Stanwell
It is centred 1 mile (1.6 km) from the historical nucleus of Stanwell and is part of the same ward and ecclesiastical parish.
The first few letters of the name are the same as in the name of neighbouring Staines-upon-Thames, which also is said to mean 'stones', in the same way as the Great Vowel Shift failed to influence the spelling and pronunciation of the contemporaneously pronounced Stane Streets (i.e. stone streets), the Old English for many of the stone-laid Roman roads in Britain The Domesday Book of 1086 records 'Stanwelle' held by Walter, son of Othere.
In the Middle Ages the parish was mostly open fields[3] In 1603, Thomas Knyvet was granted the manor of Stanwell.
He was created Lord Knyvet in 1607, and in his will left money to found a free school in Stanwell, which was established in 1624.
James VI and I's infant daughter Mary died at Stanwell while in the care of the Knyvet household.
Nearly all the land west of Stanwell Moor's clustered centre and that around Hammonds Farm was enclosed by the mid-18th century.
The streets of small houses behind the southwest Crooked Billet roundabout (named after a demolished pub) were built in the 1880s.
It was relatively active; it intervened with partial success in the negotiations for the building of the reservoirs and saw the provision of allotments in 1918 and of a recreation ground in 1927.
[9] In the northwest of the parish, off Spout Lane, Middlesex County Council established 24 small holdings in the early 1930s: Burrows Hill Close estate and Bedfont Court.
[3] In 2004, the village of Stanwell won a bronze medal in the national Britain in Bloom[10] competition, in the urban community category.
Inside the church are monuments to members of the Knyvet(t) family who bought Staines manor after their foiling of the planting of the gunpowder and Fawkes.
[12] Stanwell Place was a grand manor house from the 17th century 0.5 miles (0.80 km) west of the village church, north of Park Road.
After Gibson's death in 1947, Stanwell Place was sold to King Faisal II of Iraq who owned it until his assassination in 1958.
[14] The estate was then purchased for gravel extraction, and despite local attempts to prevent it, the house was allowed to become derelict, and demolished in the 1960s.
What was the north of the parish is a major industrial, distribution and headquarters zone, bound up now in the broad expression 'the M4 corridor'.
At one time British Mediterranean Airways was headquartered at the Cirrus House within the post town but in the London Borough of Hounslow,[15][16] near Stanwell.
Stanwell High Street itself is served by minimal public transport provision, of bus routes that run only once or twice a day.
However, Clare Road to the east of Stanwell is served regularly (three buses an hour) by London Buses route 203 between Hounslow and Staines, as well as by route 442 half-hourly between Heathrow Terminal 5 and Staines operated by local bus company Carlone Ltd. Stanwell has historically been one of the few wards of Surrey County Council held by the Labour Party.
He arrested Guy Fawkes in the cellar of the Houses of Parliament when Fawkes was planting explosives to kill King James VI and I and was convicted of high treason , while rough justice was dispensed on others alleged to have conspired. Knyvet's actions, and those of a Roman Catholic peer who was forewarned, and of Edward Doubleday in preventing this plot from succeeding, are celebrated annually on Bonfire Night .
Knyvet often stayed at his earlier acquisition at Stanwell Manor, Stanwell, and rented Knyvett House, on the site of what later became 10 Downing Street , Westminster.
