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.
Blondin Avenue, W5
Blondin Avenue is named after 19th century acrobat Blondin. Jean-François Gravelet was known as Charles Blondin and reknowned for his acrobatic feats such as tightrope crossings of Niagara Falls. During one of these he carried his manager on his back and on another he stopped halfway across to cook an omelette.
Blondin performed in London where Charles Dickens said: "half of London is here eager for some dreadful accident".
Blondin retired to Ealing and died at his home Niagara House in 1897. Niagara House and Blondin Avenue were formerly the site of part of Hugh Ronalds’ renowned nursery.
Niagara Avenue is parallel, just to the south of Blondin Avenue.
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Amelia Street, SE17
Amelia Street originally consisted of late 19th century tenement blocks built by James Pullen, a local builder, between 1886 and 1901. Amelia Street predated most of the streets in the area being of eighteenth century origin. Before 1868, it was called Penton Street.
James Pullen & Son, who advertised themselves as “lead burners and manufacturers of the patent cast lead D trap & plumbers’, tinmen’s and blow pipe solder”, had a builder’s yard in Amelia Street and traded from premises at 73 Penton Place, Kennington Park Road.
Pullen acquired property in the area and a first new block was erected in 1886 at the Penton Place end of Amelia Street. This was surrounded by controversy, as by-law approval for the development had been refused by the Metropolitan Board of Works.
The first two blocks were condemned upon completion but that they were allowed to remain when Mr Pullen agreed to change the design.
During the 1980s the buildings between Manor Place and the south side of Amelia Street were demolished by the council using their housing i...
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Cheapside, EC2V
Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London. Cheapside links St. Martin’s Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where it becomes Poultry, is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and Bank station. To the west is St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. Paul’s tube station and Paternoster Square.
In the Middle Ages, it was known as Westcheap, as opposed to Eastcheap, another street in the City, near London Bridge. The boundaries of the wards of Cheap, Cordwainer and Bread Street run along Cheapside and Poultry; prior to boundary changes in 2003 the road was divided amongst Farringdon Within and Cripplegate wards in addition to the current three.
Cheapside is a common English street name, meaning "market place". There was originally no connection to the modern meaning of cheap (’low price’, a shortening of good ceap, ’good buy’), though by the 18th century this association may have begun to be inferred.
Many of the streets feeding into the main thoroughfare are name...
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Camden Road, NW1
Camden Road is a main road running from Camden up to Holloway Road. Camden Road is an old route which begins at Britannia Junction, the confusing hub of Camden Town from which many roads emanate.
It proceeds in a straight line north-east, over the Regent’s Canal and under the railway. After climbing a short hill, it ends at Holloway Prison.
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Commercial Street, E1
Commercial Street is a major thoroughfare running north-south from Shoreditch High Street to Whitechapel High Street. The first plans for a new street in Spitalfields and Whitechapel was made by a Select Committee on Metropolitan Improvements in August 1836. This Committee recommended the construction of a street ’from Finsbury Square to Whitechapel Church and the Commercial Road’, to run in a straight line from the Bishopsgate end of Middlesex Street to near the southern end of Osborn Street. An alternative scheme put to the Committee by the chairman of the Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers was, however, closer to the line finally chosen.
By 1838, the proposed path of the new road was beginning to take shape after taking into consideration the opinions of various organisations and it was considered fortuitous that the road would cut through and remove numerous slums such as those in Rose Lane and Vine Street. Therefore, not only would it link northern routes to Commercial Road and thus the docks, but also achieve ’the destruction of a neighbourhood inhabited by p...
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Tottenham Court Road, W1T
Tottenham Court Road is a major road running from the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road, north to Euston Road - a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. In the time of Henry III (1216–1272), a manor house slightly north-west of what is now the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road belonged to one William de Tottenhall. In about the 15th century, the area was known variously as Totten, Totham, or Totting Hall. After changing hands several times, the manor was leased for 99 years to Queen Elizabeth, and it came to be popularly called Tottenham Court.
