The London, Buckinghamshire boundary., Uxbridge
The London, Hillingdon/Buckinghamshire boundary goes northwards along the River Colne. It crosses the Oxford Road and then crosses the Grand Union Canal and cuts across the end of Braybourne Close to meet Frays River which it follows northwards
The River Colne flows southwards
Frays River flows southwards
Post to the south Uxbridge
Post to the west New Denham
Post to the east Uxbridge Common
Sites on the London, Hillingdon side of the boundary
Atwells Yard
19th buildings
Beasley’s Yard
Named after the Revd Thomas Ebenezer Beasley 1763-1824.
Watts Hall, restored in 1982. The hall began as the Old Meeting House, a Congregational church of 1716 and the only substantial nonconformist chapel built in Middlesex at that date. It was built by William Thurbin. However the roof, front, and tower date from 1883 by Sulman.
Belmont Road
Uxbridge Bus Garage. This came into use in late 1983 replacing a garage in Oxford Road and is on the lower ground floor of a larger building.
Sainsbury’s Car Park –site of Belmont Road Station. 4th July 1904. Built by the Metropolitan Railway as the Terminus of the line from Harrow on the Hill. It was a brick building with no shelter on the south side of Belmont Road. It was laid out as a through station because the company intended the branch to reach High Wycombe. It had two. Platforms, with a main building on the down side and a refreshment room. These buildings survived intact after closure and became a frozen food warehouse. Later the site became a cash and carry warehouse and in 1985 a car park for Sainsbury's.
Sidings were on part of the old goods yard site north of the line.
Friends' Meeting House. This recalls the scale of old Uxbridge. It dates from 1817 and replaced the original 1692 building here. The town has been a centre for nonconformity and Quakers have been active her since 1658. Elders’ gallery and screens.
59-65 built 1988 by Ketley Goold Associates, with conservatory like staircase.
York House, 1986-7 by Michael Lyell Associates, tries harder to fit in, with pitched roofs at different levels.
The Hermitage Primary School
9 The Ostler
George Street
19th buildings
Harman's Brewery was established in Uxbridge by George Harman in 1763, and moved into its new headquarters in Uxbridge High Street in 1875. Courage, The eventual owners of the brewery, closed the headquarters in 1964. It was demolished and replaced by a Budgen's supermarket, which in turn was demolished with the construction of The Chimes shopping centre. The brewery building in George Street remained in place until it was demolished in 1967. The office building Harman House was built on the site in 1985, named after the brewery
Harman House, with its ramped entrance between huge splayed wings building up to a central tower, is the most ruthless in its sleek anonymity and ambiguous scale. 1984, again by Ketley Goold Associates: a skin of silver-glazed rectangular panels, without any articulation, not even any indication of floor levels.
Grand Union Canal
Uxbridge Lock, Conservation area with lock side buildings.
Harefield Road
Old Court House 1907
Police headquarters, Warwick Place
Flats on site of Frays College. Where George Orwell taught French. Now demolished founded about 1926 as Uxbridge High School and moving here in 1929.
High Street
High Street was previously known as ‘The Market’ which is indicative of its use.
20 King's Arms, former inn c 16 timber-framed buildings, much altered. Three gables and oriels, and a coach way to a back yard. Rebuilt 1986 by Ketley & Associates.
24 Three Tuns, which still advertises its beer by displaying three large barrels or ‘tuns’. A traditional Coaching Inn, Grade II listed, with a flagstone floor and low beamed ceiling
25-27, with pediment, brick with stucco trim.
28, a stuccoed bank
64, Old Bank House, of three storeys with a rusticated stucco ground floor, a. five windows wide, with an extra two bays added on the
66, The Cedars, an especially handsome tall c 18 house, with another good door case with fanlight, curly brick lintels to the second-floor windows, and shaped gables to the flank walls.
74-75, the late Georgian terrace type, with very pretty lights and the first-floor windows recessed in blind arches.
81 Fountains Mill, formerly a water mill by the river. There is a one three-storey yellow brick building and a tall chimney next to the inner ring road. Youth centre
98 18th house with a good door case, and a parapet to the roof.
