Hayes, Hillingdon
Hayes is a town in west London. Historically situated within the county of Middlesex, it is now part of the London Borough of Hillingdon. The town's population, including its localities Hayes End, Harlington and Yeading, was recorded in the 2021 census as 93,928. It is situated west of Charing Cross, or east of Slough. Hayes is served by the Great Western Main Line, and Hayes & Harlington railway station is on the Elizabeth line. The Grand Union Canal flows through the town centre.
Hayes has a long history. The area appears in the Domesday Book. Landmarks in the area include the Grade II* listed Parish Church, St Mary's – the central portion of the church survives from the twelfth century and it remains in use – and Grade-II-listed Barra Hall, the Town Hall from 1924 to 1979.
Hayes is known as the erstwhile home of EMI. The words "Hayes, Middlesex" appear on the reverse of The Beatles' albums, which were manufactured at the town's Old Vinyl Factory. The town centre's "gold disc" installation marks the fiftieth anniversary on 1 June 2017 of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, manufactured in Hayes in 1967. Nearby London Heathrow Airport is the largest single provider of employment.
Notable historical residents include the early modern "father of English music", William Byrd, and a pre-eminent figure of twentieth-century English literature, George Orwell.
Etymology
The place-name Hayes comes from the Anglo-Saxon Hǣs or Hǣse: " brushwood". In the Domesday book, it is spelt Hesa. The town's name is spelt Hessee in a 1628 entry in an Inquisition post mortem held at The National Archives.History
Hayes is formed of what originally were five separate villages: Botwell, Hayes Town, Hayes End, Wood End and Yeading. The name Hayes Town has come to be applied to the area around Station Road between Coldharbour Lane and Hayes & Harlington railway station, but this was historically the hamlet called Botwell. The original Hayes Town was the area to the east of St Mary's Church, centred around Church Road, Hemmen Lane and Freeman's Lane.A 2007 archaeological study looks back to earliest times. It describes finds such as flint tools dating to the Paleolithic period at the sites of Botwell, EMI Company works, and Colbrook Avenue ; more finds dating to the Mesolithic period at the site of Lake Farm Country Park . The site of Wyre Grove produced finds including pottery from the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Romano-British period and early Anglo-Saxon period . The report cites an 831 grant as evidence that the Botwell area has existed as a settlement since Anglo-Saxon times .
For some 700 years up to 1546, Hayes formed part of the Archbishop of Canterbury's estates, ostensibly owing to grants from the Mercian royal family. In that year, the then-Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was forced to surrender his land to King Henry VIII, who subsequently granted the estate to Edward North, 1st Baron North. The area changed hands several times thereafter, but by the eighteenth century, two family-names had established themselves as prominent and long-time landowners: Minet) and Shackle.
John Wesley and Charles Wesley In 2024, the Salvation Army hall closed and was put up for sale.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Hayes was home to several private boarding schools catering for wealthy families. The former Manor House on Church Road was by the 1820s a boys' school called Radnor House Academy ; Grove Cottage, Wood End, a school for young men, opened in the 1830s; Belle House School for Boys opened on Botwell Lane in the 1840s ; in the first half of the 19th century, the Wood End House School for Young Ladies stood on the site of what is now the Norman Leddy Memorial Gardens; the former Magdalen Hall on Hayes End Road was also a 19th-century private School for Young Ladies.
Wood End House was used – from 1848 to c. 1905 – as an asylum. Notable psychiatrist John Conolly was one of its licensed proprietors, between 1848 and 1866. The building was demolished in 1961.
File:Aeolian Factory at Hayes, Middlesex, England c1920.jpg|thumb|Aeolian pianola factory, Silverdale Road; c. 1920
Until the end of the nineteenth century, Hayes's key areas of work were agriculture and brickmaking. The Second Industrial Revolution brought change in the late nineteenth century, up to World War I. The town's location on the Grand Junction Canal and the Great Western Railway – Hayes & Harlington railway station had opened in 1868 – made it well-placed for industry.
The town's favourable location caused the Hayes Development Company to make available sites on the north-side of the railway, adjacent to the canal, and Hayes became a centre for engineering and industry. HDC's company secretary, Alfred Clayton, is commemorated in the name of Clayton Road. Residential districts consisting of dwellings of the garden suburb type were built to house workers after World War I.
In 1904, the parish council created Hayes Urban District in order to address the issue of population growth. Hayes and Harlington Urban District continued until 1965 when Hayes became part of the newly established London Borough of Hillingdon.