Tottenham Court Road nowadays is a significant shopping street, best known for its high concentration of consumer electronics shops. Further north there are several furniture shops, including Habitat and Heals.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Tottenham Court Road and a few of the adjoining streets became well known for stores selling World War II surplus radio and electronics equipment and all kinds of electro-mechanical and radio parts. Shops such as Proops Brothers and Z & I Aero Services lined both sides of the road at that time. By the 1960s they were a...
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Burns Way, TW5
Burns Way, lying to the north of Hounslow West, lies next to the remains of Hounslow’s countryside. Roads hereabouts were named after poets with Shelley Crescent and Browning Way.
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Colville Gardens, W11
Colville Gardens was laid out in the 1870s by the builder George Frederick Tippett, who developed much of the rest of the neighbourhood. It is possible that the street was named after the Colville Family, Scottish steel magnates. The houses were intended as single family homes for the well-to-do but, from the beginning, it proved difficult to attract wealthy buyers to the area and as early as 1888, the buildings began to be subdivided into flats.
In 1885, Tippett was declared bankrupt. He attributed his failure to "his inability to let a large portion of his property and to the pressure of secured creditors". Gradually, the character of the buildings changed as wealthier tenants left the area.
By 1928, the neighbourhood was described as "rapidly becoming poorer" and, by 1935, as a "largely slum area...large houses turned into one-room tenements and small flats".
Further decline set in as residents moved away during World War II to escape The Blitz and, indeed, one of the buildings at the end of the street was destroyed by bombing, which also damaged numerous other buildings ...
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Goods Way, N1C
Goods Way runs from Pancras Road to York Way. The area north of King’s Cross was predominantly rural until the end of the eighteenth century - the whole area was then known as Battle Bridge. John Rocque’s map of 1745 shows fields adjacent to York Way (formerly Longwich Lane and then Maiden Lane). This road, and Pancras Road (formerly King’s Road), were traditional routes out of London to the north being the route to Hampstead, Highgate and Kentish Town.
With the completion of the Regent’s Canal in 1820, the area became linked to major industrial cities in the north of England. Another feature of the area’s growing industrial importance was the arrival of the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company. The company opened Pancras Gasworks to the south of the canal in 1824.
During this same period a number of other “polluting” businesses such as paint manufacture and refuse sorting were established in the area but much of the land to the north of the canal remained open fields. In a move to rais...
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Gladstone Street, SE1
Gladstone Street was built in the 1840s. The street was originally named in two sections - Albert Street led off of Garden Row with Gladstone Street being only the section leading north off of St George’s Road.
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Eaton Square, SW1W
Eaton Square is one of the jewels in Belgravia’s crown. Eaton Square was designed by Thomas Cubitt in the Palazzo style. Born in Norfolk in 1788, he was a ship’s carpenter before setting up as a speculative builder in 1811.
Construction of the Square began in 1826 but wasn’t completed until 1855. During the layout of Belgravia, Cubitt lived nearby at 3 Lyall Street. The long construction period is reflected in the variety of architecture in the square.
The grand façades with Corinthian-style column capitals overlook private gardens, part of the 16 acres of gardens within Grosvenor’s Belgravia and Mayfair Estates. Eaton Square was originally the beginning of the royal route (the King’s Road) from St James’s Palace to Hampton Court. One of three garden squares built by the Grosvenor family, it is named after Eaton Hall, Cheshire, the family’s principal seat.
Past residents of the Square include Stanley Baldwin, Lord Boothby, Neville Chamberlain, Vivien Leigh and Lord John Russell.»more
Agar Grove, NW1
Formerly known as St Paul’s Road, the name Agar Grove dates from 1938. It links the ancient streets of York Way (Maiden Lane) to St Pancras Way, and continues to Royal College Street. The street runs along the lower edge of a slope.
