01 : North Ealing in the 19th Century
Pitshanger Farmhouse
Until the arrival of the Great West Railway in 1838, Ealing was a rural village, situated south of the Uxbridge Road. After that, there was considerable building north of the Uxbridge Road throughout the Victoria era. However, North Ealing still remained as unspoiled farmland at the end of the 19th century, as shown by the 1894 map shown below. At that time, the district now known as Pitshanger didn’t exist, and the future ‘Pitshanger Lane’ was only a track leading to Pitshanger Farmhouse, which was situated near the site of today’s Methodist Church, and was pulled down in 1908. This was the only structure north of ‘the Lane’, which otherwise comprised open fields extending to the River Brent.
(Click to enlarge photos or maps)
The red rectangle on this 1894 map shows the site of St Barnabas Church. However within 20 years, the population had grown dramatically to about 5000, with the building of the Brentham Estate from 1901 onwards, as shown in this map of 1935, with the position of the church shown in red. A new community had been born.