Barra Hall – Grade II listed since 1974 – was Hayes town hall between 1924 and 1979. Originally a manor house called Grove House, in the late 18th century it was home to Alderman Harvey Combe, Lord Mayor of London in 1799. It became Barra Hall in 1875, after Robert Reid – descendant of the Reid baronets of Barra – became owner. Army Cavalry were stationed at Barra Hall during World War I. After Hayes Urban District Council bought the Hall and its grounds in 1923, the grounds of the new Town Hall were given over to public use as a public park – with playground, tennis courts and paddling pool; it was opened by actress Jessie Matthews. In July 2024, a century on from Hayes Urban District's 1923 purchase, Hillingdon Council sold Barra Hall, to . Notwithstanding the sale, the Council claimed it would safeguard the building for the future, such that it would remain a key asset to local residents.
Writer Mabel Lethbridge was a munitions worker in World War I at National Filling Factory No. 7, Hayes when on 23 October 1917 she was severely injured in an explosion: others were killed. Lethbridge was at the time the youngest person to receive the British Empire Medal – in recognition of her service – and she wrote about her experience at the Hayes munitions factory in her first book, Fortune Grass. National Filling Factory No. 7 was situated on land south of the railway which would later become Nestles Avenue, extending almost down to where the M4 at Cranford is now. The Hayes munitions factory employed approximately 10,000 women and 2,000 men.
Author George Orwell, who adopted his pen name while living in Hayes, lived and worked in 1932–3 as a schoolmaster at The Hawthorns High School for Boys, situated on Church Road. The school subsequently closed and the original building survived until 2022 as the Fountain House Hotel. The hotel displayed a plaque commemorating its distinguished former resident. Returning several times to Hayes, Orwell was at the same time characteristically acerbic about his time in the town, camouflaging it lightly as West Bletchley in Coming Up for Air, as Southbridge in A Clergyman's Daughter, and grumbling comically in a letter to Eleanor Jacques:
Hayes... is one of the most godforsaken places I have ever struck. The population seems to be entirely made up of clerks who frequent tin-roofed chapels on Sundays and for the rest bolt themselves within doors.
The present-day Hayes Police Station – at 755 Uxbridge Road, UB4 8HU – opened on 19 June 1938.
The Grade II listed War Memorial at Cherry Lane Cemetery on Shepiston Lane commemorates what is believed to have been the most serious single incident in Hayes during World War II. Thirty-seven workers of the Gramophone Company, Blyth Road – then the town's largest employer – were killed on 7 July 1944 when a German V-1 flying bomb or "doodle-bug" hit a factory surface air-raid shelter. The original bomb census form, now held in the National Archives, confirms that it was a flying bomb which landed at 14.59 hours, killing twenty-four people and seriously injuring twenty-one. The bomb came down at the main entrance to one shelter, causing the concrete roof to collapse. Some of the badly injured were able to be rescued from the emergency exit at the rear, but others were trapped for some hours. Twelve of the victims are buried in a mass grave in Cherry Lane Cemetery.
The Sound of Hayes Clock is located at the junction of Station Road and Station Approach. The Cabinet Office granted special permission for the clock to be inscribed in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee. The inscription reads: "installed on 12 September 2023 to mark the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II".
Hayes featured in a 2011 House of Commons debate about social housing in London. It was alleged in the Parliamentary debate that a "sort of ruthless developer is taking over entire sites in area to build the slums of the future."
Industry
Hayes has, over the years, been heavily involved with industry, both local and international, having been the home of EMI, Nestlé and H. J. Heinz Company. As well as Fairey Aviation.The first large factory established was that of the British Electric Transformer Company, which moved to Hayes in 1901. The B.E.T.'s main product was the Berry transformer, invented by A. F. Berry ; Berry also invented the Tricity cooker.
The most significant early occupier was the Gramophone Company / EMI. The Hayes factory's foundation stone was laid by Dame Nellie Melba. The EMI archives and some early reinforced concrete factory buildings remain as The Old Vinyl Factory.
It was here, in the Central Research Laboratories, that Isaac Shoenberg developed the all-electronic 405-line television system.
Alan Blumlein carried out his research into binaural sound and stereophonic gramophone recording here. "Trains at Hayes Station" and "Walking & Talking" are two notable films Blumlein shot to demonstrate stereo sound on film. These films are held at the Hayes EMI archive. In 1939, working alongside the electrical firms A.C. Cossor and Pye, a 60 MHz radar was developed, and from 1941 to 1943 the H2S radar system. During the 1990s, CRL spawned another technology: Sensaura 3D positional audio. In an echo of Blumlein's early stereo recordings, the Sensaura engineers made some of their first 3D audio recordings at Hayes & Harlington railway station.