Agar Grove was called after William Agar an irascible lawyer who lived in Camden. Having also been the name and the brains behind the squalid Agar Town, he opposed Regent’s Canal going through his land. Agar Town disappeared when the next transport revolution - the Midland Railway - arrived in the area.
This newly fashionable area was literally and figuratively undermined following the passing of the Midland Railway (Extension to London) Bill in 1863. The line was constructed between 1864 and 1867. Two cut and fill tunnels passed diagonally beneath Camden Road and the newly laid-out Camden Square and mews. The tracks emerged from the tunnel via a cutting south of Murray Mews, passed under Agar Grove and then went towards the vast railway lands which stretched towards St Pancras.
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Kensal Road, W10
Kensal Road, originally called Albert Road, is the heart of Kensal Town. Kensal (New) Town began to be built in the late 1830s with the original name being "Kensal Village". The builder, Kinnaird Jenkins, laid out four main streets apart from Kensal Road: West Row, East Row, South Row and Middle Row.
Kensal New Town was an isolated community, separated from the Harrow Road and the rest of Kensal Green by the canal. When the Great Western Railway was built to the south, the isolation only increased. Kensal New Town was known as a “laundry colony”, that being the main occupation of the neighbourhood, many of whose inhabitants were Irish. Kensal New Town then had something of a rural character, with many people keeping pigs and growing vegetables in their gardens. Pony-trotting and dog stealing were also said to be popular local pursuits.
C. H. Blake’s purchased the Portobello estate from the Misses Talbot and the land included some sixteen acres to the north of the railway. This was in the vicinity of Bosworth Road, Hazl...
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Castelnau, SW13
Castelnau was called Upper Bridge Road until 1889 leading as it did to Hammersmith Bridge. Castelnau began in 1843 as 20 pairs of classical villas - Castelnau Villas - which were built along the road by Major Charles Lestock Boileau. In 1691, the 10th Baron of Castelnau and St Croix had fled France for England following persecution of the Huguenots. The family settled in north Barnes. Castelnau means ’new castle’ in the Occitan language given its name to Castelnau House which Charles Lestock Boileau built.
The church of Holy Trinity was consecrated in 1868 serving the now 800 residents of the area.
After the sale of the Boileau estate, other streets were laid out. In 1928 the London County Council created the 640 house Castelnau Estate. Streets were named after deans of St Paul’s as the cathedral was formerly owner of the manor of Barnes. In 1971 these passed to ownership of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
During the 1960s, Castelnau House was demolished being replaced by a library.
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Winthrop Street, E1
Winthrop Street was formerly a narrow street running east-west from Brady Street to Durward Street. Originally part of Ducking Pond Row, it started being built up in the first decades of the 19th century when it was known as Watson’s Buildings. Running from its south side were Wood’s Buildings, Hope Place, Gossips Gardens and North Place; its north side was the site of several separate small properties.
By 1873, it had been renamed Little North Street - Brady Street was called North Street at this time - and had been subject to much rebuilding. A ’National School for Boys and Girls’ stood at the western end (north side) and continued with a row of terraced cottages identical to and backing on to those in Buck’s Row.
Following the construction and opening of Whitechapel Underground Station in 1876 and the excavation of ground to accommodate the new railway lines, the school was replaced by a new Board School, constructed in 1876-7. On the south side, as well as a small row of dwellings, was the premises of Harrison, Barber &...
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Langthorne Street, SW6
Langthorne Street is final step in the Alphabet Streets of Fulham. The ladder of tree-lined streets known as the ’Alphabet Streets’ are located between the Thames and Fulham Palace Road.
The first of the streets is Bishops Avenue which was there before the others were created. There is this no ’A’ street since Fulham Palace already existed south of Bishops Avenue. Incidentally, there is also no ’J’ street.
The streets largely contain large semi-detached period homes.
