opened by the London and Birmingham Railway as ’Harrow’ on 20 July 1837. At the time the station was built, the area was rural and the nearest large settlement was at Harrow on the Hill about 1.5 miles to the south. Wealdstone was then a collection of houses at the north end of what is now Wealdstone High Street, about one mile north of the station.
By the end of the 19th century Wealdstone had developed in size and the station was given its current name on 1 May 1897 to reflect more accurately its location.
On 18 December 1890, a short branch line to Stanmore was opened by the London & North Western Railway and on 16 April 1917, Bakerloo line services were extended from Willesden Junction to Watford Junction running on the newly electrified local tracks.
In 1952, the passenger service to Stanmore was withdrawn.
After 1984, Harrow & Wealdstone became the northern terminus of the Bakerloo line.
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Amberley Mews, W9
Amberley Mews starred as Tom Riley’s home in the 1950 movie "The Blue Lamp". The site of Westbourne Manor House was built over from around 1867 with Amberley Road and its timber wharves built along the canal bank. Amberley Mews was built behind Amberley Road as a typical 1860 mews development.
Amberley Mews was featured, providing a record of its look, in the film ’The Blue Lamp’ at the beginning of the 1950s. Dirk Bogarde played Tom Riley, living in the fictional version of the street. Amberley Mews no longer exists - the site was built over with new flats at the end of the 1960s.
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Oakington Manor Farm
Oakington Manor Farm derived its name from a corruption of the name ’Tokyngton’. Oakington (Manor) Farm was an old Wembley manor and farm, first mentioned in 1171.
Gordon S Maxwell’s The Fringe of London (published 1925) talks of the small Middlesex hamlet of Monks Park, alongside the river Brent to the south of Oakington Farm.
In 1845, Richard Welford, a cowkeeper from Holloway, took over Warwick Farm, Paddington and founded what was to become J Welford & Sons Ltd. His dairy business became the largest retail milk business in the capital. The farm’s cowsheds were situated between the Harrow Road and what is now Warwick Crescent. The fields of Warwick Farm were built over and became Warwick Avenue, Warwick Place and Warwick Crescent.
In the mid 1850s, the Warwick Farm cowsheds were moved to Oakington Manor Farm in Wembley.
The farm was situated almost next to Watkin’s Folly in Wembley Park. What was later South Way was the farm’s access track but in 1906, the Great Central Railway bu...
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British Museum
British Museum was a station on the Central line, located in Holborn and taking its name from the nearby British Museum in Great Russell Street. British Museum station was opened by the Central London Railway on 30 July 1900 with an entrance at 133 High Holborn.
There had been ideas for an underground passageway between British Museum and Holborn (100 metres away and open in 1906) but tunnelling would have been complex. A proposal to enlarge the tunnels under High Holborn to create new platforms at Holborn station for the Central and to abandon the British Museum station was originally included in a private bill submitted to parliament as early as November 1913. The First World War prevented any work taking place. The works were eventually carried out as part of the modernisation of Holborn station at the beginning of the 1930s when escalators were installed. British Museum station was closed on 24 September 1933, with the new platforms at Holborn opening the following day.
British Museum station was subsequently used up to the 1960s as a military administrative office and emergency command post, ...
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Nether Street, N3
Nether Street was recognised by the mid-14th century as an old street, sometimes called ’Lower Street’. Nether Street was a link road from the main roads to Finchley properties such as Moss Hall and Brent Lodge. It was already called Nether Street by 1365 and ’le lower street’ in 1622. It was linked at both ends to Ballards Lane. Coles Lane, first mentioned in 1393 may have been the southern link. About 1867 the northern section was named Mosshall Lane.
By the time of the 1851 census, Nether Street had 17 houses, including Elm Place, Sellars Hall, Brent Lodge, Long Lodge, and Courthouse Farm, and housed two fund-holders, two members of the stock exchange and two solicitors.
West of Nether street is Dollis Brook, a tributary of the Brent. The viaduct carrying trains between Mill Hill East and Finchley Central was designed by Sir John Fowler and is the highest point above sea level on the London Underground.
The large house which is now Finchley Golf Club (here since 1929) was originally called Nether Court. This is one of the larg...
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Debden House
The Grade II listed Debden House was built in the early 19th century and was probably a former coach house. Debden Green House, as it was then, was once part of the Debden Hall estate. In 1777, Alexander Hamilton is shown to be the owner of Debden Hall and Debden House in Debden Green. He owned Debden Green House from at least 1748. It seems that he used Debden Hall and House as his country estate.
Hamilton died at Lincoln’s Inn in 1781 at the age of 88. When he died his eldest son William Hamilton inherited his property. William was also a lawyer who lived at Lincoln’s Inn.
William died in 1811 and as he had no sons his property was left to his nephew William Richard Hamilton. It seems that sometime after this both Debden House and the Hall were sold to Nicholas Pearse who was the husband of Sarah Hamilton, William’s daughter.