118 Hill House Georgian
119 Nonna Rosa restaurant. Brick front with bowed window, probably timber-framed behind.
120-121, Zanzibar. A late 18th pair with stone central keystones to the windows. Carved porch
122, four bay house, with 18th brick cornice;
124-125 MacDonald's intrusive
132 The ‘Good Yarn Wetherspoons. The building was Pearson’s menswear shop. They moved here in 1968, from another address. They had originally been a tailors, from 1837. 18th house with projecting white windows
134, 18th, three storeys and five bays, with rubbed brick window-heads and central wooden oriel.
135 Crown and Sceptre
142 Barclays Bank, with a busy late c 19 stucco facade of 1975 as an envelope to new buildings - an indication of the approach to urban design was changing at this time.
Court House and Inland Revenue Offices, unsatisfactory bitty 1970s affairs in red brick, just where a solid street to front is needed to lead the eye downhill. But their setting much improved by the demolition in 1986 of the vast Odeon,
Goods yard closed in 1939. This had been used by wholesale grocers, Alfred Button and Sons.
Library, Part of Block 3 development. Modern with traditional materials. Massing and detailing carefully arranged to create a building in keeping with the High Street. Group Value RIBA Local Award 1989.
Market House, 1788 by Thomas Niell, a composition. It has 11 with a pediment and turret. The ground floor is now shops, since a restoration 1986 which are recessed behind the wooden Tuscan columns. Originally the ground floor was entirely open as and used for corn while the upper floor served as a grain store and as a charity school. It was built to replace one demolished in 1785 for road widening.
Uxbridge Station. Moved here from Belmont Road in 1938 and built as an underground station by the Metropolitan Line. It is an example of Holden style architecture, and was designed together with L. H. Bucknell. The frontage is plain, and surmounted with concrete sculptures, symbolising wheels and typical of the 1930s. Inside over the platforms is a concrete and glass roof, with a raised section over the centre road, and there is a wide circulating area with Stone leaves and whelks in the booking hall. Above are three stained glass windows, showing the arms of the then Urban District Council, together with those of Middlesex and Buckinghamshire. No other station on the Underground system has anything similar. Licensed buffet. Listed.
White Horse Tavern early c20 half-timbered
A bridge which would have carried the tracks of a proposed rail line to Denham above the street remained in position until 1922.
Montague Road
52-58 1848
55 + 57 Early- mid 19th
59 Early- mid 19th
60-64, 1848
66 + 68 Montague Cottages Early- mid 19th
Oxford Road
Colne Bridge rebuilt 1938. The boundary with Buckinghamshire. The bridge is likely to be the site from which the name of Uxbridge is derived – the bridge of the Wuxen.
Coal post on the south side in the parapet of the bridge
Houses a low group of canal side houses between the bridges
Canal Bridge rebuilt 1938
98 Swan and Bottle. This pub, which dates back to the 17th is named as the result of an amalgamation of two pubs– the Olde Swan and the Leather Bottle
90 Crown and Treaty House hotel. This has been an inn since the early 19th when it was converted by James Spiller, with Soane as consultant, after the canal company had acquired the grounds to build a wharf. The name commemorates the meeting held here in 1644 between Charles I and the Parliamentarians. It has one wing of the formerly half timbered Treaty House, otherwise known as The Place, which belonged to the Bennet family in the early 17th; the rest was demolished in the 1750s, and the road was diverted across the forecourt. It has a curved gable which is probably Jacobean but the porch is pastiche 18th. However the core of the building is 16th and upstairs, the so-called Treaty Room, has 16th paneling and a strap work over mantel, and another room has 17th paneling. Much of the woodwork was removed in 1922 and taken to New York to decorate the Empire State Building, but it was returned in the 1950s.
101 The Quays. Parexel building in art deco liner style 1991 for pharmaceutical manufacturer. On the site of Uxbridge High Street Station.
