Little Ealing History

Earlier this year we published a new edition of our book on the history of Little Ealing.

Little Ealing was once a sleepy hamlet surrounded by farmland and orchards. This was not very long ago; it was within the lifetimes of many of those who have contributed their memories to this book. The country lanes have now become busy urban routes and the fields have been replaced with residential roads lined with terraced houses and gardens. Glimpses of this earlier world can still be seen, however, in the remaining old houses, the road layout and the open spaces.

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If you have walked past the gates across from the Plough pub at the bottom of Little Ealing Lane and glanced at the house just visible behind the trees you might have wondered about its history. You may know it was a school, The King Fahad Academy not so long ago. Now the house looks run down and the grounds overgrown. But work soon will start to get the building and grounds ready to host a free school. We hope the work will be done sensitively in order to safeguard this fine example of an eighteenth century mansion and a grade two listed building, and which is central to the history of Little Ealing.

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When waiting at South Ealing station do you sometimes wonder why it is so close to Northfields station? In fact at less than 300 yards between platforms they are the two closest over-ground stations on the whole tube network. How this came to be is a rather familiar tale of the resultant compromise between bureaucratic bungling and local protests.

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Paul Fitzmaurice describes the little known Steel family of Northfields whose development of the area resulted in many of the street names we know today

Up until the twentieth century the district we now know as Northfields was virtually all fields with a muddy track called Northfield Lane joining the hamlets of Little Ealing and Ealing Dean (or West Ealing). It formed part of the ancient Manor of Coldhall and for centuries was devoted to arable farming and latterly market gardens. During the course of the 19th century the Steel family came to lease much of the area as market gardeners.

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100 years ago…

In 1908 the local newspaper was reporting the closure of ‘the Owls’ school in St Mary’s Road [opposite what is now TVU]. Better known as Great Ealing School, it had had a long and distinguished history: under the headmasterships of Dr George Nicholas and his two sons, the school produced such Victorian luminaries as Cardinal Newman, Thomas Huxley and W S Gilbert.

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