Ealing Common

Pott to thr west Ealing Broadway

Bloomsbury Close
Built on a site which was tennis courts.


Daniel Road
Ealing Lawn Tennis Club. In 1906 the Club moved here from St. Leonards Road bringing the clubhouse with it. It cost £540 to prepare the new site due to the need to level the ground, cut down trees and turf it.  A new clubhouse was built in 1926, and extended in 1929. They then had twenty courts. In 1964, Ealing Common Lawn Tennis Club, adjacent, closed down and the Ealing club gained 4 more grass courts. The club got ownership of its land in 1987 and investment began in 1988 with 3 asphalt courts and an air dome to enclose them. In 2008 a new clubhouse was opened,

Ealing Common
This is 47 acres of common land as designated by the 1866 Metropolitan Commons Act. Previously in the early 19th the manorial rights had been transferred from the Bishops of London to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. They had overseen the clearing of scrub, planted trees and drained the ponds. It is now mainly grassland but also has avenues of horse chestnuts planted in the 19th after the common had been bought by the Ealing Local Board.  In the north is an English oak. In the south-west corner is a small enclosed park, Warwick Dene, planted as a rose garden and a rest garden for the elderly and the blind.  In the Second World War there were underground air raid shelters here as well as search lights and anti-aircraft guns in the central area. There were allotments in the south part of the common.

Elm Avenue
This follows the line of an old path. A triple line of elms, fringing from the south side of the common dated from the late 1650s. The remaining trees were blown down in the gale of 1987.

Elm Grove Road
All Saints Church. This was built as a memorial to assassinated Prime Minister Spencer Percival and paid for by his youngest daughter, Frederica. It was built in 1905 on land donated by the Rothschilds. The name of All Saints comes from the date of Perceval’s birthday. The architect was, W. A. Pite. There is also a blue plaque to Percival on the church.
Elm Grove House. The church is roughly on the site of Elm Grove House. He later became Prime Minister. After his assassination his family continued to live there until 1860. It was then acquired by the East India Company,.
Royal Indian Asylum. The Elm Grove estate in Ealing had been purchased by the Secretary of State for India from the Perceval family in 1870. It was then converted into a lunatic asylum for patients who had been sent home from India by Matthew Digby Wyatt. It had previously been in Hackney. It closed on this site in 1892. The house was later bought and demolished by the Rothschilds

Granville Gardens
Ealing Common District Line Depot. This was built by the District Railway built on 25 acres bought from Leopold de Rothschild in 1905 when it was electrified and it is now the oldest of the main depots on the Underground. Originally the depot was used to store old steam locomotives as they were replaced by the new electric units. From 1932 some Piccadilly line trains were stored here. In 1922 Acton Works took over responsibility for major overhauls but were returned to Ealing Common in 1985.  In 1990, a heavy repair shop was built here but this building is now used as storage for items from the London Transport Museum, although this has its own separate entrance away from Granville Gardens. The depot is now used to storage of District Line trains. Two sidings at Ealing Common Station connect to the depot.

Gunnersbury Lane
This road carries the North Circular Road and is often know by that name
The London Diploma College. Private language school.
17-19 Ealing Riding School. Probably dates from the 1980s.
Ealing Common Farm. This is shown on maps of the 1890s roughly at the site of the entrance to Evelyn Grove

Hamilton Road
3 Gregg secretarial college started in 1926 but had moved by 1928
Hamilton House School. This was here 1905 - 1908 and prepared boys for the Royal Naval College, Osborn

Hangar Lane
This carries the North Circular Road.
1 - 8 Hanger Lane built before the 1870s and used as rooming houses. demolished 1972. The site has been used for a succession of hotels.
Hangar Lane farmhouse. In 1861 it was described as Mary Cotching's 'model' dairy farm with a shop in The Mall selling fresh milk, delivered twice daily. It was sold to United Dairies in 1928 who used is as their depot and finally closed in 1992. It is now housing.