Uxbridge High Street Station. 1st May 1907. This was built by the Great Western Railway and it was intended to join West Drayton and Denham. Trains from here just ran round from Vine Street Station. Between 1917 and 1920 it was closed and in 1939 its last advertised passenger service ran although a freight service remained for another twenty five years. By the time this finished everything had been demolished. The station was at the north end of the High Street and had a single timber platform, a wooden building, waiting rooms, ticket office, toilets and a stationmaster’s office. There was a covered stairway to the street, and under the bridge was a building leased out as a café.
Sedgewick's Brewery. Demolished
Bridge House. Xerox
Park Road
Methodist Central Hall at the corner of Park Road was erected in 1930
Railway Line.
The Great Western Railway did some work in the 1900s on the subsequently abandoned line to Denham – a cutting, an embankment, a brick viaduct and an iron girder bridge over the High Street, which was demolished in 1922.
Rockingham Road
Fassnidge Park. This was a memorial park which Kate Fassnidge created for her late husband in the gardens of their Uxbridge home in the 1920s. She gave it to the Council
The Pavilions Shopping area
A big chunk of the town was flattened in 1963-75 for a complex of shops, offices, and flats by Turner Lansdowne Holt and Partners. The original plan of the shopping areas was of the common 1960s type - open pedestrian squares linked by partly covered shopping parades - but in 1985-8 it was reconfigured and the two squares became glazed atria. The original central pub remains.
Sandersons Road
Goes to Sanderson’s wallpaper factory
Shire Ditch
Uxbridge Common
Part of a piece of land known as Northolt and Uxbridge Common. This was transferred to Uxbridge District Council in 1898 on condition it remained unenclosed and was to be used as public open space for informal sports and recreation for residents of the manor of Colham
Water Tower a sturdy square battlemented former tower for the Rickmansworth and Uxbridge Valley Water Company
Windsor Street
4 17th and early 19th
5a and 5B 17th and 19th
6 + 7 17th or early 18th
22 and 23 18th
36 1909
39-40 is clearly older, perhaps c 16, the ground floor gutted, but still with mullioned timber windows to the upper floor, and a steep, uneven roof.
49-50 Fig Tree wine bar further down the street was once the Police Station and was previously known as The Old Bill. Small and built in 1871 of brick.
Former post office, with Edwardian Baroque corner entrance,
Queen’s Head pub. It is thought that this might have been the rectory, and it has an underground passage which leads to the church. It was previously called ‘The Axe’.
St.Margaret's. This is an old church originally a chapel but not a parish church. It has a 15th hammer beam roof. Flint dressed walls although one of the aisles has become a cafe. The tower is 14th but part rebuilt. The nave, north aisle, and both the nave arcades date from the early 15th century. The chapel used as an organ chamber, is early-16th and traditionally this was the site of Shiryngton's chantry chapel. It was thoroughly restored in 1872 and a vestry built on the site of the former chicken market in 1882. Fittings include a late-15th font and two carved chairs, one of which is dated 1679. Monument: alabaster and marble altar tomb of Leonora Bennet 1638 with a reclining female figure and realistically carved skulls and bones.
Town Pump against the church wall.
Willow Avenue
‘Kingsmill’ Mill building, 1836. It includes industrial storage and a 10 storey silo buildings. This was a flourmill which owned by King in the 19th, who called it "Kingsmill". This is a now a major brand name although the flour is milled elsewhere. It latterly belonged to Allied Mills and worked until 2001
Kingsmill Cottage. At the entrance to the mill site. Grade II listed
Mill House. Grade II listed
Midway Cottage, Grade II listed
Administration building, Grade II listed
Vehicle workshop. Grade II listed
Gazebo, weighbridge and type K.6 telephone box. Grade II listed
Sources
British History on Line. Uxbridge. Web site
Cinema Theatres Association Newsletter
Cinema Treasures. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
Crown and Sceptre
Day. London Underground
Field. London place names,
Glazier. London Transport Bus Garages
GLIAS Newsletter
London Archaeologist,
London Borough of Hillingdon. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Railway Record.
