Yeading?

Today, Yeading has become part of the residential sprawl adjoining Hayes on the Eastern boundary of the London Borough of Hillingdon but that sprawl is a fairly recent thing. To the west of London, close to the frantic Heathrow Airport and skirted by the busy A40(M) and M4 trunk roads, Yeading in the not too distant past was just a set of fields.

Yeading Past

Records suggest 'Geddinges' an area to the north of the Parish of Hayes is what is now known as Yeading.

In 757 'Geddinges', was given by Ethelbald the King of Mercia, to Withred and his wife.

Records show that Hugh, son of Hugh de Northburgh and a relative of Roger Northburgh, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, acquired a house and 92 acres in Hayes and Yeading in 1337. This estate appears to have originated from a conveyance of land of 1325 from William de Pilardeston, also referred to as Pilardington, who owned Yeading manor at this date. In the Middle Ages Yeading was just a vast area of land split into small chunks but already it had become a sub-manor of the Parish of Hayes. In 1347 Henry Frowyk owned 2 houses and 180 acres in Yeading which he had acquired from John Dalling, a London mercer. Land in those days was rarely sold or parted with but records show that in 1430 an estate, consisting of part of a house and 186 acres in Yeading, was sold by Henry and Joan Southwell to John Holme. By 1479 this same property had passed to William Chadborne, a London baker, and his son Thomas, who disposed of it in 1479 to John Shodewell, a clerk. Other land in Yeading was bought in 1419 by Richard King from Thomas Bullock.

Brick-making was the first industry to appear in Yeading, and it all began with the opening of the Paddington Canal in 1801 branching from the Grand Junction Canal. Linking Yeading with a growing London and also the industrial revolution heartland of the Midlands, the Canal put Yeading firmly on the map. By 1827 brickfields and brick-makers' cottages had appeared at Yeading and the Union Inn opened. Yeading evolved at a fast pace and 1874 record books state Yeading inhabitants were 'always found civil', which was in contrast to a report a few years earlier that described the area as one where 'dirt, ignorance, and darkness reign supreme'. Despite all this, Yeading was not the residential area it is today.

In fact, in 1903 during an outbreak of Smallpox in nearby Uxbridge, Yeading was chosen as the site for a remote temporary Hospital to quarantine the sick.

Even in the inter-war years when industrial development saw a great deal of new housing built in the Hayes area records show that there were only 20 houses in Yeading in 1938. The boom was soon to come with the post-war housing boom focusing on the Yeading area.

Records show that there was a school in Yeading before 1861 when in that year the master and mistress transferred to the Biscoe school at nearby Norwood. This was most probably what was to become the mission church in Yeading, described in 1890 as having formerly been a day school and styled a mission room in 1908. A small wooden hut in Yeading Lane was dedicated in 1932 but year later was replaced by a larger timber hall built by the London Diocesan Mission.
With Yeading's number of residents expanding this hall was demolished in 1961 when the permanent church of ST. EDMUND OF CANTERBURY, built on an adjoining site, was consecrated. The church was designed by Antony Lewis and is quite unique in looks and set-up.

For nearly 200 years the Yeading wharf on the Paddington canal was used to tranship bricks locally made from clay extracted from the surrounding land. Local folklore even claims some of the bricks were used to build Buckingham Palace. During the First World War the wharf was used for shipping explosives as the site was remote from housing, yet easily accessible from London by canal and rail. During World War Two the site was further used by the GPO as a communications centre for similar reasons.

Last updated January 2005