River Crane Cranford

River Crane
The Crane continues to flow south
 TQ 10280 76864

Suburban area along the old Bath Road

Post to the north Cranford
Post to the south Hatton


Bath Road
618 Jolly Waggoner. Big roadhouse style pub.
680 Cranford College. It appears to be built on the site of a pool which was in the grounds of Meadowbank
686 Meadowbank Adult Education Centre. Opened 2010.  It had previously been a community centre. It is either on, or close to, the site of the Speedbird Club – and the site of Meadowbank House.
700 Travel Lodge hotel
Milestone. 18th outside the Travel Lodge in the pavement,
745 Berkeley Arms Hotel.  When the Bath Road was widened the hotel was rebuilt in 1932 on a much grander scale. It was noted for a Florentine restaurant and dance floor. It is now part of the Ramada Hotel
804 Europa House. This block dates from the 1960s.
Site of the Church of the Holy Angels. This was accessed from a path off the Bath Road. It began as a chapel of ease in the 19th in a Church of England school. In 1935 a corrugated-iron mission church was built by Maurice Child with a green cement floor, and concrete altar and font with furnishings given by local pubs. In 1940 it was taken over by the London Diocesan Home Mission but in 1941 it was bunt down. It was rebuilt immediately in a Rodney hut furnished by Martin Travers built of steel with a hooter rather than bells. It burnt down in 1965 and the current church in the High Street was built around 1970. The site of the church may be reflected in the tarmacked car parking area at the rear of Europa House.
Berkeley Parade. The shops with 'château’ type buildings and little slated turrets match the 'Berkeley Arms' across the road and date from 1932.
Cranford Library
Cranford National School. Opened 1883 west of Dudset Lane

Berkeley Avenue
Cranford Primary School.  The school moved here in 1937 from the building on the Bath Road. A nursery was added in 1971.
Sand and gravel pit before the Second World War on the site of the primary school.

Dudset Lane
This road led to Dudset Farm, a lorry park, which lay on other side of the river Cray, and thus it leads first to a bridge which is on private land

Firs Drive
1 Cranford Baptist Church

Meadow Bank Gardens
Meadowbank was a house here which became the headquarters of BOAC’s Speedbird social club, later replaced by the current Concorde Club.
Meadowbank was established in 1946 as the export shed for the British Overseas Airways Corporation. This was essentially a collection point where goods for export were sorted and assigned to flights.
Air Scouts Hall

River Crane
The Greater London Council straightened a section of the River Crane in Hounslow artificially creating Oxbow lakes that have since become overgrown and heavily silted.

Silver Jubilee way
Heathrow Estate. Trading estate
Cranebank. British airways training centre. Opened 1969 for cabin crew training.

Waye Avenue
Sewage Works. This lay south of Waye Avenue next to the river. It was opened by Staines Rural District Council in the 1900s, and lasted until the 1940s.

Woodfield
Woodfield County Secondary School. 1960s predecessor to Cranford Community College. Now in the High Street

Sources
British History Online. Cranford. Web site.
Church of the Holy Angels. Web site
Clunn. London Marches On
Milestone Society. Web site.
Pevsner and Cherry.  North West London

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