London Transport. Country walks 1
Middlesex Churches
Middlesex County Council. History of t Middlesex#
O’Connor. Forgotten Stations of Greater London
Robbins. Middlesex
Stevenson. Middlesex
Thames Basin Archaeological Industry Group
Walford. Village London,
The River Colne flows southwards
Frays River flows southwards
Post to the south Uxbridge
Post to the west New Denham
Post to the east Uxbridge Common
Sites on the London, Hillingdon side of the boundary
Atwells Yard
19th buildings
Beasley’s Yard
Named after the Revd Thomas Ebenezer Beasley 1763-1824.
Watts Hall, restored in 1982. The hall began as the Old Meeting House, a Congregational church of 1716 and the only substantial nonconformist chapel built in Middlesex at that date. It was built by William Thurbin. However the roof, front, and tower date from 1883 by Sulman.
Belmont Road
Uxbridge Bus Garage. This came into use in late 1983 replacing a garage in Oxford Road and is on the lower ground floor of a larger building.
Sainsbury’s Car Park –site of Belmont Road Station. 4th July 1904. Built by the Metropolitan Railway as the Terminus of the line from Harrow on the Hill. It was a brick building with no shelter on the south side of Belmont Road. It was laid out as a through station because the company intended the branch to reach High Wycombe. It had two. Platforms, with a main building on the down side and a refreshment room. These buildings survived intact after closure and became a frozen food warehouse. Later the site became a cash and carry warehouse and in 1985 a car park for Sainsbury's.
Sidings were on part of the old goods yard site north of the line.
Friends' Meeting House. This recalls the scale of old Uxbridge. It dates from 1817 and replaced the original 1692 building here. The town has been a centre for nonconformity and Quakers have been active her since 1658. Elders’ gallery and screens.
59-65 built 1988 by Ketley Goold Associates, with conservatory like staircase.
York House, 1986-7 by Michael Lyell Associates, tries harder to fit in, with pitched roofs at different levels.
The Hermitage Primary School
9 The Ostler
George Street
19th buildings
Harman's Brewery was established in Uxbridge by George Harman in 1763, and moved into its new headquarters in Uxbridge High Street in 1875. Courage, The eventual owners of the brewery, closed the headquarters in 1964. It was demolished and replaced by a Budgen's supermarket, which in turn was demolished with the construction of The Chimes shopping centre. The brewery building in George Street remained in place until it was demolished in 1967. The office building Harman House was built on the site in 1985, named after the brewery
Harman House, with its ramped entrance between huge splayed wings building up to a central tower, is the most ruthless in its sleek anonymity and ambiguous scale. 1984, again by Ketley Goold Associates: a skin of silver-glazed rectangular panels, without any articulation, not even any indication of floor levels.
Grand Union Canal
Uxbridge Lock, Conservation area with lock side buildings.
Harefield Road
Old Court House 1907
Police headquarters, Warwick Place
Flats on site of Frays College. Where George Orwell taught French. Now demolished founded about 1926 as Uxbridge High School and moving here in 1929.
High Street
High Street was previously known as ‘The Market’ which is indicative of its use.
20 King's Arms, former inn c 16 timber-framed buildings, much altered. Three gables and oriels, and a coach way to a back yard. Rebuilt 1986 by Ketley & Associates.
24 Three Tuns, which still advertises its beer by displaying three large barrels or ‘tuns’. A traditional Coaching Inn, Grade II listed, with a flagstone floor and low beamed ceiling
25-27, with pediment, brick with stucco trim.
28, a stuccoed bank
64, Old Bank House, of three storeys with a rusticated stucco ground floor, a. five windows wide, with an extra two bays added on the
66, The Cedars, an especially handsome tall c 18 house, with another good door case with fanlight, curly brick lintels to the second-floor windows, and shaped gables to the flank walls.
74-75, the late Georgian terrace type, with very pretty lights and the first-floor windows recessed in blind arches.
81 Fountains Mill, formerly a water mill by the river. There is a one three-storey yellow brick building and a tall chimney next to the inner ring road. Youth centre
98 18th house with a good door case, and a parapet to the roof.
