Bedfont

Bedfont is a suburb in the London Borough of Hounslow, approximately 15 miles (24 km) west of Charing Cross.

[6] The obsolete locality name of West Bedfont mainly lies around Long Lane in the parish (area) of neighbouring Stanwell.

Its casting off from the rest of the parish and new allegiance to Stanwell church occurred at some point in its descent of the manor in the 12th century.

[8] The Domesday Book has an entry stating that the manors of Bedfont, Hatton and Stanwell were all held by William Fitz Other.

From the early 14th century the Manor of East Bedfont was held by the Trinitarian Priory of Hounslow, before being taken by the Crown during the reformation.

The manufacture of gunpowder was a dangerous occupation and workers were killed or maimed in many explosions down the years, with the mills being demolished and rebuilt a number of times.

After the railway heyday the twentieth century saw motor cars take en masse to the old arterial coaching route and so prompted the Great South West Road in 1925 skirting the bulk of Bedfont south of today's airport and much of Hounslow in a decade when the Bath Road, which branches off, was also improved.

By 1946 another form of transport began to impact on the village when Heathrow Airport opened and became the largest employer in the area, with the effect of increasing the demand for local housing.

The tower clock is of uncertain date: it may have been installed to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1897) or King Edward VII's coronation (1902).

dismissed a suitor with such contempt that in revenge he had the trees trimmed to typify them as two proud and haughty peacocks' and they were for two centuries the pride of the village.

For a time they were not maintained but they were recreated in 1990 at the initiative of the chairman of Princes Sporting Club, David Spyer, who remembered in the early 50's being told about Hood's poem.

In discussion with the then vicar, he learnt that the local authority had given permission for them to be truncated, it was difficult to find anyone who could advise him on restoration of these trees.

[citation needed] The building of the Great Western Railway between London and Bristol in 1841 marked the beginning of the end for the golden age of the stagecoach, and by 1847 stage and mail coaches had ceased to run to the west.

Remains of a millstone from Bedfont Powder Mills
Street of semi-detached homes and bungalows built, like most of the area, in the 19th and 20th centuries