West Ealing
Encyclopedia
West Ealing is a place in the London Borough of Ealing
London Borough of Ealing
The London Borough of Ealing is a borough in west London.-Location:The London Borough of Ealing borders the London Borough of Hillingdon to the west, the London Borough of Harrow and the London Borough of Brent to the north, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to the east and the London...

 in west London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

History

West Ealing in its present form is less than 100 years old.

In 1234 there was a hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

 called West Ealing. This name though appears to have been replaced by the name Ealing Dean at some time. West Ealing station
Train station
A train station, also called a railroad station or railway station and often shortened to just station,"Station" is commonly understood to mean "train station" unless otherwise qualified. This is evident from dictionary entries e.g...

, for example, began life in 1871 being called something else - Castle Hill & Ealing Dean Station. The Ealing Dean name is possibly derived from 'valley' or 'denu' and the earliest reference to it goes back to 1456. It appears on a Parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

 map of Ealing
Ealing
Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...

 dated 1777. Most of what is now West Ealing at this time was open countryside and fields. Houses in the area were only to be found at Ealing Dean, Drayton Green and Castle Bear Hill (now called Castlebar Hill).

In 1387, Drayton Green was called Drayton and later Drayton in Ealing. The late 19th century
19th century
The 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...

 saw Drayton develop as a hamlet with eight householders. The area around Drayton Green Lane was later called Steven's Town with more than 40 cottages.

There was an important road running east/west through the area which later became known as the Uxbridge Road
Uxbridge Road
Uxbridge Road is the name of the A4020 road in London. It starts at Shepherd's Bush Green and goes west towards Uxbridge. It passes through Acton, Ealing Broadway and Hanwell....

. The Uxbridge Road was a well used route for stagecoaches during the 19th century and the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to Banbury
Banbury
Banbury is a market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire. It is northwest of London, southeast of Birmingham, south of Coventry and north northwest of the county town of Oxford...

 and Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 coach called at the ‘Halfway House' pub in West Ealing. The pub is still there but is now called The Broadwalk Hotel. The now defunct ‘Green Man' pub in West Ealing - now Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

 - was a carters' stopping place with stabling, reputedly, for a hundred horses.

In the 19th century much of the land from the Uxbridge Road south to Windmill Road, east to Northfield Avenue and west to Boston Road was given over to market gardens and orchards. Along with a few streets named after varieties of apples, almost the last remaining evidence of this is old Steel's Fruit Packing Warehouse on the corner of Northfield Road and Northcroft Road. The basic look of this old fruit warehouse has changed surprisingly little over time

On the eastern boundary of these market gardens
Market gardening
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. It is distinguishable from other types of farming by the diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically, from under one acre ...

 and orchards were allotments
Allotment (gardening)
An allotment garden, often called simply an allotment, is a plot of land made available for individual, non-professional gardening. Such plots are formed by subdividing a piece of land into a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families...

 which date back to the year of the Poor relief
Poor relief
Poor Relief refers to any actions taken by either governmental or ecclesiastical bodies to relieve poverty experienced by a population. More specifically, the term poor relief is often used to discuss how European countries dealt with poverty from the time just around the end of the medieval era to...

 Act of 1832, when the area called Ealing Dean Common (then both sides of Northfield Avenue) was given to the poor of West Ealing by the Bishop of London. There are still allotments on the eastern side of Northfield Avenue, but the ones to the west were built on in the early 1980s.

Ealing Dean's major claim to fame in the 1800s
19th century
The 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...

 was as the site of regular pony/donkey races. These races, on what was then called Jackass Common and now Dean Gardens, ceased in 1880 when the local council stopped them because of complaints about the 'evil they encouraged'.

In 1882, Ealing Lawn Tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

 Club began life on land which abounded St. Leonards Road and the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...

 (GWR). The club quickly became the most successful ladies lawn tennis club in the world. Three Ealing-born club members - Blanche Bingley
Blanche Bingley
Blanche Bingley was an English tennis player.Born in Greenford in the London Borough of Ealing, Blanche Bingley was a member of the "Ealing Lawn Tennis & Archery Club." In 1884, she competed in the first ever Wimbledon championships for women and two years later captured the first of her six...