Langthorne Street was built over the orchard of Mill Shot Farm in around 1902. In 1903 the London Borough of Fulham approved the Allen and Norris partnership to build houses in some of the streets.
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City Thameslink
City Thameslink is a central London railway station within the City of London, with entrances on Ludgate Hill and Holborn Viaduct. City Thameslink opened in 1990 to replace Holborn Viaduct railway station as part of the Thameslink project. It was originally named St Paul’s Thameslink, but to avoid confusion with the nearby St Paul’s tube station on the Central line, it was renamed City Thameslink the following year.
The Thameslink line opened in 1988 after the Snow Hill tunnel, closed to passengers since 1916, was re-opened to provide a through route to Farringdon and King’s Cross from South London. Holborn Viaduct closed on 26 January 1990. Initially, trains used the approach viaduct for the closed Holborn Viaduct station. The new service was an immediate financial success and it was decided to redevelop the Holborn Viaduct site with a new station and business complex.
Before Holborn Viaduct closed, a new line between Blackfriars and the tunnel was constructed on a different alignment slightly to the east and at a lower elevation, providing the opportunity to build 56 000 squa...
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Knockholt
Knockholt station is two miles from the village of the same name. Knockholt itself is split into two areas, [[3982|Knockholt village]] and [[3993|Knockholt Pound]]. The unusual distance of the station from the village is due to a potential name confusion with Halstead in Essex - the nearest village to the station is Halstead, Kent. Hence the railway company deciding to name it unusually. Hayes, Kent (Hayes, Middlesex) and Farnborough, Kent (Farnborough, Hampstead) have caused equal confusion over the years but this didn’t seem to matter so much.
Knockholt is also rather unusual in that it spent from 1965 to 1969 within the boundary of Greater London but a local petition successfully moved the area back into Kent.
Knockholt inspired local resident Edith Nesbitt to set her children’s classic The Railway Children here. The station dates from 1876 when it was opened as ’Halstead for Knockholt’, being renamed simply ’Knockholt’ on 1 October 1900. Between 1887 and 1915, a twice daily bus service operated be...
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Bishop’s Bridge
Bishop’s Bridge, sometimes known as Paddington Bridge, is a road bridge which carries Bishop’s Bridge Road across the rail approaches to Paddington station The name of Bishop’s Bridge derives from the manor of Paddington which was granted to the Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, by Edward VI in the mid 16th Century.
In 2003 while researching a book about the station, Steven Brindle discovered that Isambard Kingdom Brunel was responsible for the original Bishop’s Bridge and that the section he built over the canal was his first iron bridge and had a unique design.
The bridge was due to be rebuilt and negotiations between the council and English Heritage followed. It was agreed that the 1839 iron bridge would be dismantled with a view to future reconstruction. The bulk of the dismantling work took place in April 2004, allowing the bridge replacement work to proceed as planned.
Construction on the replacement bridge by Hochtief commenced in July 2003 with it opening on 14 June 2006.
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Nine Elms
Nine Elms is an area within Battersea in the far north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Wandsworth. Nine Elms was formerly mainly industrial but is now becoming more residential and commercial in character. In the area is the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.
Nine Elms Lane was named around the year 1645, from a row of elm trees bordering the road, though a path probably existed between York House and Vauxhall from the 1200s. In 1838, at the time of construction of the London and Southampton Railway, the area was described as "a low swampy district occasionally overflowed by the River Thames [whose] osier beds, pollards and windmille and the river give it a Dutch effect".
Nine Elms railway station opened on 21 May 1838 as the first London terminus of the London & South Western Railway. The neo-classical building was designed by Sir William Tite. The station was connected to points between Vauxhall and London Bridge by Thames steam boats. It closed in 1848 when the railway was extended via the Nine Elms to Waterloo Viaduct to a new terminus at Waterloo. The ...
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Chester Road, DA15
Chester Road lies to the north of the Blackfen Road. In the early 1930s, estates of houses and bungalows were being built in the area by C. R. Leech, Wates and New Ideal Homesteads.