Keswick Close
Built on the site of a Badminton Hall.

North Common Road
St Matthew's Church. This originated with an iron church erected on a triangle of grass in Grange Park in 1872. It was then called the St Matthew’s Mission District Church. The present church was funded by public subscription and built on land donated by the Wood family. It was designed by Alfred Jowers in 1884. There are the beginnings of a tower in the Entrance Porch, but this was never built. There is a memorial screen as a Great War memorial.  In the 1980s it was shared with Ealing's Polish Catholic community.
7 A blue plaque which commemorates Dorothea Chambers who won the Ladies' Singles at Wimbledon seven times
9-10 YMCA. Short term supported housing scheme.

The Common
19 Greystoke Court. Built in 1903 as five flats, using artificial bricks made from hard clinker of Ealing's 'fume extractor' .

The Mall
53 The Lodge. “gastro” pub. It was previously The Bell Inn but appears to be a modern rebuild.
46-47 The Sir Michael Balcon. Weatherspoon’s pub named after the owner of Ealing Studios.  Previously The Hogshead, and Slug and Lettuce.
Ealing College. This moved to the house on the corner of Hamilton Road in 1880. It was called Hermosa school after 1886 and the Proprietary school from 1894 until its closure in 1901. Girton House school for girls occupied the building from 1905 to 1923 and Acton college moved there in 1925, when it was renamed Ealing college.

Uxbridge Road
Ealing Common Station. This opened in 1879 and now lies between Acton Town and North Ealing on the Piccadilly Line and between Acton Town and Ealing Broadway on the District Line. It was originally built for the Metropolitan District Railway by J.Wolfe Barry in plain brick with a two storey stationmaster’s house and entrance. In 1886 the name was ‘Ealing Common and West Acton’.  In 1903 the District extended north of here to Park Royal and the Royal Agricultural Society's Park Royal show grounds. This extension was the first of the Underground's surface lines to be electrified. In 1910 the name was changed to ‘Ealing Common’.  In 1930 a new station building by Charles Holden was constructed in Portland stone – to cut marking and wear - with a heptagonal ticket hall but constrained because of its site on the bridge.  There was originally a blue glass band around the canopy edge intended to be illuminated. There are roof-lights in the booking hall with the London Transport logo. Some original enameled signs survive
The Granville Pub. Courage pub converted to a Harvester before demolition in 2008
Fordhook House. This was on the site of what is now Fordhook Road. Henry Fielding the 18th playwright, novelist and magistrate, leased a country house here in 1752 or 1753. It was later the home of Lady Byron, widow of the poet and mother of Ada Lovelace. She founded a school here on new principles of co-operation and training.
Metropolitan Water Fountains Association installed a drinking fountain here in 1878. It remains.

Warwick Road
The Grange Pub.  This is on the boundary of the Rothschild estate since they were opposed to licensed premises on their lands. It was built in 1871 on the site of a beer house called the Cricketers –indicating an activity on the common.

Watermans Mews
Opitcal Works.This mews off Uxbridge Road is marked on some maps as ‘optical works’.  The Ealing based telescope makers W.Ottway give as one of their addresses ‘8 Uxbridge Road’ and this could perhaps refer to them.  Their main address was Orion Works either ‘adjacent to the Town Hall’ or ‘Northfield Avenue’. They claim to have dated from the 1640s but more probably 1840s and seem to have closed in the 1950s. Their telescopes are collectors’ items.

Sources
All Saints Church. Web site
British History On line. Ealing. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
Day. London's Underground
Ealing Common Society. Web site
Ealing Common Walk. Web site
Ealing Lawn Tennis club, web site
Gates and Lang. Ealing.
Hidden London. Web site
Lawrence. Bright Underground Spaces
London Pubology. Web site
Lost pubs. Web site
London Railway Record
Middlesex Churches,
Pevsner and Cherry, North West London
St.Matthew’s Church. Web site
Walford. Village London
Wikipedia. As appropriate