William picked up his bundle of tools and left the new manor house at Sudhale. He trudged eastward along the Oxford Road, barely noticing the woods and common on either side, for his back ached terribly after a hard day’s wood carving. Approaching Hanewelle, he splashed through the shallow river, wishing the lord of the manor would repair the collapsed bridge. Then up the lonely hill to the corner of the path to Brentford. On this corner stood a huddle of small cottages. Some called this corner Tickill, William called it home…
Stand by the clock tower and reflect that this part of Hanwell was called Tickill on a map of 1680. Tickill Clock Tower. Has a certain ring to it. This is one of the busiest spots in Hanwell – the junction where Boston Road meets the Uxbridge Road. These days, shops and cafés are packed together here in busy density.
Boston Road is a one-way street. On the left-hand side, looking south, all is a hot spot of bustle and confusion. Until recently, in the now closed Fade To Black corner café, locals chatted and cappuccino steamed under the mini minaret. If you turned the corner too fast on leaving you risked colliding into the kid riding a bright red pedal car outside the Expresso kebab shop, for want of anywhere else to play. Or being jostled by those struggling to catch an E8 or 195 at Jessamine Road bus stop.
Fade to Black has re-opened, as Momentum. So you can get your fix of top-notch coffee once again, while perhaps catching up with the movement hoping to transform Labour…
Exploring the little yard just after the bus stop takes seconds – a cosy motor repair shop. Next up, Jessamine Road is dead-ended by the high brick wall of Lidl – its aspect less cosy. Maunder Road is a narrow meander; it looks dead-end, but isn’t.
Things are busy on the right-hand side, too, but the vibe is a bit calmer, the pavement wider. Mleczko on the corner and its endearing sign (Have you ever visit butchers downstairs?) used to be a branch of J Sainsbury 100 years ago. Big Bites is back. Hanwell Kebabs is still the best!
On this first stretch of the walk, these shops and businesses, and the flats above them, are a mix of mid-20th century and Victorian/Edwardian terraced buildings. They are now punctuated by the latest wave of new buildings, inspired by Crossrail, which will enable travel to and directly through London.
The vibe isn’t always calmer on this side though, you sometimes find an individual looking anxiously up at the flats above the parade of shops – sometimes shouting. First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait. There are some interesting little side-streets to slip down when the waiting’s over; the nearest being Wilmot Place. The disused phone box opposite is alos popular in this regard.
A good mix of the usual suspects can be found on this part of Boston Road: kebab shops and cafés, newsagents, hairdressers, dry cleaners, a florist and solicitors. But there are some eclectic and unusual premises, too: security and electronics businesses, a posh flooring shop and the Olive Orchard Boutique. Another shop has closed down since I last walked by a few days ago. All signage has been removed and already I can’t remember what kind of shop it used to be.
Next up, Seasons Close is gated housing, the entrance flanked by the Golden Chip fish and chip shop on one side and the Little Wonder bakery on the other. Both are run by the same family and both are marvellous. Good quality and friendly staff.
Londis near the bottom of this stretch used to be Costcutter. What it was before that, I don’t know, but the brand was originally known as London & District Stores. Lovely name. Ghost signs on the wall, above the buddeleia next to the wonderful Provender Mews, offer fading reminders of how things used to be, and how they change over time.
Next door is an arch leading to a lovely mews – Queen’s Terrace Cottages. Further down we have George Bone Tattoos, accountants, solicitors, the Dodo micropub, and a café-cum-florists called W7 Emporium.
Hanwell Square is a massive new residential development on the site of the old Wickes. The building looks like it’s nearly finished and residents will soon be moving in. High-earning young professionals will spend their golden handshakes on rooftop sundowners while enjoying the bullet point benefits of state-of-the-art apartments, shops and cafés, landscaped courtyard, charming locals and prime access to Crossrail/Heathrow/M4. They probably won’t worry about possible new-build scope creep tactics… This might be the third main wave of building expansion over the centuries, but this time it’s on land previously built on.
Perhaps the new residents will try out the two old-boy pubs nearby on the fork of Boston Road and Lower Boston Road: the Prince of Wales (which used to be the Pig) and the Village Inn (which used to be the Royal Victoria). They won’t know about the wonderful Horseshoe Café that used to be next door, now a crammed in new build/conversion. Maybe they’ll hang out at Ben Scooters, everyone else seems to.
They will likely enjoy the Hanwell Hootie, which takes place every year in pubs and other venues all over Hanwell, and especially here on Boston and Lower Boston Roads.
A map of 1786 shows Boston Road as a lane to Brentford with very few buildings (Park Farm perhaps, which was occupied as early as the 13th century). By 1816, there were a few cottages at the junction with Lower Boston Road, and by now all remaining land to the north of Park Farm had been enclosed.