118 Hill House Georgian
119 Nonna Rosa restaurant. Brick front with bowed window, probably timber-framed behind.
120-121, Zanzibar. A late 18th pair with stone central keystones to the windows. Carved porch
122, four bay house, with 18th brick cornice;
124-125 MacDonald's intrusive
132 The ‘Good Yarn Wetherspoons. The building was Pearson’s menswear shop. They moved here in 1968, from another address. They had originally been a tailors, from 1837. 18th house with projecting white windows
134, 18th, three storeys and five bays, with rubbed brick window-heads and central wooden oriel.
135 Crown and Sceptre
142 Barclays Bank, with a busy late c 19 stucco facade of 1975 as an envelope to new buildings - an indication of the approach to urban design was changing at this time.
Court House and Inland Revenue Offices, unsatisfactory bitty 1970s affairs in red brick, just where a solid street to front is needed to lead the eye downhill. But their setting much improved by the demolition in 1986 of the vast Odeon,
Goods yard closed in 1939. This had been used by wholesale grocers, Alfred Button and Sons.
Library, Part of Block 3 development. Modern with traditional materials. Massing and detailing carefully arranged to create a building in keeping with the High Street. Group Value RIBA Local Award 1989.
Market House, 1788 by Thomas Niell, a composition. It has 11 with a pediment and turret. The ground floor is now shops, since a restoration 1986 which are recessed behind the wooden Tuscan columns. Originally the ground floor was entirely open as and used for corn while the upper floor served as a grain store and as a charity school. It was built to replace one demolished in 1785 for road widening.
Uxbridge Station. Moved here from Belmont Road in 1938 and built as an underground station by the Metropolitan Line. It is an example of Holden style architecture, and was designed together with L. H. Bucknell. The frontage is plain, and surmounted with concrete sculptures, symbolising wheels and typical of the 1930s. Inside over the platforms is a concrete and glass roof, with a raised section over the centre road, and there is a wide circulating area with Stone leaves and whelks in the booking hall. Above are three stained glass windows, showing the arms of the then Urban District Council, together with those of Middlesex and Buckinghamshire. No other station on the Underground system has anything similar. Licensed buffet. Listed.
White Horse Tavern early c20 half-timbered
A bridge which would have carried the tracks of a proposed rail line to Denham above the street remained in position until 1922.
Montague Road
52-58 1848
55 + 57 Early- mid 19th
59 Early- mid 19th
60-64, 1848
66 + 68 Montague Cottages Early- mid 19th
Oxford Road
Colne Bridge rebuilt 1938. The boundary with Buckinghamshire. The bridge is likely to be the site from which the name of Uxbridge is derived – the bridge of the Wuxen.
Coal post on the south side in the parapet of the bridge
Houses a low group of canal side houses between the bridges
Canal Bridge rebuilt 1938
98 Swan and Bottle. This pub, which dates back to the 17th is named as the result of an amalgamation of two pubs– the Olde Swan and the Leather Bottle
90 Crown and Treaty House hotel. This has been an inn since the early 19th when it was converted by James Spiller, with Soane as consultant, after the canal company had acquired the grounds to build a wharf. The name commemorates the meeting held here in 1644 between Charles I and the Parliamentarians. It has one wing of the formerly half timbered Treaty House, otherwise known as The Place, which belonged to the Bennet family in the early 17th; the rest was demolished in the 1750s, and the road was diverted across the forecourt. It has a curved gable which is probably Jacobean but the porch is pastiche 18th. However the core of the building is 16th and upstairs, the so-called Treaty Room, has 16th paneling and a strap work over mantel, and another room has 17th paneling. Much of the woodwork was removed in 1922 and taken to New York to decorate the Empire State Building, but it was returned in the 1950s.
101 The Quays. Parexel building in art deco liner style 1991 for pharmaceutical manufacturer. On the site of Uxbridge High Street Station.
Uxbridge High Street Station. 1st May 1907. This was built by the Great Western Railway and it was intended to join West Drayton and Denham. Trains from here just ran round from Vine Street Station. Between 1917 and 1920 it was closed and in 1939 its last advertised passenger service ran although a freight service remained for another twenty five years. By the time this finished everything had been demolished. The station was at the north end of the High Street and had a single timber platform, a wooden building, waiting rooms, ticket office, toilets and a stationmaster’s office. There was a covered stairway to the street, and under the bridge was a building leased out as a café.
