Paddington
Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough of the County of London, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1847. It is also the site of St Mary's Hospital and the former Paddington Green Police Station.
Paddington Waterside aims to regenerate former railway and canal land. Districts within Paddington are Maida Vale, Westbourne and Bayswater including Lancaster Gate.
History
The earliest extant references to Padington, historically a part of Middlesex, appear in the documentation of purported tenth-century land grants to the monks of Westminster by Edgar the Peaceful as confirmed by Archbishop Dunstan. However, the documents' provenance is much later and likely to have been forged after the 1066 Norman Conquest. There is no mention of the place in the Domesday Book of 1086.It has been reasonably speculated that a Saxon settlement led by the followers of Padda, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, was located around the intersection of the northern and western Roman roads, corresponding with the Edgware Road and the Harrow and Uxbridge Roads. From the tenth century, Paddington was owned by Westminster Abbey which was later confirmed by the Plantagenet kings in a charter from 1222. This charter mentions a chapel and a farm situated in the area. A 12th-century document cited by the cleric Isaac Maddox establishes that part of the land was held by brothers "Richard and William de Padinton". They and their descendants carried out activities in Paddington; these were known by records dating from 1168 to 1485. They were the earliest known tenant farmers of the land.
During King Henry VIII's dissolution, the property of Paddington was seized by the crown. However, King Edward VI granted the land to the Bishop of London in 1550. Successive bishops would later lease farmlands to tenants and city merchants. One such, in the 1540s, was Thomas North, who translated Plutarch's Parallel Lives into English in 1579. Shakespeare would later use this work and was said to have performed in taverns along Edgware Road.
In the later Elizabethan and early Stuart era, the rectory, manor and associated estate houses were occupied by the Small family. Nicholas Small was a clothworker who was sufficiently well connected to have Holbein paint a portrait of his wife, Jane Small. Nicholas died in 1565 and his wife married again, to Nicholas Parkinson of Paddington who became master of the Clothworkers' Company. Jane Small continued to live in Paddington after her second husband's death, and her manor house was big enough to have been let to Sir John Popham, the attorney general, in the 1580s. They left the building that became in this time Blowers Inn.
Early Modern period
As the regional population grew in the 17th century, Paddington's ancient Hundred of Ossulstone was split into divisions; Holborn Division replaced the hundred for most administrative purposes. A church, the predecessor of St Mary was built in Paddington in 1679.In 1740, John Frederick leased the estate in Paddington and it is from his granddaughters and their families that many of Paddington's street names are derived. The New Road was built in 1756–7 to link the villages of Paddington and Islington. By 1773, a contemporary historian felt and wrote that "London may now be said to include two cities, one borough and forty six antient villages ... Paddington and Marybone."
During the 18th century, several French Huguenots called Paddington village home. These included jewellers, nobility and skilled craftsmen; and men such as Claudius Amyand. The French nobility built magnificent gardens that lasted up until the 19th century.
Roman roads formed the parish's northeastern and southern boundaries from Marble Arch: Watling Street and; Uxbridge road, known by the 1860s in this neighbourhood as Bayswater Road. They were toll roads in much of the 18th century, before and after the dismantling of the Tyburn gallows "tree" at their junction in 1759, a junction now known as Marble Arch. The Tyburn gallows might have been a reason why expansion and urban development slowed in Paddington, as public execution was taking place there up until 1783.Only from 1801 did major construction in Paddington occur, stimulated when the bishops leased land to the Grand Junction Canal, which formed a direct trade link between London and the Midlands, bringing more employment to the area, though some of the trade continued along the Regent's Canal when that was opened in 1820. Construction and building projects took place across the parish throughout the 19th century, increasing its population rapidly, overtaking the village scene of Paddington. The population increased from 1,881 to 46,305 between 1801 and 1851, with 10,000 new inhabitants added every decade thereafter.
Paddington station first opened in 1838, with the first underground line in 1863. Paddington was one of the few districts in London that had a migrant majority population by 1881., with a thriving Greek and Jewish community present in the mid-19th century. During the period, several Victorian churches were demolished owing to structural decay. Victorian housing developed into slums, giving the area an unsavoury reputation.