The catalyst for the first main wave of building expansion in Hanwell was the development of rail travel, when the Great Western Railway opened in 1838, crossing the Brent valley on Wharncliffe Viaduct. In the 1870s and 1880s, large-scale building began and by 1894 the area between the railway and Studley Grange Road was dense housing and not a lot else.
This area is known (especially by estate agents) as Olde Hanwell and also extends up the Lower Boston Road and down to the Fox, where the River Brent meets the Grand Union Canal. The whole length of Boston Road, by now two-way, is generally flat, though most of the side streets on the right slope gently down to the canal.
On Boston Road itself, Nissan Westway is making way for yet more third-wave residential new builds – the young lad in me used to like seeing the big car transporters. Next on the left is the ambulance station; handy for Ealing Hospital. After that an Access self storage place. For some reason I really like these, even though the hedge in front of this one reeks heavily of fox.
Meanwhile, on the right-hand side as you continue south, you pass the tops of Rosebank Road, Osterley Park View Road (which has a view, but not of Osterley Park as far as I can tell) and Studley Grange Road. Late 19th century terraced houses, I’d say. These side roads are narrow, or maybe the cars these days are wide – in places they nudge up onto the pavement. Until about 20 years ago this area was dotted with small factories. A map of 1865, 27 years after the railway arrived, shows Boston Road built-up as far down as here, with gravel pits and Park Farm further down. By 1920, there were allotments in between the gravel pits.
Back on the other side of the road, Tools4Trade used to be the Red Lion pub, and a tricky little mini roundabout by the junction of Cambridge Road, leads to the Royal Mail Sorting Office and one of Hanwell’s dismantled but still operational LTNs.
Then the shop on the corner that still (I think) occasionally distributes groceries to those who can’t afford regular shops, and used to be an antiques shop called Studio something. A few doors down, Iverson’s Tyres/MOTs is now Halfords.
At this point, moving south away from Hanwell Broadway, the architecture of the houses changes from Victorian/Edwardian to a more modern style. For in the 1930s, the second main wave of building expansion started with Humes Avenue and continued all the way down the Boston Road. Indeed, most of the south of Hanwell was covered with streets and houses by 1932. Humes Avenue is home to the wonderful Humes Avenue Garage that does a great job and doesn’t rip you off. The area bounded by Studley Grange Road, Boston Road and Townholm Crescent was once gravel pits, all the way down to the canal. Indeed, Humes Avenue is named after Thomas Hume, physician to the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. He later lived nearby and built a wharf to load gravel onto barges bound for London.
At the top of Humes Avenue is South Hanwell Baptist Church and the wooden scout hut of a church hall adjacent. Then a tile shop with a tatty flat atop – the shop was once a petrol station. Behind these is an estate of flats – Lambourne Close.
We pass the top of the delightful Trumpers Way. Not always easy as we dodge the frequent sudden appearance of Getir scooters trying to get-there. As we hope to as well in a future post. Well worth exploring.
Then Boston Hotel used to include an Indian restaurant that’s now Kone Japanese restaurant. We’ve been in once and have also ordered a good few takeaways – highly recommended. A few more shops, a multi-cuisine takeaway and a couple of hairdressers. Opposite, across the zebra crossing you have a shop, another hairdressers and a petrol station that’s handy for the late-for-workers and the live fast/die young brigade, who find it impossible to observe the 20mph speed limit. I guess we all do at times.
More thirties semis on the right, including Townholm Crescent which, like Humes Avenue have the solid look of old council houses and are set on wider roads than Olde Hanwell. Just don’t let anyone hear you call it Molde Hanwell.
Halfway houses, their denizens and a paint shop haunt the left before the turning into Oaklands Road. In 1886, the remains of sixth century Saxon warriors were found on the site of what is now Oaklands Primary School. After the turning is Hanwell House, a residential care home next to the Cumberland Road bus stop.
In the 19th century a glacial erratic, or Sarsen stone, was found in the area of what is now Townholm Crescent, in a place where you wouldn’t normally expect to find a large flat boulder about five feet long. It was deposited at the end of the last Ice Age as the ice melted and retreated. There it stayed until house-building started on Townholm Crescent, when it was moved by builders. It now resides just by the main gates of Elthorne Park.
To think that 12,000 years ago this area was all covered by a thick sheet of ice. In more modern times it was all heathland, then farmland. Until a couple of hundred years ago, Boston Road was a lonely lane connecting Brentford to Hanwell. There were very few buildings of any sort.