Sedgewick's Brewery. Demolished
Bridge House. Xerox
Park Road
Methodist Central Hall at the corner of Park Road was erected in 1930
Railway Line.
The Great Western Railway did some work in the 1900s on the subsequently abandoned line to Denham – a cutting, an embankment, a brick viaduct and an iron girder bridge over the High Street, which was demolished in 1922.
Rockingham Road
Fassnidge Park. This was a memorial park which Kate Fassnidge created for her late husband in the gardens of their Uxbridge home in the 1920s. She gave it to the Council
The Pavilions Shopping area
A big chunk of the town was flattened in 1963-75 for a complex of shops, offices, and flats by Turner Lansdowne Holt and Partners. The original plan of the shopping areas was of the common 1960s type - open pedestrian squares linked by partly covered shopping parades - but in 1985-8 it was reconfigured and the two squares became glazed atria. The original central pub remains.
Sandersons Road
Goes to Sanderson’s wallpaper factory
Shire Ditch
Uxbridge Common
Part of a piece of land known as Northolt and Uxbridge Common. This was transferred to Uxbridge District Council in 1898 on condition it remained unenclosed and was to be used as public open space for informal sports and recreation for residents of the manor of Colham
Water Tower a sturdy square battlemented former tower for the Rickmansworth and Uxbridge Valley Water Company
Windsor Street
4 17th and early 19th
5a and 5B 17th and 19th
6 + 7 17th or early 18th
22 and 23 18th
36 1909
39-40 is clearly older, perhaps c 16, the ground floor gutted, but still with mullioned timber windows to the upper floor, and a steep, uneven roof.
49-50 Fig Tree wine bar further down the street was once the Police Station and was previously known as The Old Bill. Small and built in 1871 of brick.
Former post office, with Edwardian Baroque corner entrance,
Queen’s Head pub. It is thought that this might have been the rectory, and it has an underground passage which leads to the church. It was previously called ‘The Axe’.
St.Margaret's. This is an old church originally a chapel but not a parish church. It has a 15th hammer beam roof. Flint dressed walls although one of the aisles has become a cafe. The tower is 14th but part rebuilt. The nave, north aisle, and both the nave arcades date from the early 15th century. The chapel used as an organ chamber, is early-16th and traditionally this was the site of Shiryngton's chantry chapel. It was thoroughly restored in 1872 and a vestry built on the site of the former chicken market in 1882. Fittings include a late-15th font and two carved chairs, one of which is dated 1679. Monument: alabaster and marble altar tomb of Leonora Bennet 1638 with a reclining female figure and realistically carved skulls and bones.
Town Pump against the church wall.
Willow Avenue
‘Kingsmill’ Mill building, 1836. It includes industrial storage and a 10 storey silo buildings. This was a flourmill which owned by King in the 19th, who called it "Kingsmill". This is a now a major brand name although the flour is milled elsewhere. It latterly belonged to Allied Mills and worked until 2001
Kingsmill Cottage. At the entrance to the mill site. Grade II listed
Mill House. Grade II listed
Midway Cottage, Grade II listed
Administration building, Grade II listed
Vehicle workshop. Grade II listed
Gazebo, weighbridge and type K.6 telephone box. Grade II listed
Sources
British History on Line. Uxbridge. Web site
Cinema Theatres Association Newsletter
Cinema Treasures. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
Crown and Sceptre
Day. London Underground
Field. London place names,
Glazier. London Transport Bus Garages
GLIAS Newsletter
London Archaeologist,
London Borough of Hillingdon. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Railway Record.
London Transport. Country walks 1
Middlesex Churches
Middlesex County Council. History of t Middlesex#
O’Connor. Forgotten Stations of Greater London
Robbins. Middlesex
Stevenson. Middlesex
Thames Basin Archaeological Industry Group
Walford. Village London,
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