In the 1930s massive rebuilding and improvements projects were made. However, even as late as the 1950s Paddington was a byword for overcrowding, poverty and vice. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the area would see vast improvements and redevelopments in city planning.
Tyburnia
The southeast section of Tyburnia used to be a shanty-town in the 1790s before the Canal was built and brought much needed employment to its inhabitants. The area was built up during the course of the Napoleonic Wars.In the 19th century the part of the parish most sandwiched between Edgware Road and Westbourne Terrace, Gloucester Terrace and Craven Hill, bounded to the south by Bayswater Road, was known as Tyburnia. The district formed the centrepiece of an 1824 masterplan by Samuel Pepys Cockerell to redevelop the Tyburn Estate into a residential area to rival Belgravia.
The area was laid out in the mid-1800s when grand squares and cream-stuccoed terraces started to fill the acres between Paddington station and Hyde Park; however, the plans were never realised in full. Despite this, Thackeray described the residential district of Tyburnia as "the elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia, the most respectable district of the habitable globe."
Etymology
Derivation of the name is uncertain. Speculative explanations include Padre-ing-tun, Pad-ing-tun, and Pæding-tun the last being the cited suggestion of the Victorian Anglo-Saxon scholar John Mitchell Kemble.There is another Paddington in Surrey, recorded in the Domesday Book as "Padendene" and later as "Paddingdon", perhaps to be derived from Old English dene, denu "valley", whereas Paddington in Middlesex is commonly traced back to Old English tūn "farm, homestead, town". Both place names share the same first part, a personal name rendered as Pada, of uncertain origin, giving "Padda's valley" for the place in Surrey and "homestead of Padda's people" for the place in Middlesex. That both place names would refer to the same individual or ancient family, is pure speculation. A lord named Padda is named in the Domesday Book, associated with Brampton, Suffolk.
Colloquial expressions
An 18th-century dictionary gives "Paddington Fair Day. An execution day, Tyburn being in the parish or neighbourhood of Paddington. To dance the Paddington frisk; to be hanged." Public executions were abolished in England in 1868.Geography
The Paddington district is centred around Paddington railway station. The conventional recognised boundary of the district is much smaller than the longstanding pre-mid-19th century parish. That parish was virtually equal to the borough abolished in 1965. It is divided from a northern offshoot Maida Vale by the Regent's Canal; its overlap is the artisan and touristic neighbourhood of Little Venice. In the east of the district around Paddington Green it remains divided from Marylebone by Edgware Road. In the south west it is bounded by its south and western offshoot Bayswater. A final offshoot, Westbourne, rises to the north west.Governance
Paddington was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington, the headquarters of which was at Paddington Town Hall, until 1965 when the area became part of the enlarged City of Westminster.Landmarks
Browning's Pool
A lagoon created in the 1810s at the convergence of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, the Regent's Canal and the [|Paddington Basin]. It is an important focal point of the Little Venice area. It is reputedly named after Robert Browning, the poet. More recently known as the "Little Venice Lagoon" it contains a small islet known as Browning's Island. Although Browning was thought to have coined the name "Little Venice" for this spot there are strong arguments Lord Byron was responsible.London Paddington Station
is the iconic landmark associated with the area. In the station are statues of its designer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and the children's fiction character Paddington Bear.Paddington Basin
The terminus of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal was originally known as the Paddington Basin and all the land to the south was developed into housing and commercial property and titled The Grand Junction Estate. The majority of the housing was bounded by Praed Street, Sussex Gardens, Edgware Road and Norfolk Place. Land and buildings not used for the canal undertaking remained after 1929 with the renamed Grand Junction Company, which functioned as a property company. While retaining its own name, it was taken over in 1972 by the Amalgamated Investment and Property Company, which went into liquidation in 1976. Prior to the liquidation the Welbeck Estate Securities Group acquired the entire estate comprising 525 houses 15 shops and the Royal Exchange public House in Sale Place.The surrounding area is now known as Merchant Square. A former transshipment facility, the surrounds of the canal basin named Merchant Square have been redeveloped to provide of offices, homes, shops and leisure facilities. The redeveloped basin has some innovative features including Heatherwicks Rolling Bridge, the Merchant Square Fan Bridge and the Floating Pocket Park.