Buying a new house in the area was an exciting business and show house viewing (even for those not intending to purchase) was a popular weekend occupation for many who lived in the inner London suburbs.
Many families who moved here were attracted by modern houses with gardens, fresh air and space. Many of the 1930s houses though were small and even had outside toilets.
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Mayplace Road East, DA7
Mayplace Road East was an old lane leading east from Barnehurst. In 1750 Miles Barne inherited a large estate: May Place.
’Barnehurst’ was an artificial name created for the local railway station from the family name. The area was previously agricultural - a mix of market gardens, orchards and woodland. A settlement was concentrated along Mayplace Road. Only with the electrification of the railway in 1926 did the large housing developments of the 1920s and 1930s start to appear.
In 1926, the developer W H Wedlock Ltd started to build on the site of Mayplace Farm and based on Oakwood Drive.
W H Wedlock Ltd developed the ’Mayplace Estate’ between Erith Road and Barnehurst Avenue only after 1932 as the underlying land was more difficult to develop.
The Barne family finally disposed of May Place in 1938, selling it to Crayford Urban District Council for £24,500.
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Boxmoor Street, W11
Boxmoor Street was also known as Henry Place and Beaumont Street during its brief life. It ran west from Norland Road and started its life in the 1840s. The western end was originally the Counter’s Creek rivulet, later superseded by the track of the West London Railway.
By the 1930s, Boxmoor Street was described as "a little road off the Norland Market in Shepherd’s Bush". Its entrance was located opposite the Stewards Arms pub.
It was quite unique as it was part of W11 lying within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The M41 (West Cross Route) motorway was built over the top of the street.
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Waterloo Street, EC1V
Waterloo Street once ran from Lever Street to Radnor Street. The modern layout of Galway Street still includes the part of the line of Waterloo Street and nearby Murton Street.
The original street dates from around 1829 and like other streets of similar name, commemorates Wellington’s 1815 victory. The whole area was redeveloped for the Pleydell Estate in 1965.
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Dupont Street, E14
Dupont Street ran from Maroon Street to Burn Street. Limehouse was a large, important London port in the medieval period. It specialised in production such as rope making and shipbuilding rather than cargo handling. In 1600, it was estimated that half of the population of 2000 who lived in Limehouse had a seafaring connection.
Dupont Street seems to have been built as Catherine Place during the 1820s. The name Dupont Street replaced Burn Street before 1912 though on the 1900 map, both names appear simultaneously. The street contained a pub - the Devonshire Arms - at 10 Dupont Street.
Well into the twentieth century, Dupont Street was a classed as a slum.
During the 1990s, Dupont Street was replaced by Shaw Crescent which was built over the top of it.
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Saxham Road, IG11
Saxham Road was the first road built on the Movers Lane Housing Estate. The foundation stone for the Movers Lane Housing Estate, municipal housing which was built by Barking Council, was laid in Saxham Road on 6 Decmber 1933 by the Mayor, A. Edwards.
The estate was intended to provide 265 houses for approximately 1378 persons, according to the Council at the time. This first section, consisting of 106 houses and eight flat built at a cost of £35 706, was intended to provide accommodation for the occupants of Back Lane, Church Path, Bridge Street and Abbey Road areas. The mayor hoped "that the houses would be proceeded with rapidly, and that at an early date they would have the pleasure of transferring to the new houses tenants from the slum dwellings".
The Mayor gave a speech that day. He had asked the Borough Engineer, R.A. Lay, to see how many bricks Barking was responsible for laying in connection with the municipal houses since he came to the area in 1899, the year of the first housing scheme. Between 1899 and 1908, the ...
