[2]: 63 [3] Archaeological evidence suggests that the settlement's origin was an 8th-century Saxon village close to Northolt Manor behind the present Court Farm Road.

[4] It is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Northala, part of the Elthorne Hundred in the historic county of Middlesex, England.

[5] Northolt Manor itself was built in the fourteenth century and provides much of the archeological information of the area from its excavations in the 1950s and onward.

A Tudor barn built in 1595 from Smith's farm in Northolt was moved to Chiltern Open Air Museum and is now on display there.

[6] In the early part of the 18th century farmland was enclosed in order to provide hay for the City of London, alongside more traditional crops such as peas and beans.

This 93 acre site had 20 stores each able to hold 100 tons of explosives, and was connected by a rail spur at Northolt Junction station.

Two important transport links run through Northolt: the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal and the modern A40 road.

In the 21st century, a new large private housing development was built on the former site[citation needed] of the Taylor Woodrow company, adjacent to the Grand Union Canal.

Jimmy Canning, IRA member, lived undercover in Northolt from 1991 to 1993; he had wooed local Audrey Lamb and moved into her house at 15 Islip Gardens, using it as a weapons and bomb storage depot.

A one-and-a-half mi (2.4 km) racecourse was constructed by Sir William Bass and Viscount Lascelles, and opened in 1929 by the Earl of Harewood and his wife the Princess Royal.

The gates of the original racecourse remain in Petts Hill, and a section of the track can be observed as a long, flat stretch of land alongside Mandeville Road.

Numerous London Buses routes serve Northolt such as: 90, 120, 140, 282, 395, 398, 487, 696, 697, E6, E7, E9, E10, N7, N140 and SL9 The constituency of Ealing North is currently represented by Labour and Co-operative Party Member of Parliament (MP) James Murray, and has been since 2019 following the retirement of Stephen Pound.