During the First World War, the EMI factories produced aircraft. Charles Richard Fairey was seconded there for a short time, before setting up his own company, Fairey Aviation, which relocated in 1918 to a large new factory across the railway in North Hyde Road. Over 4,500 aircraft were subsequently produced here, but Fairey needed an airfield to test these aircraft and in 1928 secured a site in nearby Heathrow. This became the Great West Aerodrome, which was requisitioned by the Air Ministry in 1944. It was initially developed as a heavy-bomber base intended for Boeing B-29 Superfortresses, but when the Second World War ended in 1945, it was taken over by the Ministry of Aviation and became Heathrow Airport.
In 1913, German bodybuilder and music hall performer Eugen Sandow – famous in his time as "Sandow the Great", a contender for the title of world's strongest man – opened a cocoa factory in Hayes. Sandow's fortunes plummeted in World War I. The Sandow Cocoa Company went into liquidation, and the building and assets passed to the Hayes Cocoa Company in 1916. Hayes Cocoa was owned by Swiss chocolate company Peter, Cailler, Kohler.
In 1929, the Nestlé company bought out Peter, Cailler, Kohler and located its major chocolate and instant coffee works on the canal, adjacent to the railway east of the station; it was for many years the company's UK headquarters. The factory's elegant Art Deco façade was long a local landmark. The road that led to the factory was renamed Nestlé's Avenue ; Sandow Crescent, a cul-de-sac off Nestlé's Avenue, remains. The Hayes Nestlé factory closed in 2014 at a cost of 230 jobs. Developers Segro bought the 30-acre Nestlé site in early 2015.
File:Hayes, Benlow Works, Silverdale Road - geograph.org.uk - 205648.jpg|thumb|Benlow Works, Silverdale Road – Grade II listed; Walter Cave, 1909–11
Opposite Nestlé, on the other side of the canal, the Aeolian Company and its associates manufactured pianolas and rolls from just before World War I until the Great Depression. That, and the increasing sophistication of the gramophone record market, led to its demise. Its facilities were subsequently used by, among others, Kraft Foods and Wall's, a meat processor and ice cream manufacturer. Only one of the Aeolian Company's striking Edwardian buildings remains. Designed by notable English architect Walter Cave, Benlow Works on Silverdale Road is a four-storey structure with Diocletian windows on the top floor. It is Grade II listed.
Food company Heinz's UK headquarters was located at South Building, Hayes Park, Hayes between 1965 and 2017. The Grade II* listed Heinz buildings were culturally significant as the only British example of the work of influential American architect Gordon Bunshaft and one of only two designs by him in Western Europe. In February 2024, Hillingdon Council heard an application in relation to the buildings' Grade II* listed status. Historic England raised concerns, saying the existing buildings were "highly significant for their sophisticated sculptural form". But the planning officers decided that conversion of significant architecture in Hayes meant "less than substantial" heritage harm, and approved the conversion of Bunshaft's designs into 124 flats.
United Biscuits – makers of McVitie's biscuits and Jacob's Cream Crackers – long had its UK headquarters in Hayes. The company formally changed its base to Chiswick in June 2021.
Callard & Bowser manufactured a popular line of English toffees and other confectionary at its Pump Lane, Hayes factory between 1956 and 1983. 635 jobs were lost in the two years leading up to the factory's closure.
The first factory to produce the iconic Marshall amplifier opened in June 1964 in Silverdale Road, Hayes. Guitar-amplification pioneer Jim Marshall employed fifteen people to build amplifiers and cabinets in a 5,000-square-foot space.
Hayes has been home to businesses in various industries over the years. Among others: UK caravan manufacturer Car Cruiser built caravans in North Hyde Road for a short time in the early 1930s. From the early 1970s to 2003, McAlpine Helicopters Limited – later renamed McAlpine Aviation Services Limited – operated from two purpose-built helicopter hangars in Swallowfield Way, Hayes. Damont Audio was a vinyl pressing plant based in Hayes from the 1970s to 2005. "DAMONT" or "Damont Audio Ltd" is typically inscribed in the run-out groove of vinyl produced at the plant.
In 2024, industry was impacted when Hillingdon Council acquired industrial site HPH3, Hyde Park for development into more accommodation.
In 1971, Neville Sandelson, MP for Hayes and Harlington 1971–1983, articulated concern about de-industrialisation in the House of Commons: "The position in Hayes... is causing grave anxiety both in regard to the present and the long-term prospects. The closure of long-standing industrial firms in the area has become a contagion which shows no sign of abating". By 1982, Sandelson said the contagion had become an epidemic, reiterating: "a subject of great concern to every family in Hayes and Harlington... the progressive decline of industry."