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Walnut Tree Place, SE11
Walnut Tree Place was a minor street replaced by the China Walk Estate. In the 17th century, this area was open fields and a favourite recreation spot for Londoners who would cross the Thames by boat to escape the city. By the late 17th century a place of entertainment called Lambeth Wells had been established in the vicinity of Lambeth Walk at its junction with Lollard Street. Lambeth Walk was then a lane known as Three Coney Walk. John Rocque’s map of 1746 shows Three Coney Walk in an area of market gardens and sparse development.
The opening of Westminster Bridge in 1750 caused an increase in traffic which began to change the area. New turnpike roads were laid including Kennington Road. Although smart houses were built along Kennington Road, within a few decades the area behind it began to fill up with poor quality housing.
By the mid 19th century, the area was completely built over. It was by then notorious for its poverty and crime.
The poor housing conditions became a pressing concern after the First W...
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Castor Street, E14
Castor Street existed between the 1810s and 1960s. Until the building of the East India Dock Road in 1806, the only roads running north from Poplar High Street were Bow Lane, Robin Hood Lane and North Street. East India Dock Road’s arrival at the beginning of the nineteenth century started development planning.
The land to the north of Pennyfields as far as East India Dock Road was owned by Mary Burch. In 1812, Castor Street was laid out and a number of leases were granted there to carpenters, a bricklayer and a builder. Henceforth a number of small houses were erected in Castor Street and Sandpit Road (later this was renamed West Street and again in 1875 renamed Birchfield Street).
Mary Burch offered short leases of 31 years - these were too short to encourage a high standard of building. Some nearby occupiers complained of filth ’of every kind’ in Castor Street.
By 1832, Joel Langley and his family had acquired the land from Miss Burch. From about 1855 Joseph and George Mills establ...
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Grangeway, NW6
Grangeway, NW6 lies off of Messina Avenue. Built in the period immediately following the First World War, Grangeway is tucked into the corner of Kilburn Grange Park.
The park itself is a 3.2 hectare open space in Kilburn. Administered by the London Borough of Camden, it includes a children’s playground, basketball court, outdoor gym equipment and tennis courts.
The park first opened in 1913 having previously been part of the Grange estate.
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Byfleet and New Haw
Byfleet & New Haw railway station is at the northern edge of Byfleet with the village of New Haw immediately to the north and the M25 motorway within 400m to the west. The station was designed by the architect James Robb Scott and opened on 10 July 1927 to cater for the increasing local population. The opening of the Vickers aircraft factory in 1911 led to Byfleet’s population doubling in just ten years. Many new houses were built to accommodate the factory workers.
The station was originally called "West Weybridge" and changed to its present name in June 1962.
It is on a section of railway that forms part of the South Western Main Line’s original form, the London and Southampton Railway, which was built in stages. The first stage opened in May 1838 and joined the London Terminus in Nine Elms with Woking Common, now Woking.
Byfleet and New Haw Station is in close proximity to the historical Brooklands racetrack and aerodrome, which date back to 1907. The racetrack hosted the 1927 British Grand Prix a few months after the station opened.
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Staveley Road, W4
Staveley Road was the site of the first V2 rocket landing on London. At 18.43 on Friday 8 September 1944, a V2 missile launched from Wassenaar, Netherlands in Holland landed in Staveley Road, near the junction with Burlington Lane.
The V2 on Chiswick resulted in three deaths. Three year old Rosemary Clarke who lived at number 1 Staveley Road, Ada Harrison aged 68 of 3 Staveley Road and Sapper Bernard Browning, who was on leave, and on his way to Chiswick Station. 19 were injured.
The missile had taken seven minutes to reach Chiswick from Holland, travelling at around 3000mph. This is regarded as the world’s first recognised ballistic rocket attack, although another V-2 had previously landed in the outskirts of Paris earlier in the morning.
Eleven houses were completely destroyed and another fifteen had to be extensively rebuilt. The general public was not notified about the existence of V2 rockets until November.
Sixteen seconds after the V2 attack occurred in Chiswick, another V2 landed in...
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The Underground Map is creating street histories for the areas of London and surrounding counties lying within the M25.