, Charlotte Cooper
Charlotte Cooper (tennis player)
Charlotte Reinagle Cooper was a tennis player born in Ealing, Middlesex, England where, as a young woman, she was a member of the Ealing Lawn Tennis Club. She won her first of five Wimbledon championships singles titles in 1895, wearing an ankle-length dress in accordance with proper Victorian...

 and Dorothea Douglass
Dorothea Douglass Chambers
Dorothea Katherine Lambert Chambers was an English female tennis player who was born in Guayamas, Ealing in the United Kingdom.-Biography:...

 - between them won 13 Wimbledon Singles titles between 1886 and 1906. In 1906 the club relocated to Creffield Road in Ealing Common.

In the 1890s, the centre had shops that were less pretentious and more informal than those in the centre of Ealing. There was no regular street market in central Ealing, but there were then (and now) fruit and vegetable stalls in West Ealing. If there was a golden age for West Ealing centre it was in the mid-20th century when draper
Draper
Draper is the now largely obsolete term for a wholesaler, or especially retailer, of cloth, mainly for clothing, or one who works in a draper's shop. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. The drapers were an important trade guild...

, house furnisher, clothier
Clothier
Clothier may refer to one of the following professions:*Tailor - the most common modern usage*Cloth merchant*A cloth manufacturer - see cloth productionAs a surname, Clothier may refer to one of the following individuals:...

 and outfitters FH Rowse, and draper and fashion house WJ Daniel & Co were both flourishing, along with Marks and Spencer, British Home Stores, Woolworth
Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group plc was a listed British company that owned the high-street retail chain, Woolworths, as well as other brands such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK and book and resource distributor Bertram Books...

 and WHSmith. In later years, more heavyweights arrived in the shape of Sainsbury's, Waitrose
Waitrose
Waitrose Limited is an upmarket chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom and is the food division of the British retailer and worker co-operative the John Lewis Partnership. Its head office is in Bracknell, Berkshire, England...

, McDonalds, and latterly Blockbuster Video.

The West Ealing Library
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...

 is on Melbourne Avenue just to the south of the Uxbridge Road. Its old location, opened in 1903, was between Melbourne Avenue and St James's Avenue, where Sainsbury's is currently located.

West Ealing boasted its own large cinema
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....

 at the Uxbridge Road end of Northfield Avenue, which started life as the Kinema in 1913 - replacing Ealing Dean Cottage Hospital. The cinema was rebuilt in 1928 and became the Lido. Because film-going attendances shrank, it was divided into two small cinemas and renamed Studio 1 and Studio 2; it also opened a bingo hall in the main hall. Another change of ownership and it became Cannon 1 & 2. The bingo hall closed and reopened as a snooker
Snooker
Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a green baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regular table is . It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white , 15 worth one point each, and six balls of different :...

 hall. It changed hands again and opened briefly as the Gosai, which was an Indian cinema
Cinema of India
The cinema of India consists of films produced across India, which includes the cinematic culture of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Indian films came to be followed throughout South Asia and...

 devoted to mostly Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

 films. It then closed and remained so, until it was demolished in 2005. The site has now been redeveloped in partnership between the Dominion Housing Group and the Ealing Community and Voluntary Service. The new building is known as the Lido Centre and opened in 2007. It is home to Ealing's volunteer centre. Above the workspace provided for the different voluntary organisation there are a number of small utility flats, intended for social housing use.

Some of the spurts in residential building booms in the area can be attributed to the GWR railway station opening at Ealing Dean in 1871 and the later extension from the station to Greenford
Greenford
Greenford is a large suburb in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, UK. It was historically an ancient parish in the former county of Middlesex. The most prominent landmarks in the suburb are the A40, a major dual-carriageway; Horsenden Hill, above sea level; the small Parish Church of...

 via Castle Bar Park railway station
Castle Bar Park railway station
Castle Bar Park station is in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, England and is in Travelcard Zone 4. The station is 12 km north west of London Paddington on the Greenford Branch Line. The station and all trains serving it are operated by First Great Western...

 and Drayton Green railway station
Drayton Green railway station
Drayton Green railway station is in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, and is in Travelcard Zone 4. The station and all trains serving it are operated by First Great Western...

; the London United Tramways
London United Tramways
London United Tramways Company Limited was an operator of trams and trolleybuses in the western and southern suburbs of London, UK, from 1894 to 1933, when it passed to the London Passenger Transport Board.-Origins:...

