GROWTH OF EALING. (fn. 7)
Early settlement is
attested by finds of Palaeolithic articles, chiefly
around Ealing common and the main railway
line, Neolithic implements, coins of the Iron
Age, and Romano-British burials at Hanger
Hill. (fn. 8) Although no Anglo-Saxon settlement is
recorded, the name Ealing denotes the Gillingas,
or Gilla's people, of c. 700. (fn. 9)
Ealing village and the medieval church lay at
the centre of the parish, between two streams and
south of Uxbridge Road. Smaller hamlets arose
to the west at Ealing Dean and to the south-west
at Little Ealing, both of them between the more
westerly stream and the Brent. (fn. 10) South-east of
Ealing village lay the manor house of Gunnersbury. North of Uxbridge Road the heavy clay
land was less attractive to early settlement.
Hanger Hill was so called from a hangra or
'wooded slope', where a wood existed in 1393 and
1539, as was the farm at Pitshanger, whose name
occurred in 1222. (fn. 11) Drayton Green, close to
Ealing Dean, and Haven Green, an extension of
Ealing village, were the only settlements north of
Uxbridge Road in the early 19th century. (fn. 12)
There was then a contrast between the large
estates north of the road, with their farms and
parkland, and the more populous area to the
south, with its market gardens joining those of
Brentford. (fn. 13)
There were 85 households in Ealing and its
surrounding hamlets, excluding Old Brentford,
in 1599 and 116 by 1664. Ealing village was as
large as the other hamlets combined in 1675. (fn. 14)
The relative sizes of the hamlets in the 18th
century cannot be assessed, (fn. 15) but the northern
part of the parish as a whole was much less
populous than Old Brentford or Lower Side,
which had 259 households in 1664, (fn. 16) and was to
remain so until 1861. (fn. 17) Ealing and Little Ealing
in 1746 were described merely as very pleasant
villages near Brentford, (fn. 18) although Ealing was
noted for its royal and noble residents in the 18th
and early 19th centuries, before becoming a
spacious upper middle-class suburb from the
1860s. (fn. 19)
Ealing village, where there was a church by c.
1127, (fn. 20) was also known in 1274 and 1393 as
Church Ealing (fn. 21) and from 1593 as Great Ealing. (fn. 22)
It was linear in shape, extending northward from
the church along a street, much of it bordered by
a narrow green, almost to Uxbridge Road. The
village, with no medieval manor house and with
no inn in 1599, (fn. 23) won little notice from travellers
until the late 18th century, although in assessments of 1711 and later it was sometimes described as Ealing town. (fn. 24) Objects found in Grange
Road and at the north end of Ealing green suggest
that by 1700 buildings stretched the length of the
modern St. Mary's Road. The finds from Grange
Road may have come from Ealing House, which,
with the adjoining Ealing Grove, originated in an
estate of the late 16th century. (fn. 25)
By 1746 there had been little building south of
the church, except a boys' school in South Ealing
Road, but houses stood on either side of St.
Mary's Road, those at the northern end facing
each other across Ealing green. There was a pond
on the green near the entrance to Mattock Lane,
Maddock Lane in 1766, south of Ashton House
or its forerunner. The village was extended still
farther north by some buildings at the corner of
Uxbridge Road. The high road itself was almost
empty, apart from the Feathers and, to the east,
the Bell. Beyond the Feathers, north of the road,
houses stood on the north and east sides of the
Haven or Haven Green, (fn. 26) an area normally
assessed separately from Ealing village in the
18th century. (fn. 27)
Eminent residents, in addition to the occupiers
of neighbouring estates mentioned below, included Earl Rivers and Lady Russell as early as
1704. (fn. 28) The novelist Henry Fielding (1707-54)
from 1752 had a country house at Fordhook,
north of Uxbridge Road near the Acton boundary, since the air was the 'best in the kingdom'. (fn. 29)
Of two storeys and attics, with a stuccoed front of
five bays, (fn. 30) Fordhook was a farmhouse in 1795 (fn. 31)
and the home of Byron's widow Lady NoelByron in 1835. (fn. 32) Noted for its gardens in 1845, it
was pulled down after 1903. (fn. 33)
Although the parish became increasingly
fashionable during the 18th century, housing in
Ealing village spread very little between 1746 and
1822. By 1777 there were a few buildings in
Mattock Lane and by 1822 some more in Love
Lane, later the Grove, besides the Coach and
Horses and a few other buildings, including
almshouses, in Uxbridge Road. (fn. 34) The handsome
villas noted from the 1790s included many that
were outside the village, (fn. 35) which in 1816 bore a
'desirable air of retirement and country quiet.'
There were however some dignified residences
around the green, including one of c. 1770 later
altered by Sir John Soane and known as Pitzhanger Manor House. (fn. 36) Several smaller houses
also were rebuilt, many surviving in 1979. (fn. 37)
The railway station, opened in 1838, was
thought in 1845 to have brought many visitors to
a pretty but previously little known place, (fn. 38) and
already to have stimulated building to the north. (fn. 39)
Within the old village the Park was laid out by
Sidney Smirke as a residential side street off the
east side of St. Mary's Road in 1846, (fn. 40) when it
was also agreed to build on 9 a. belonging to
Ashton House between Mattock Lane and
Uxbridge Road. Some large villas there constituted Ealing's first successful building scheme
on such a scale, although completion proved
slow: Ashton House itself survived in the mid
1860s, when much of the Uxbridge Road frontage
but only part of Mattock Lane had been built up.
Meanwhile at the south end of the village smaller
houses were being planned around Ranelagh
Road on the Old Rectory estate, which had been
bought c. 1852 by the Conservative Freehold
Land Society, the first land society to obtain a
foothold in Ealing. Progress was slow, only c. 20
houses being ready by the mid 1860s, presumably
because the railway station was too far away. (fn. 41)
The northern end of the village, close to the
railway, grew more rapidly, although a poor train
service may have slowed building on the Ashton
House estate and along the northern side of
Uxbridge Road, where Christ Church had been
erected in 1852-3. The road between Ealing
green and Uxbridge Road was called High Street
by 1873, when continuous building lined its
eastern side, opposite the grounds of Ashton
House. (fn. 42) High Street's western side was built up
near Uxbridge Road in the 1870s and farther
south in the 1880s. (fn. 43) The street consisted mainly
of shops in 1877, when they extended to the
stretch of Uxbridge Road called the Broadway
and were about to be built along a more easterly
stretch, the Mall. (fn. 44) East of High Street, buildings
put up by John Galloway in Oxford Road
included a block on the corner of the Broadway. (fn. 45)
A spate of building in the late 1870s and early
1880s saw Uxbridge Road lined with houses in
both directions, the section near the station being
dignified with shops, local offices, and, in 1889,
a town hall. (fn. 46) The town extended to Ealing
common by 1886, when large detached houses
lined North Common Road, although on the east
the common was still bordered by open country. (fn. 47)
North Common Road, like the municipal offices
and, earlier, Christ Church, was built on land
belonging to the Wood family, whose estate
included both sides of Uxbridge Road from
Haven Green to the eastern boundary, besides
frontages towards West Ealing. (fn. 48) New housing
was still mainly for the middle or upper middle
classes, following the example set elsewhere on
the Woods' estate, although standards were less
strict than in the 1850s. Farther south humbler
housing was provided west of St. Mary's and
South Ealing roads on the Beaconsfield estate of
c. 1880, from Disraeli Road as far south as
Venetia Road, which was close to the new South
Ealing station. (fn. 49) Although building did not yet
extend beyond the railway, a stretch of South
Ealing Road on either side of the line was called
Station Parade in 1886. (fn. 50) Housing also stretched
eastward from St. Mary's Road over the Grange
estate, along Warwick Road by 1883 and the
south part of Windsor Road from 1889. (fn. 51) The
western roads were short ones, leading to the
future Walpole park, opened in 1901, and
Lammas park, acquired in 1881, which together
helped to preserve the old north-south line of the
village. (fn. 52)
In 1893 most business premises were in High
Street, the Broadway, and the Mall, or in Spring
Bridge Road, leading to the west side of Haven
Green, and the Parade, a row of shops near
the station at the south-east corner of Haven
Green. (fn. 53) The almshouses made way for shops on
the south side of the Mall in 1902. (fn. 54) Bond Street,
leading due north from Ealing green to Uxbridge
Road, was under construction in 1904, when
Ashton House was finally pulled down. (fn. 55)
Shopping parades were built in 1905 both there
and along the south side of the stretch of Uxbridge Road known as New Broadway, (fn. 56) where
electric trams had run since 1901. (fn. 57) So was
created an urban centre along Uxbridge Road
and its shorter offshoots, in contrast with the
much quieter old village along Ealing green and
St. Mary's Road.
Growth around Uxbridge Road was largely to
serve new suburbs to the north, themselves the
product of better public transport. In the 20th
century rebuilding and infilling continued along
the main road, where most of the town's shops
and restaurants were said to be modern in style in
1954 (fn. 58) and where some imposing office blocks
were built towards the west from the 1960s. (fn. 59) In
the 1970s there were large modern stores on the
south side of the Broadway, a street which also
retained a refronted parade of 1883 and which
had been altered much more than the Mall.
Meanwhile at Haven Green some houses on the
north side made way in the 1930s for the fivestoreyed block of 160 flats called Haven Court. In
St. Mary's Road the technical college was built in
1929 opposite Cairn Avenue, itself laid out by
1934 on the site of a house called the Owls, but
otherwise little change took place in the old
village or the Victorian avenues which branched
off it on either side. (fn. 60)
The Broadway and its neighbourhood was by
far the busiest of Ealing L.B.'s shopping centres
in the early 1970s, with a turnover twice that of
Acton or Southall. Rebuilding south of the
Broadway and east of High Street was suggested
in the 1950s, approved by the council in 1969,
and planned to begin in a modified form in 1980,
by which date several small streets behind
the shops and north of the Grove had been
demolished. The new scheme included
shops, offices, flats, car parks, and a pedestrian
precinct. (fn. 61)
In 1980 a conservation area stretched from
Pitzhanger Manor House to St. Mary's church (fn. 62)
where the line of old Ealing village along the west
side of the road contained several brown-brick
houses of the 18th and early 19th century. (fn. 63)
Those along Ealing green include the 18thcentury St. Mary's, the 19th-century pair formed
by Pine Cottage and Thorpe Lodge, and a group
of c. 1800 formed by St. Aidan and the neighbouring terrace of Morgan House, Wrexham Lodge,
the Willow House. Farther south in St. Mary's
Road stand the larger Ealing Court Mansions
and Westfield House (no. 94), both of the early
19th century. The second faces the small St.
Mary's Square, crossed by heavy traffic, where
humbler buildings, including the former fire
station, mark the southern limit of the 19thcentury village. In Church Lane, leading west
from the square, nos. 1 and 17 are 18th-century
cottages. At the north-east end of the village, the
Mall contains a pair of stuccoed early 19thcentury houses, nos. 42-3, next to some shops.
Little Ealing, so called by 1650, (fn. 64) lay 1 km.
south-west of the parish church. Equidistant
from Uxbridge Road and Brentford, it was linked
with them by Northfield Lane (later Avenue) and
Windmill Lane respectively and grew up where
they met Little Ealing Lane from the east. (fn. 65) The
manor house of Coldhall was once thought to
have stood farther east beside South Ealing
Road, but more probably it was near the lanes'
junction on the west side of Northfield Lane. (fn. 66)
By 1664 the largest house was probably Place
House, south of the junction and later called
Ealing Park. (fn. 67)
Until the late 19th century Little Ealing
was only a small hamlet, with 14 householders
assessed for church rates in 1704 and 1719, (fn. 68) 19 in
1750, and 14 in 1766. (fn. 69) Its population was 129
in 1841. (fn. 70) Buildings included the early 18thcentury Rochester House, (fn. 71) at the corner of
Little Ealing Lane and close to the Plough,
perhaps the inn so called in 1722 and said in 1898
to be the parish's oldest building. (fn. 72) All the houses
were close to the lanes' junction in 1746 (fn. 73)
and remained so in the 1860s. (fn. 74) A residence
inherited from King Gould in 1756 by his son
Charles (1726-1806), later a baronet and Judge
Advocate-General, (fn. 75) may have been replaced by
a nursery garden of Hugh Ronalds, west of the
south end of Northfield Lane, before 1822. (fn. 76)
Charles Gould sold much Ealing property,
changed his name to Morgan, and moved to
Monmouthshire; on the other hand his heirs still
paid rates in Little Ealing, where his house was
said to stand empty in 1898. (fn. 77)
Ealing Park and 70 a. were sold for building in
1882. (fn. 78) The house, as a convent, retained some of
its landscaped grounds in the 1890s, (fn. 79) and Little
Ealing was still a quiet hamlet in 1898. (fn. 80) To the
south, however, Murray and Whitestile roads
had been laid out by the British Land Co. by
1883 (fn. 81) and some houses stood in Darwin Road by
1896, foreshadowing the joining up of the village
and northern Brentford. Soon the spread of
housing around South Ealing station reached
Little Ealing, where the old Plough was demolished in 1905 (fn. 82) and a school was built east of
Rochester House. A few small shops were built
on the east side of Northfield Avenue, between
the Plough and Julien Road, c. 1909. (fn. 83)
By 1920 the grounds of Ealing Park had been
mostly covered with terraced or semi-detached
houses, as had all the land stretching eastward to
South Ealing Road and northward to the District
railway line. Some open ground survived on the
west side of Northfield Avenue, near Niagara
House, but much of the avenue had been built up
beyond the railway, where the naming of a halt as
Northfields and Little Ealing signified the end of
the village's separate identity. By 1934 Niagara
House had gone and there were more shops and a
cinema on the west side of Northfield Avenue.
The last adjoining open spaces, to the west, had
been taken for sports grounds and for housing
which stretched along Swyncombe Avenue to
Boston Manor Road. (fn. 84)
Both the former Ealing Park (fn. 85) and Rochester
House survived in 1980. Rochester House was
presumably built for John Pearce (d. 1752), a
London distiller who bought land at Little Ealing
c. 1712, and named after his son Zachary Pearce,
bishop of Rochester (1690-1774), who died
there. (fn. 86) A residence of the exiled General Charles
François Dumouriez (fn. 87) from 1804 to 1818, it later
became a school and in 1980 housed the Institution of Production Engineers. It is a threestoreyed brown-brick building, with a late
18th-century extension to the south-west. (fn. 88)
Ealing Dean, perhaps so called from 'valley'
or denu, was recorded from 1456 and was known
earlier, from 1234, as West Ealing. (fn. 89) It grew up
along Uxbridge Road 1.5 km. west of the north
end of Ealing village beyond the 7-mile stone,
where a crossroads was formed by the junction of
the high road with Northfield Lane and Drayton
Green Lane. (fn. 90) Ealing Dean's householders probably included at least half of the 25 assessed at
Drayton in 1710 and the 34 at 'Drayton and the
roadside' in 1719; eleven were assessed at the
roadside alone in 1766. (fn. 91)
In 1746 and 1822 buildings stood only on the
north side of Uxbridge Road, west of the crossroads. They included the Green Man, licensed
by 1722, and the Old Hat, by 1759 the name of
two inns, farther west. (fn. 92) One of the Old Hats was
also called Halfway House by 1845 (fn. 93) and the
other in the 1880s was claimed to have existed for
300 years. (fn. 94)
The G.W.R.'s main line from 1838 marked off
a strip of land between itself and Uxbridge Road,
where the working-class cottages of Stevens
Town were built at Ealing Dean between 1840
and 1860. (fn. 95) As part of the district of Christ
Church at Haven Green, they probably formed
the neighbourhood which in 1864 was said to be
attracting large numbers of the poor, whose low
standards threatened to reduce it to the condition
of Brentford. (fn. 96)
In 1873 the buildings along the north side of
the main road, in front of Stevens Town, still
faced fields, market gardens, the parish allotments beside Northfield Lane, and a solitary inn.
East of the crossroads, however, there was building on both sides of Uxbridge Road and also at
the west end of Mattock Lane, where St. John's
church was built in 1876. Houses, with a few
gaps, lined most of Uxbridge Road between
Ealing Dean and the town (fn. 97) and spread rapidly
between the road and the railway after the
opening of Castle Hill, later West Ealing, station
in 1871. (fn. 98) The northern part of the parish's only
working-class housing of that date was built east
of Stevens Town c. 1880. Serious overcrowding was said to exist in the following decade,
when Ealing Dean had c. 8,000 people in 700
cottages. (fn. 99) By 1886 building stretched continuously along Uxbridge Road towards Ealing and
also filled the short roads such as Broughton
Road which branched off it towards the railway. (fn. 1)
The last part of Ealing Dean to be built up was
on the south side of Uxbridge Road west of the
crossroads. There were a few houses near the
Hanwell boundary at the top of Coldershaw and
Grosvenor roads in 1886 (fn. 2) and many more, as far
east as Seaford Road, by 1896. (fn. 3) St. James's
church was built for the western end of the
suburb in 1903-4, by which date a stretch of
Uxbridge Road served as a shopping centre half
way between Ealing and Hanwell. (fn. 4) Some rebuilding took place there in the 1930s, when the
stretch was known as the Broadway, West Ealing,
and Stevens Town was rebuilt in the 1960s. By
1979 the Broadway was the second busiest
shopping area in the borough. (fn. 5) Only between
Seaford Road and the crossroads did open spaces
survive, in the form of Dean gardens and the
allotments which in 1980 still gave a rural air to
the north end of Northfield Lane.
The Ealing-born novelist Nevil Shute (1899-
1960) was the son of Arthur H. Norway, who
lived at no. 16 Somerset Road by 1890. (fn. 6)
Drayton Green, near to the Hanwell boundary, was called Drayton in 1387 and later often
Drayton in Ealing, to distinguish it from the
separate parish of West Drayton. (fn. 7) Although
often taxed in the 18th century with houses along
Uxbridge Road at Ealing Dean, (fn. 8) Drayton Green
remained a distinct hamlet until the spread of
building in the late 19th century.
The hamlet grew up near the site of a house,
perhaps once moated, (fn. 9) at the northern end of a
green. (fn. 10) In 1636 the green consisted of a rectangle
bisected by the way later called Drayton Green
Lane, which was bordered by narrower strips of
waste for much of its course northward to
Perivale ford. About a dozen buildings stood on
the northern, eastern, and western sides of the
green, including David Walter's Drayton House
by the road at the north end and William
Baringer's house next to some cottages on the
east side. Most of the surrounding land was held
by Walter, who was to be assessed on 11 hearths
in 1664, (fn. 11) or Baringer.
Drayton Green, remained a small hamlet,
where in 1766 only 8 householders were assessed
for church rates (fn. 12) and where buildings in 1822
occupied much the same positions as in 1636. (fn. 13)
The G.W.R. line ran close to the south end of the
green from 1838 and perhaps helped to keep it
separate from Ealing Dean. In the mid 1860s the
surroundings were still open, whereas building
had spread along most of the north side of
Uxbridge Road. A house on the green, west of the
lane, was called Manor House, although Drayton
had never been a manor, and a farmhouse, later
called Drayton Farm, lay to the north. A residence set back from the east side of the green was
called Drayton House, with grounds stretching
southward to a lodge by the railway. (fn. 14)
To the east Argyle and Sutherland roads were
laid out in 1870, when the G.W.R. was about to
open Castle Hill, later West Ealing, station. (fn. 15)
Housing was approaching along those roads by
1886, (fn. 16) although Drayton Green itself remained
unchanged in 1896. (fn. 17) The iron church of St.
Luke stood north-east of the green, at the corner
of the new Courtfield Gardens and Lynton
Avenue, from 1901. (fn. 18) At that time the east side of
the green was built up, Drayton House being
replaced by a school which opened in 1908, (fn. 19)
while the hamlet was hemmed in to the west by
the G.W.R.'s depot and the loop line through
Drayton Green station, opened in 1905. Semidetached houses had encroached on the northeastern corner of the green by 1908, when its
remaining 4 a. were fenced and improved as an
open space. (fn. 20) Manor House survived until after
1920, by which date there was building over all
the grounds of Drayton House around Drayton
Avenue. (fn. 21)
Away from the old hamlets, building in the
northern half of the parish in the late 19th
century followed the sale of large estates. (fn. 22)
Activity was often delayed, however, by problems
over drainage, caused partly by the London Clay
and partly by the fact that the authority of
Ealing's local board of health, set up in 1863, was
not extended to the northern boundary until
1873. A modest beginning was the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners' sale in 1852 of 5 a. of glebe at
Castlebar Hill, where two houses were built in
1853 and most plots had been let by the early
1860s. Houses formed an isolated row in the later
Castlebar Road in the mid 1860s, when building
was about to start nearby in Eaton Rise, which
was laid out by John Galloway. (fn. 23)
The most ambitious building scheme was that
of Henry de Bruno Austin, (fn. 24) lessee of Castle Hill
Lodge, (fn. 25) who in 1864 began to build on 190 a.
between the G.W.R. line and the northern
boundary, on both slopes of the western end of
the Hanger Hill ridge. The land included 107 a.
leased from C. P. Millard of Pitshanger, Brent,
and Drayton Green farms and 65 a. from F. C.
Swinden of Castle Hill Park, but not Castle Hill
Park itself. Several roads had been laid out north
of Castle Hill by 1866, where Kent Gardens was
lined with large semi-detached houses and
Cleveland Gardens, to the west, had a few 10bedroomed villas. Austin went bankrupt in 1872
and building on the most southerly part of his
estate, near Castle Hill station, was delayed until
its purchase by a land company in 1882. The rest
of his land, where avenues had been laid out
around St. Stephen's church, consecrated in
1876, remained empty in the 1890s. Building was
also delayed on the adjoining estates of Castlebar
Park, where St. Stephen's Road was laid out in
1874 but plots were not marked out until c. 1880,
and Castle Hill Park, partly divided in 1870 but
built up only gradually from 1880. Such delays in
fulfilling the extensive plans of the 1860s made
the early growth of north Ealing 'the most
notable failure in outer west London'.
The largest landowner c. 1850 was the Wood
family, with over 920 a. in Ealing and northern
Acton, including the compact 750-a. Hanger Hill
estate, land along Uxbridge Road, and smaller
pieces near the Perivale boundary. The antiquary
John Bowyer Nichols (1779-1863) was an early
resident at Hanger Hill. (fn. 26) Although the first villas
in Uxbridge Road were finished in the 1850s,
most of the Woods' land was built up only after
c. 1877, when activity was so intense that in 1878
six times as many houses were completed in
Ealing as in 1876. Craven, Culmington, and
Madeley roads recall the Shropshire associations
of Edward Wood (d. 1904), of Culmington
Manor, Craven Arms (Salop.). (fn. 27) Just as the first
villas in Uxbridge Road had been intended for
buyers who kept their own carriages, so most of
the Woods' property north and west of Ealing
town was intended for the upper middle class.
Probably the area's assured social status explained the successful sale of houses in Mount
Park Crescent, Madeley Road, and similar
avenues in the 1880s. Most of the Hanger Hill
estate, however, was not built up in 1899, when
Wood complained that progress had been impeded by the construction of the South Harrow
railway. (fn. 28)
Meanwhile cheaper housing was being built in
Arlington Road and its neighbours north of
Castle Hill station and, more widely, south of
Uxbridge Road. The Beaconsfield estate on the
west side of old Ealing village was the forerunner
of extensive lower middle-class housing around
South Ealing station and Little Ealing, where
such houses may have hindered the sale of larger
ones on the British Land Co.'s property around
Whitestile Road.
In the mid 1890s (fn. 29) building joined the new
urban centre at the north end of Ealing village to
both Ealing Dean and the western end of Ealing
common. It was also approaching Drayton
Green and from Haven Green it stretched westward along Gordon Road, northward, and northeastward. Farther north some houses stood in
Castlebar Park, Mount Avenue, and Montpelier
Road. There remained empty roads around St.
Stephen's church, however, and the fringes of
the parish were still rural: near Brentside farm in
the north-western corner, Woodbury and Pits
hanger farm north of Pitshanger Lane, Hanger
Hill House in the north-east, and Fordhook at
the eastern end of Ealing common. South of
Uxbridge Road housing branched to east and
west from the old line of Ealing village but open
country lay beyond on either side. Housing was
approaching Little Ealing, in the south-west,
from both Ealing and Brentford, whereas the
south-eastern corner of the parish remained
open. Gunnersbury Lodge stood north of
Gunnersbury Lane, with Manor House to the
west and the two seats of Gunnersbury Park and
Gunnersbury House to the south, overlooking
parkland and fields which stretched south to
Chiswick High Road. A few buildings, including
St. James's church, stood on the Ealing side of
the high road and many more, constituting the
suburb called Gunnersbury, on the Chiswick
side.
The prosperous middle-class character of
Ealing as a whole was widely advertised and
strenuously defended. Unlike neighbouring
authorities, the local board did not encourage
cheap railway fares and its successor, the U.D.C.,
opposed all projected tramways after 1885. (fn. 30)
Promotional literature, often financed by tradesmen, presented Ealing as more of a separate town
in its own right than any other outlying suburb,
offering in 1893, amidst 'charming rusticity',
'every advantage of modern civilization'. Few of
the shops were mere branches of London stores,
the main streets did not peter out in cheaper ones,
and there were many fashionable promenades,
clubs, hotels, and entertainments. (fn. 31) A low deathrate was repeatedly stressed and in 1904 ascribed
to the gravel subsoil, high housing standards, and
good sewerage. Potential residents were also
lured by the private schools, which for long had
produced famous pupils, by modest local rates,
and the absence of industry. Pride was taken in
being free of such 'nuisances' as non-parochial
cemeteries or asylums and even in the fact that
criminals were sent for trial to Brentford. (fn. 32) In
1901 Ealing had a higher proportion of female
domestic servants than any suburb except
Hampstead and Kensington. (fn. 33)
Renewed building activity from the late 1890s
weakened some of the claims that Ealing was an
exclusive suburb. By 1904 it was admitted that
cheaper houses were spreading, although large
ones were still going up and the rich had not been
driven away. (fn. 34) In 1911 the whole borough was
described, with exaggeration, as a garden suburb,
since 12,000 trees had been planted since 1873. (fn. 35)
It would have been true to say that the prosperous areas retained their identity, with the result
that Ealing was still predominantly middle-class
in 1911. (fn. 36)
In the northern part of the parish many plots
were filled after 1896, during a building boom
which reached its peak in 1903. Houses were at
last built in Egerton Gardens and other roads
around St. Stephen's church. (fn. 37) Already there
was rebuilding on desirable sites, such as that of
no. 17 Ealing Common, which made way for an
ornate five-storeyed block of flats. (fn. 38) Most building, however, was in the south and west parts,
notably on market gardens south of Ealing Dean,
and was for clerks and other lower middle-class
occupants. (fn. 39) Council houses were built on part of
6½ a. off South Ealing Road, bought in 1899,
where 131 cottages and flats in North and South
roads were first occupied in 1902. (fn. 40)
Six working men combined in 1901 to buy
plots for 9 houses in Woodfield Road, east of
Pitshanger Farm. (fn. 41) Encouraged by Henry Vivian,
Ealing Tenants Ltd. was formed as a copartnership, also in 1901, to build terraces in
Woodfield Avenue, Woodfield Crescent, and
Brunner Road, with support from Leopold de
Rothschild and others. So originated the first
true garden suburb and a national movement,
similar tenants' associations being formed at
Letchworth (Herts.) and Sevenoaks (Kent) in
1905 and later at Hampstead. (fn. 42) Land, much of it
formerly part of Pitshanger farm, was bought
piecemeal until Brentham, as the estate was
called, covered 60½ a., where the last of 700
planned houses were finished in 1914-15. Ealing
Tenants having been absorbed by CoPartnership Tenants before 1930, the estate was
sold to Liverpool Trust Ltd. in 1936 and to
Bradford Property Trust in 1940. A few houses
had been sold privately by 1936 but despite
further sales a third of the property was still
rented in 1964.
