Ealing Station, where this walk begins, was located in the small village of Haven Green when it opened on 1 December 1838 as a station on the Great Western Railway line. Trains ran to Paddington from here and three decades later, the District Line opened its station here.
We walk straight out of the front entrance to the station, which has undergone a complete transformation to accompany the arrival of the Elizabeth Line.
Directly opposite the station, down some stairs and into an alleyway called Haven Place, was the location for the now legendary Ealing Club.
Started by Alexis Corner and Cyril Davis in early 1962, the Ealing Club kickstarted the British R&B boom. Regular players at the Saturday night blues sessions included Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, Graham Bond, Jack Bruce, Malcolm Cecil, Eric Clapton, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Paul Jones, Rod Stewart, Dick Taylor, and Charlie Watts. Manfred Mann played there. The Who appeared at the Ealing Club early on in their career, when they were known as the Detours. Eric Burdon, lead singer of the Animals frequented the venue.
Arguably most importantly, The Rolling Stones were formed at the Ealing Club. They teamed up for the first time in January 1963.
By the end of 1963, the Ealing Club model had been copied all over London, as places such as the Marquee refocused on British R&B which then morphed into the late 1960s British rock scene.
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It’s time to leave Ealing Broadway and walk (left) down to the junction with The Mall.
Turning left into The Mall, we encounter an iconic building, later a branch of the Nat West Bank. In a mark of immense civic pride, it has been built in 1874 as the Ealing Board Offices. It was the first building on the north side of the then Uxbridge Road and adjacent to Station Approach.
The offices were designed by Charles Jones, Ealing’s first architect, engineer and surveyor. He was known for designing pleasing, well-proportioned and functional civic buildings. The Ealing Board Offices was the first of Ealing’s new public buildings.
After the District Railway arrived at Ealing Broadway station in 1879, the offices became too small and a Town Hall (also Jones designed) was completed in 1888. The Board Offices became a bank two years after the Town Hall opened.
1880 was important as the Uxbridge Road here became the Mall when the Wood family of Hanger Hill sold off part of the 900 acres of farmland they owned, to built the road. The same Charles Jones who had built the Board Offices, initiated the planting of the plane trees on the north side.
We walk along The Mall, now lined with shops. We would originally have passed a number of pubs and hotels, notably The Bell.
At 24 The Mall, just before Hamilton Road on the left, Ealing College, opened in 1880. It was renamed Hermosa School after Charles Taylor, the headmaster left in 1886, Then it was named the Proprietary School from 1894 until 1901. Girton House School for Girls occupied this site until 1923 when Acton College moved there, and it was renamed Ealing College once again. The school moved out in 1957 and the building was demolished. College Court built in its place in the 1960s.
Crossing Hamilton Road, we cross over The Mall at the first pedestrian traffic lights, facing a dentists office and continue in the same direction until we reach Florence Road.
Via Florence Road we can travel from the Queen of the Suburbs to the Queen of Crime. One of the first houses down the road, was the house of Agatha Christie’s aunt. The author visited a number of times over the years and the aunt become the inspiration for Miss Marple.
Florence Road seems to have been laid out in the 1860s although there were only two semidetached houses on Florence Road by the time of the 1865 Ordnance Survey map.
At a T junction beyond the local doctors’ surgery, we turn left into The Grove. As Grove Road, this seems to have dated from 1822 (or before) with building starting at the other – Ealing – end.
We soon come across Ealing Common, a 47 acre open space – common land as designated by the 1866 Metropolitan Commons Act.
Ealing Common preserves fine avenues of horse chestnut trees, most of which were planted in the late Victorian period. London plane trees are also found around the perimeter of the common. Our old friend Charles Jones was also responsible for the layout. In August 1733, one of the first cricket matches was played on the common between Ealing & Acton and the London Cricket Club.
We turn right down the road called The Common.
The western side of The Common was already partially built by the 1870s with some of the Victorian properties in the northern section and in the southern section around St Marks Road and St Mathews Road. Properties along the western side of the Common display a rather disparate ensemble as they have clearly been developed independently in small groups.
At the junction of The Common and Warwick Road, we encounter the pub called The Grange. This was constructed in 1871 on the same site as The Cricketers, a beer house.
Diagonally opposite The Grange lies a small garden called Warwick Dene. This dated from shortly after the Ealing Board’s acquisition of Ealing Common – the garden was the result of a land swap in 1895 between Ealing Council and the Rothschild family, who owned it. Leopold De Rothschild exchanged Warwick Dene for land near Ealing Common station to provide a road. The council created a fragrant ’Rest Garden for the Aged and Blind and Those Requiring Rest’. The area is enclosed with railings of cast iron and a gateway with the words ’Fraser Patent Disinfecting Apparatus’ over it.
From 1809 until his assassination in 1812, prime minister Spencer Perceval lived at nearby Elm Grove House, now the site of All Saints Church. His son’s widow later sold the Elm Grove estate to the East India Company. Spencer Perceval’s youngest daughter bequeathed money for All Saints’ church to be built in his memory and Leopold de Rothschild gave the site, where Elm Grove had formerly stood. The church was completed in 1905.
We now walk diagonally across Ealing Common towards the busy roads we see, crossing busy Gunnersbury Avenue.
Ealing Common station opened in 1879, when housing began to spread from the town in this direction. It is where this walk ends.
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