Elthorne Park was opened in 1910. It has a bandstand, joggers and dog walkers, and people who do Tai Chi in the early morning. The Hanwell Carnival float parade ends here, and the many participants and onlookers wander among the stalls and rides, no doubt waiting to see which pooch would steal the dog show. And talking of winners, the school next door was attended by Lioness Chloe Kelly.
According to Eric Leach, the first known evidence of human occupation in Hanwell is Paleaolithic flints discovered in gravel pits opposite Elthorne Avenue in 1910. This means the first Hanwellites settled here any time between about 500,000 years ago and about 11,000 years ago.
Nearby, St Thomas church hall sometimes shows films. The front porch sags in the middle. Or maybe it’s meant to look like that. The church next door is imposing, but I can never decide if it’s handsome, too. It does have a flagpole, and a flag of St George (usually).
At this point on the walk south, the almost-semis start getting larger, and more spaced out on both sides of the now-tree-lined road. Few of them have front lawns, most are paved.
Otherwise, there’s not much to distract, on a stretch that always goes on further than you expect it to. Until you get to the Royal, that is. The Royal Harvester is one of our locals and used to be called the Royal Hotel.
Back in the day, it had a restaurant offering silver service. Nowadays, it’s Harvester Fayre, including a cheeky little mac’n’cheese.
The old off licence behind the Royal is now a plant and flower shop.
Opposite is the grassy southern entrance to Elthorne Park leading to the top of the wooded lane that goes down to the canal.
Back on the left, we have the Royal pub garden (squint and pretend you’re on your holidays).
Then, some 60s/70s maisonettes…
and last but not least, a shopping parade of miscellany a bit further down, including the lovely Nepal, Sainsbury’s, a café-cum-post office, a coffee shop, takeaways and the inevitable hairdressers. Somewhere near here, as if anticipating the tube station, the road name changes from Boston Road to Boston Manor Road. I don’t know exactly where, nor why.
Across the road, you have a car repair station that has an art deco feel to it. A little further down, opposite the tube station, there’s a small office block. 1970s I’d guess. It’s called Boundary House and is home to a branch of Airivo serviced offices – your space your way.
And if you peep round the back, you get a wonderful view of the back end of Northfields Underground Depot with its massed ranks of trains parallel to the Piccadilly Line. From the top of the office block you could imagine a sort of steel bouquet: the train tracks behind the fence as flower stalks and the row of train fronts as red-bottomed flower heads.
Boston Manor station is a portal to escape – the Piccadilly line runs south west from central London down to Heathrow. It was first opened in 1883 as Boston Road station.
Boston Road station
The current station building opened in 1934, coinciding with the second wave of building expansion. It was designed by Charles Holden, and is more eye-catching than most of the work he did for London Transport. You may know the pub by Collier’s Wood tube station that’s named after him.
The station front semi-circular concession still features the Cup of Joe Coffee Shop signage, but the shop itself is long closed. A forlorn hand-written note in the window says ‘face masks for sale inside’.
I’d read about the Hanwell Gospel Oak that was supposed to be near here, and a couple of years ago spent a lockdown exercise hour in search of it. It’s just as well social distancing prevented me asking anyone for directions. It turns out said oak lay beside the road just to the north of where the tube station is now until around 1928. Instead, we now have what I call the nettle pit, a gap down the side of the tube station, also just to the north. For most of the year, it’s full of what must be very tall nettles. Perhaps in years gone by the local magistrate might have punished minor transgressions by ordering the miscreant to be ‘Cast into the Nettle Pit!’
So the walk packs more in than you might have thought, for such a short stretch of average suburban London street. All compressed in time when you consider millions of years ago when it was molten rock, then sea, swamp and glacier, and more recently woodland, heath and river. And now it’s on its way to becoming beige, a clean brushed-brick Crossrail new-build beige.
If you’d like to find out more about Hanwell, local historian David Blackwell has a fascinating collection of books, maps and photos, old and new, of Hanwell and neighbouring areas. They are on display at Hanwell Library on the first Saturday of each month from 10am to 3pm. On the third Saturday of each month the display is more about Ealing in general.
You might be interested in these other blog posts about Hanwell…
Walk out to winter (on parallel paths)
Hanwell during lockdown
LTN boxes and bollards
Introduction of LTNs during lockdown
Hanwell Square! Oh yeah!
The new development
From heaven’s gate to prison gate
A walk down High Lane, Hanwell
Hanwell’s rubbish
Litter and fly-tipping
Hanwell Hootie – what a beauty!
The local music festival
Brunel in Hanwell – Wharncliffe Viaduct
A special place
A Hanwell walk – 1
From Hanwell Broadway to West Ealing
A Hanwell walk – 2
More of a West Ealing walk, really
Around Hanwell and up the allotment 
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