Nicholas Pearse was the son of a wealthy landowner and clothier and he had inherited property when his father died in 1793. Nicholas Pearse and Sarah Hamilton had no children and when Nicholas died in...
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Poplar Dock
Poplar Dock is a small dock that connects to the Blackwall Basin of the West India Docks. Originally this was a series of reservoirs built by the West India Dock Company and completed in 1828.
The West India Dock Company built the reservoirs to provide clean impounded water to keep the water level in the docks high and so prevent an influx of water and mud when the entrance locks were opened at high tides. Each of the reservoirs was 650 feet by 110 feet. They were fed from the river on every high tide. The bottom of each reservoir inclined upwards. A steam engine pumped settled water into the upper reservoir, which sluiced directly into the Blackwall Basin and entrance lock.
The steam engine proved inadequate and so, in 1831, James Watt replaced the twin pumps with a single ’Great Pump’.
The upper reservoir was filled in 1838–9 because its site was required for the London and Blackwall Railway. The reservoirs were converted into a timber pond in 1844.
Poplar Dock was then converted into a railway dock, in t...
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Rosenau Road, SW11
Rosenau Road was named after Schloss Rosenau, the birthplace and boyhood home of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who became the consort of Queen Victoria. After the opening of Albert Bridge in 1873 offered the prospect of easy access to Chelsea and the West End, development along its approach road became more attractive. Hedworth Williamson, a speculator then acting as building contractor for the bridge, saw the potential. A cousin of his better-known namesake, the diplomat Sir Hedworth Williamson, he had a somewhat doubtful record in property speculation. A warrant for his arrest issued in 1865 over a questionable sale of shares described him as ‘5ft 6in high, of florid complexion, and very stout face, with projecting front teeth; wears no whiskers or moustache’.
He employed as his architect and surveyor John Robinson. Robinson drew up the initial plans for Williamson, writing in November 1871 to the Commissioners:
At the present moment I think it cannot be denied that the Locality has a bad
name, but, as most of the Building Ground surrounding the Park is still unlet
and as it is in most part...
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Hacton
Hacton is a small dispersed settlement located within the London Borough of Havering. Hacton is located in the countryside between two London suburban towns, Upminster and Rainham.
The name means ’farmstead on a hook-shaped piece of land’ and refers to an area next to the River Ingrebourne. It was historically a hamlet in the ancient parish of Upminster with a long history - a Romano-British farmstead was discovered west of Corbets Tey during gravel-digging in 1962.
In medieval Upminster there seem to have been three clusters of settlement - Upminster village and the hamlets of Hacton and Corbets Tey.In addition to the three settlements medieval dwellings were scattered through the parish.
Hacton and its bridge already existed in 1299. The hamlet expanded slowly. High House and Hoppy Hall on the Corbets Tey road, were probably built in the early 17th century - both were demolished in 1935–6.
Hacton Bridge was originally manorial. In the 1630s it was a horse-bridge, but in the 1660s local inhabitants per...
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Brockwell Park
Brockwell Park is a 50 hectare park located between Brixton, Herne Hill and Tulse Hill. The Grade II listed Brockwell Hall was originally built between 1811-1813 when the area was part of Surrey and was the country seat of glass merchant John Blades as the centrepiece of his Park Estate. The perimeter of today’s park reflects the boundary of the original estate.
The land and house were acquired by the London County Council (LCC) in March 1891 and opened to the public on 2 June in the following summer, led by the local MP Thomas Lynn Bristowe. At the unveiling, he died of a heart attack on the steps of Brockwell Hall.
In 1901 the LCC acquired a further 43 acres of land north of the original park.
J.J. Sexby, the Chief Officer of Parks of the LCC designed the conversion of the estate into a public park. When he came to the estate he described it as displaying "a wildness ... the beauties of Nature unadorned... long stretches of undulating grassland dotted here and there with fine specimen trees ... When it was bought for the...
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Wembley Park
Wembley Park is a London Underground station, the nearest Underground station to the Wembley Stadium complex. Tracks were laid through the area by the Metropolitan Railway (MR, now the Metropolitan Line) when it extended its services from Willesden Green to Harrow-on-the-Hill. Services to Harrow started on 2 August 1880 although Wembley Park station was not constructed until later.
The station was constructed to serve the pleasure grounds developed by the MR at Wembley Park, a former country estate bought by the company in 1881 as a destination for excursion trips on the company’s trains. The station opened for the first time on 14 October 1893 and initially operated to serve only Saturday football matches in the park. It opened fully on 12 May 1894.
Later in the 1890s, the Great Central Railway’s (GCR’s) London extension was constructed adjacent to the MR’s tracks. The tracks pass under the entrance building but the station has never been served by mainline operators. In 1905 the tracks were electrified and the first electric trains became operational. B...
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The Underground Map is creating street histories for the areas of London and surrounding counties lying within the M25.