 Company line opening between Ealing and Southall
Southall
Southall is a large suburban district of west London, England, and part of the London Borough of Ealing. It is situated west of Charing Cross. Neighbouring places include Yeading, Hayes, Hanwell, Heston, Hounslow, Greenford and Northolt...

 in 1901; and the Metropolitan District Railway
Metropolitan District Railway
The Metropolitan District Railway was the predecessor of the District line of the London Underground. Set up on 29 July 1864, at first to complete the "Inner Circle" railway around central London, it was gradually extended into the suburbs...

 "halt" opening at Northfields in 1907.

In the 1920s, many houses were built on the Argyle Park Estate (stretching from the Argyle Road to the Greenford GWR railway line), and along Kent Avenue. Later housing developments replaced the allotments to the west of Northfield Avenue, others created flats in Langham Gardens off Gordon Road in 1970 and another in 1977 created the Green Man Lane Estate. In the early 1980s, the Berners Drive/Coleridge Square estate was built alongside a rebuilt West Middlesex Lawn Tennis club immediately west of Drayton Green.

Since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, there has been rebuilding in West Ealing and many Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...

 houses have been converted into flats. FH Rowse's has now gone and so has WHSmith, Marks and Spencer, Woolworth
Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group plc was a listed British company that owned the high-street retail chain, Woolworths, as well as other brands such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK and book and resource distributor Bertram Books...

 and McDonalds. Recent arrivals include Wilkinson (pictured). The old Daniel's store has been demolished and replaced by a large gym with a block of flats on top. Waitrose
Waitrose
Waitrose Limited is an upmarket chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom and is the food division of the British retailer and worker co-operative the John Lewis Partnership. Its head office is in Bracknell, Berkshire, England...

 knocked down its store after its short 16-year life and replaced it with a much bigger one.

Recent history has been a story of a gentle decline in West Ealing shopping and cultural facilities. One bright spot was the establishment in 2001 of London's only street market dedicated to farm produce.

Political representation

West Ealing is made up of three electoral wards for local council
Local government in the United Kingdom
The pattern of local government in England is complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to the local arrangements. Legislation concerning local government in England is decided by the Parliament and Government of the United Kingdom, because England does not have a devolved...

 election
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

s: Cleveland, Elthorne and Walpole; it is also served by a small part of Northfields ward. These wards each elect three councillors to Ealing Council
London Borough of Ealing
The London Borough of Ealing is a borough in west London.-Location:The London Borough of Ealing borders the London Borough of Hillingdon to the west, the London Borough of Harrow and the London Borough of Brent to the north, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to the east and the London...

.

West Ealing was in the parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

ary constituency of Ealing Southall (represented since 2007 by Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 Virendra Sharma
Virendra Sharma
Virendra Kumar Sharma is a British Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Ealing Southall since 2007.-Parliamentary career:...

) until boundary changes for the 2010 general election moved Walpole into the newly-formed Ealing Central and Acton constituency (represented since 2010 by Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 Angie Bray
Angie Bray
Angela Lavinia Bray is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton since 2010.-Biography:...

).

West Ealing is in the London Assembly
London Assembly
The London Assembly is an elected body, part of the Greater London Authority, that scrutinises the activities of the Mayor of London and has the power, with a two-thirds majority, to amend the mayor's annual budget. The assembly was established in 2000 and is headquartered at City Hall on the south...

 constituency of Ealing and Hillingdon which has one assembly member: Richard Barnes (Conservative), who was re-elected in May 2008.

Nearest railway stations

  • Castle Bar Park railway station
    Castle Bar Park railway station
    Castle Bar Park station is in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, England and is in Travelcard Zone 4. The station is 12 km north west of London Paddington on the Greenford Branch Line. The station and all trains serving it are operated by First Great Western...

  • Drayton Green railway station
    Drayton Green railway station
    Drayton Green railway station is in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, and is in Travelcard Zone 4. The station and all trains serving it are operated by First Great Western...

  • West Ealing railway station
    West Ealing railway station
    West Ealing railway station was opened in 1871 as "Castle Hill and Ealing Dene" on the Great Western Railway, which was constructed from Paddington through Ealing to Bristol in 1836-8....

  • Ealing Broadway railway station

External links


Neighbourhood Groups:
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK