HANWELL
The old parish of Hanwell (fn. 1) formed a strip, four
miles long and only about a third of a mile wide,
running down the east bank of the River Brent to
the Thames. Because of the turn in the Brent's
course from west to south, the river bounded the
parish both on the north and on the west, while
the Thames formed the southern boundary. The
eastern boundary was less well defined, but ran for
the most part fairly straight across the fields and
common from north to south. (fn. 2) These bounds
inclosed about 1209 acres in 1863-4, when they were
first accurately surveyed. There was also a detached
part of the parish, containing 74 acres, which lay
a couple of miles to the north-west, and ran down the
northern slope of Hanger Hill to the Brent, between
Ealing and Twyford. (fn. 3) Part of this area is later known
to have been a demesne wood belonging to the
manor of Greenford and Hanwell, (fn. 4) and the reasons
for its attachment to Hanwell, though unknown, are
probably to be found in its tenurial history. Further
description of this detached part is omitted here,
since it was topographically more closely related to
Ealing than to Hanwell.
By the 12th century, when a chapel was founded
in New Brentford, (fn. 5) the town seems to have formed
a separate manor. (fn. 6) The boundary between it and
the part of the parish which remained subject to the
mother church of Hanwell may have been drawn at
about this time. It ran straight across the parish
approximately on the present line of the Piccadilly
railway: the remains of a then dead 'gospel oak'
stood beside the road on the north of the line as late
as 1928. (fn. 7) Legally New Brentford remained part of
Hanwell parish until the 18th century, (fn. 8) and it was
still in an historical and technical sense part of the
'ancient parish' so long as that retained any significance. Its history, however, is not described here.
From an early date it was more closely linked with
Old Brentford than with Hanwell, and it has seemed
essential to consider at one and the same time the
history of the two constituent parts of the town of
Brentford. Since Old Brentford remained more
closely connected with Ealing, its mother parish,
than did New Brentford with Hanwell, the history of
both has been reserved for description with that of
Ealing, in Ossulstone hundred. In the following
article the expression 'the parish' is generally used,
as it was in the past, to describe Hanwell alone,
without New Brentford. Where it refers to the
whole parish, in its strict legal sense, this is indicated to be so.
Hanwell itself, excluding New Brentford and the
detached area beyond Ealing, covered 992 acres in
1863-4. In 1885 it was made into an urban district, (fn. 9)
and in 1926 the whole urban district, still including
the detached part, was added to the borough and
civil parish of Ealing. (fn. 10) Later adjustments were made
to the boundary between Ealing and Brentford so
that it no longer follows the old line of that between
Hanwell and Brentford.
There is less than 100 feet between the highest
and lowest points in the parish, but the steepness of
some of the slopes gives it a hilly character. This
is particularly so north of the Uxbridge road, where
Cuckoo Hill, the highest point, rises steeply to over
100 feet and where the parish church stands on a
pronounced spur over the curving Brent valley.
South of the Uxbridge road, too, there is a sharp drop
down to the river from the ridge along which runs
the Boston road. (fn. 11) The course of the Brent above
the bridge at Hanwell was straightened during the
early 1920's in several places, notably just north of
the church. (fn. 12) The Grand Union Canal (formerly the
Grand Junction), opened in 1798, joins the river a
little below the bridge. Several cuts were made when
the canal was constructed in order to straighten the
old course of the river from there down to the Thames
at Brentford. (fn. 13) The soil of Hanwell is mixed: there is
a strip of alluvium, wider in the north, along the
Brent, and the north of the parish, beyond Church
Road, is mostly London clay, with some gravel
beyond that again. To the south gravel predominates, with a patch of brick-earth along the eastern
boundary. (fn. 14)
Some Saxon graves of the late 5th or 6th century,
which were found at the site of Oaklands School in
1886, together with other finds nearby, provide the
first evidence of settlement in Hanwell. The settlement to which they belonged may have been connected with the Uxbridge road or with a track
running north from Brentford. (fn. 15) Within historic
times, however, there were very few houses south
of the Uxbridge road until the 19th century, and
most of the medieval village is likely to have been
nearer the church. This stands, as earlier churches
have done at least since the 12th century, (fn. 16) at the
top of a steep slope overlooking the river and the
bridge from the north. The name Hanwell is in all
probability derived from a spring which rises close to
the church. (fn. 17) In the 18th century there were only a
few houses around the church but more stood farther
east along Church Road and, in particular, where the
road bends by the present Cuckoo Lane. (fn. 18) The end
of Greenford Avenue south of Cuckoo Lane was not
constructed until the late 19th century, (fn. 19) but before
1772 another lane led from lower down Church Road
to the house at Hanwell Park, approximately on the
site of Drayton Manor Grammar School. The date at
which a house was first built on this site is unknown;
it was there by the 18th century and there were also
a few cottages in the two lanes (the present Cuckoo
Lane and the lane just described) which met in front
of it. (fn. 20)
The settlement beside the Uxbridge road is very
probably medieval. It was called Tickill on a map of
c. 1680, (fn. 21) but this name is not mentioned elsewhere.
The road itself may have originated in the early
Middle Ages, and though the date at which the Brent
was first bridged here is unknown, references to
Brent Bridge and its need of repair have been found
as early as 1396. (fn. 22) In the 15th or early 16th century (fn. 23)
it was rebuilt or repaired in stone, but it was made of
brick in 1675. (fn. 24) It seems to have been repaired by
the lords of the adjoining manors until 1762, when
the turnpike trustees rebuilt and widened it. (fn. 25) From
1815 the county took responsibility and the bridge
was widened again and largely faced with stone in
1906. (fn. 26) The houses round Church Road and the main
road comprised the whole village before the 19th
century, except that the site of Park Farm (by
Elthorne Park) may have been occupied as early as
the 13th century, (fn. 27) and there were a few cottages
at the junction of Boston Road and Lower Boston
Road by 1816. (fn. 28)
Apart from the Uxbridge road, most of the roads
through the parish ran from north to south. (fn. 29)
Boston Road led up from Brentford between the
lands of Park Farm, which may always have been
inclosed, on the west, and South Field, which
stretched up to the Uxbridge road, on the east. A
lane left the road on the south side of Park Farm and
led over a bridge to Osterley. (fn. 30) North of Park Farm
(i.e. north of Trumper's Way), the heath stretched
to just beyond the present line of the Uxbridge road,
so that the main road itself, Cherington Road,
Lower Boston Road, and the north end of Boston
Road all followed ill-defined tracks across it. Another track (now Green Lane) also led across the
common to a bridge in the common meadow of
Billetts Hart. North of the main road Church Field
and East Field lay respectively to west and east of the
lower part of Church Road. Farther north again,
the whole of Cuckoo Hill was inclosed land by the
18th century, apart from a little remnant of open
field called Mill Hill Field. (fn. 31) This commemorated a
short-lived medieval windmill (fn. 32) and lay at the top
of the hill on the west side of Cuckoo Lane (now
Greenford Avenue). Cuckoo Lane was not then the
only road north from the village, for High Lane, now
only a footpath to Ruislip Road, was probably as
good a road as most of the others in the parish.
Until 1816 it led to the large common meadow
called Hanwell Mead beside the Brent, north of the
present golf-course. (fn. 33) The Ruislip Road ran along
a strip of common-land beside the Brent to Greenford Bridge, which has been on its present site since
1652. Before that date the history of the bridge is
confused: there seem to have been two bridges
between Hanwell and Greenford in the Middle
Ages, one of which probably crossed the river at
the end of Cuckoo Lane. The other may have continued the line of High Lane. (fn. 34) Their sites possibly
suggest a stronger flow of traffic here from north to
south than from east to west.
By 1746 Hanwell Park had fair-sized grounds
on the north of the house, laid out with straight
avenues of trees. (fn. 35) In 1775 its owners secured a
private Act of Parliament exchanging lands with
Hobbayne's charity so as to improve the southern
aspect of the house. (fn. 36) They closed both the lane
running up from Church Road and the west end of
what is now called Cuckoo Lane, and extended the
grounds of the house right down to East Field. (fn. 37)
The house itself (since demolished) was also rebuilt
or altered about this time or rather later. It was the
largest in the parish, built on an H-plan with two
stories, a parapeted roof, and a portico with coupled
columns between the wings on the south front. (fn. 38)
Towards the end of the 18th century several cottages
near the church seem to have been demolished, (fn. 39) and
within the next few decades houses of more pretension were built along Church Road. (fn. 40) The chief
of these was the Rectory, which was rebuilt about
1790, (fn. 41) and, according to a writer of 1816, commanded 'truly pleasing views over a rich valley, through
which the little river Brent pursues a meandrous
course'. (fn. 42) The view, to which other guide-book
writers paid tribute in turn, owed much to the 'lawnlike fields' (fn. 43) in which G. H. Glasse (rector 1785-
1809) laid out the lands all round the church, which
he held as glebe or acquired as his private property. (fn. 44)
A good deal of his property was attached to Brent
Lodge, which stood to the south of the church and
was rebuilt early in the 19th century and demolished
soon after 1931. (fn. 45) The Rectory itself was pulled
down some years later, (fn. 46) and the house called the
Spring, further east, followed after the Second
World War. Among the surviving houses are the
Gothic Rectory Cottage by the church, formerly the
charity school and built in 1800, (fn. 47) and the Hermitage,
a little further east. This is a small cottage orné of the
early 19th century, with pointed and quatrefoil
windows, an ogee-headed door, and a heavily overhanging thatched roof. More of the houses built at
about this time further along Church Road still
survive, notably round the little green where the
road bends. They include the Grove, built in the
late 18th century and now belonging to the golfcourse, and Spring Cottage, which is rather later
and has Gothic windows. A few more of Hanwell's
larger houses, of which two survive, were built
rather later in Cherington Road. Another, called
Lawn House, stood north of the Uxbridge road, and
was demolished about the end of the 19th century. (fn. 48)
In 1816 the last open fields, commons, and
meadows were inclosed. South Field and East
Field, were still of considerable extent (80 and 44
acres), though inclosures had been made on their
edges, but Church Field and Mill Hill Field had
already been reduced to very little. (fn. 49) The most
immediately important part of the inclosure was
that of the heath, covering nearly 100 acres. Building
on the common had taken place in the late 18th
century, (fn. 50) perhaps stimulated by increased traffic on
the Uxbridge road, which had been turnpiked in
1714. (fn. 51) The 'Coach and Horses' (renamed the
Viaduct Inn when the railway was built) stood near
the bottom of the hill down to the bridge by 1730. (fn. 52)
Two or three other inns which were in the parish
during the 18th century do not seem to have
survived, (fn. 53) but the 'King's Arms' and the 'Duke of
York', on each side of the main road, were both
there by the early 19th century. (fn. 54) The parish cage
was built about 1788 near the way into Church
Field from the main road, (fn. 55) the parish pump was
erected on the south of the road in 1815, (fn. 56) a yard
behind the 'King's Arms' served as a parish pound, (fn. 57)
and both the poor-house and the school stood for a
while in the early 19th century just off the main road
in the Halfacre (now Halfacre Road). (fn. 58) Following
the inclosure there was a good deal of building on
the former common-land, so that by the time the
railway arrived in 1838 there were already several
terraces of houses along the main road and nearby, (fn. 59)
and the number of houses in the whole parish (249
in 1841) was nearly double that in 1801. (fn. 60) The construction of Brunel's Wharncliffe Viaduct for the
railway made a great change in the landscape of the
parish, though most of it in fact lies on the far side
of the Brent outside the boundary. It is built of
brick, with eight wide elliptical arches supported
on massive square piers. On the south side are the
arms of Lord Wharncliffe, the chairman of the House
of Lords committee on the Great Western bill. (fn. 61) The
viaduct was widened in 1877 and it was no doubt at
the same time that the station was moved from the
top of Station Road to its present position farther
east. (fn. 62)
Some building took place around the Uxbridge
road and Boston Road in the first few decades after
the railway was opened, (fn. 63) but the chief change in the
appearance of the parish resulted from the building
of the great Central London District School on
Cuckoo Hill in 1856. (fn. 64) The opening of the two
cemeteries on each side of the main road in 1854
(by St. George's parish, Westminster) (fn. 65) and 1855
(by Kensington) (fn. 66) also had its effect on the parish.
In the seventies and eighties large-scale building
began and by 1894 the area west of the cemeteries
between the railway and Studley Grange Road was
virtually covered with close-packed semi-detached
and terraced houses. (fn. 67) Some 'rookeries and slums'
had apparently resulted from the lack of any control
over building and drainage by the time the local
board of health was formed in 1885, (fn. 68) and part of
the area south of the Uxbridge road was scheduled
for redevelopment by the county council in 1951. (fn. 69)
North of the railway the Golden Manor estate
constituted almost the only building area before the
nineties and consisted of larger houses in gardens. (fn. 70)
In 1886 the final break-up of the Hanwell Park estate
began with the construction of the south end of
Greenford Avenue. (fn. 71) By 1913 the house had been
demolished, and terraced and semi-detached houses
were going up on its site and all round on the west
of the Greenford branch line (opened 1904-5) of the
G.W.R. (fn. 72) South of the main-line railway, the last
gaps were filled in with the laying of tram lines along
the Uxbridge road (1901), and Lower Boston Road
and Boston Road (1906), (fn. 73) and building spread south
and eastward, as part of the great expansion of the
adjoining parts of Ealing. (fn. 74) Elthorne Heights (fn. 75)
(Studland Road and northwards) was laid out just
before the First World War (fn. 76) but already the first
step had been taken, with the opening of Churchfields recreation ground in 1898, (fn. 77) to preserve the
hillsides and river-valley around the church free of
buildings. The second important stage in this process
was the opening of the Brent Valley Golf Club about
1910: the club was taken over by the borough
council in 1938 and became a public course. (fn. 78) The
last stage was the acquisition of Brent Lodge by the
council in 1931 (fn. 79) and the addition of its grounds to
the recreation grounds already there. The site of the
house has been used for various gardening buildings and this has slightly marred the view from the
viaduct.
Most of the south of the parish was covered with
streets and houses by 1932, and the northern slope
of Cuckoo Hill west of Greenford Avenue was also
being built up. By 1935, apart from the site of the
Rectory and some other land at that end of Church
Row, on which small houses and flats were built
soon afterwards, the only considerable area left for
building was the land belonging to the Cuckoo
(Central London District) School. (fn. 80) This now
belonged to the London County Council, and by
1939 they had put up 1,592 houses there, and two
churches and three schools had been provided. (fn. 81)
Most of the houses stood in small terraces, and 82
prefabricated houses were added after the Second
World War. (fn. 82) The chestnut avenue which had
formed the main drive to the school was retained as
the central road of the estate, leading up to the main
block of the old building, which was left standing
while the rest was demolished. It is a gaunt Italianate brick building of three and four stories with a
central tower and an arcaded portico of nine bays.
In 1959 it was in rather battered condition but was
still used for various local activities.
There has been little building since the Second
World War since so little suitable land remained
vacant, but the Ealing council have erected 104 flats
at Gifford Gardens, on the north-western side of
Cuckoo Hill. They and the earlier Hanwell council
had built 361 dwellings in the parish before the war. (fn. 83)
Despite the lack of building sites, there is still open
land in addition to that round the church and to the
other official parks, of which the largest is Elthorne
Park (opened 1911) in the south. Most of the land
along the Brent, except in the late-19th-century St.
Margaret's Road area, is open, whether as allotments, recreation grounds, grassland, or simply as
waste. On the northern boundary Ruislip Road
remains almost a country lane running beside the
unfenced Brent, with parkland beyond in Greenford.
Sir Montagu Sharpe (1856-1942), vice-chairman
and chairman of Middlesex County Council 1889-
1909, chairman of Middlesex Sessions 1909-33, and
the historian of Middlesex and of Hanwell, should
probably be named first among the worthies of the
parish. (fn. 84) The rectors of Hanwell include notable
names, (fn. 85) one or two fairly eminent persons lived in
the parish in the late 18th and 19th centuries, (fn. 86) and
the Central London District Schools had at least one
pupil of international fame. (fn. 87) Jonas Hanway (1712-
86), philanthropist, is often claimed by the parish
because he was buried here and was a friend of the
rector. (fn. 88) Hanwell Heath was the meeting-place of
the electors of the county on at least one occasion in
the 18th century, when the poll was held at Brentford. (fn. 89)