The garden estate proper was begun in 1907,
when Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin advised
on the layout. They designed the distinctive nos.
1-7 Winscombe Crescent and were followed by
F. Cavendish Pearson, whose work included
Neville, Ludlow, and Meadvale roads, and then
by G. L. Sutcliffe, whose last work was in
Fowlers Walk. During the 1930s and after the
Second World War there was some private
infilling, and several of the original properties
lost their privet hedges and acquired garages.
Brentham nonetheless retained its character in
1969, when it was designated a conservation
area. (fn. 43)
The establishment of Brentham combined
with the building up of older roads on the
northern side of the Hanger Hill ridge to create a
small shopping centre along the north side of
Pitshanger Lane. St. Stephen's school had been
opened there in 1882, St. Barnabas's church was
begun in 1914, and many shops stood between
the two sites by 1908. In 1979 they served a
district separated from the rest of Ealing by the
Hanger Hill ridge and from more modern
suburbs to the north by recreational land along
the Brent.
Ealing and Brentford: evolution of settlement 1822-1914
(scale 1 inch to 1 mile)
Between the World Wars building covered
most available plots and was carried to the edges
of the borough, except where open spaces had
been preserved. (fn. 44) In the north-west corner the
Cleveland estate off Argyle Road was planned in
1924. (fn. 45) Semi-detached houses in Avalon Road
ran from Vallis Way to the Crossway by 1928 and
to Ruislip Road by 1932, while Cavendish
Avenue ran along the Hanwell boundary by
1939. In the north-east corner Kingfield,
Mulgrave, and neighbouring roads had been
built up east of Brentham by 1935 and detached
houses were built before and after the Second
World War in avenues east of Hanger Lane.
South of Uxbridge Road housing stretched from
Ealing Dean or West Ealing southward to Little
Ealing, except where allotments survived at the
north end of Northfield Avenue: Camborne
Avenue and Leyborne Avenue, projected in
1920, had been built up by 1934. In the southeastern corner of the borough, building drew
closer to Gunnersbury park. Sunderland and
Durham roads in 1920 led from South Ealing
Road only as far as Roberts Alley, later Olive
Road, but by 1934 they stretched eastward along
Maple Grove and its neighbours between the
District railway and Pope's Lane. Infilling included Ealing Village, where 128 flats in fourstoreyed blocks, apart from the gatehouse,
formed a cheaply built private estate on a previously neglected strip of ground near the railway
north-east of Ealing Broadway station. (fn. 46)
By 1951 there was so little land available that it
was not thought possible to house all applicants
within the borough. (fn. 47) Council houses multiplied
from 3,484 before the Second World War to
8,639 by 1965 (fn. 48) but most building took place
beyond the old parish, notably at Northolt. Many
older houses in and around Ealing town had been
subdivided by 1951, (fn. 49) as others were thereafter.
There remained a contrast between the leafy
avenues north of the main railway line and east of
the old village around the common, on the one
hand, and the denser housing of West and South
Ealing. The area north and north-east of the
town, in particular, remained exclusive, with
blocks of private flats interspersed among the
large Victorian villas. Characteristic of such
high-density but expensive building were two
ten-storeyed towers begun in 1963 on the north
side of St. Stephen's Road. (fn. 50)
The population of Ealing parish, including
Old Brentford, rose slowly from 5,035 in 1801 to
7,783 in 1831, after a recent influx of market
garden workers, and 9,828 in 1851. (fn. 51) Old Brentford chapelry, with 6,057 inhabitants, remained
more populous than the rest of Ealing in 1851 but
thereafter Brentford's growth rate declined: (fn. 52)
increases in the ancient parish to 11,963 in 1861,
18,189 by 1871, 25,436 by 1881, and 35,648 by
1891 resulted mainly from growth around Ealing
itself. Separated from Brentford, Ealing M.B.
had 33,031 inhabitants in 1901, 61,222 in 1911,
and 67,755 in 1921, before the absorption of
Hanwell and other areas. The population of the
enlarged borough fell slightly between 1951 and
1961, from 187,323 to 183,077, as in neighbouring districts.