Maida Vale | |
---|---|
The Grand Union Canal at Little Venice | |
Location within Greater London | |
Population | 23,161 (2016 Maida Vale and Little Venice combined Ward populations) [1] [2] |
OS grid reference | TQ255825 |
London borough | |
Ceremonial county | Greater London |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | London |
Postcode district | W9 |
Dialling code | 020 |
Police | Metropolitan |
Fire | London |
Ambulance | London |
UK Parliament | |
London Assembly | |
Maida Vale ( /ˈmeɪdəveɪl/ MAY-də vayl) is an affluent residential district consisting of the northern part of Paddington in West London, west of St John's Wood and south of Kilburn. It is also the name of its main road, on the continuous Edgware Road. Maida Vale is part of the City of Westminster, 3.1 miles (5.0 km) north-west of Charing Cross. [3] It has many late Victorian and Edwardian blocks of mansion flats. The area is home to the BBC Maida Vale Studios. [4]
The name derives from a pub called The Maida, the hanging board of which used to show a likeness of Sir John Stuart, under which was the legend Sir John Stuart, the hero of Maida. [5] [6] General Sir John Stuart was made Count of Maida, a town in Calabria, by King Ferdinand IV of Naples and III of Sicily, after victory at the Battle of Maida in 1806. [7]
The pub stood on Edgware Road near the Regent's Canal until about 2000. [5] In recent years, a different pub (formerly The Truscott Arms) has been renamed The Hero of Maida, [8] [9] but is in a different location.
The area is bounded by Maida Avenue and the Regent's Canal to the south, Maida Vale Road to the north-east, Kilburn Park Road to the north-west, and Shirland Road and Blomfield Road to the south-west: an area of around 1 square kilometre (0.4 square miles). It makes up most of the W9 postal district.
The southern part of Maida Vale, at the junction of Paddington Basin with Regent's Canal with many houseboats, is known as Little Venice. Paddington Recreation Ground is also located in Maida Vale.
The area to the south-west of Maida Vale, at the western end of Elgin Avenue, where it meets Harrow Road, was historically known as "Maida Hill", as a recognised postal district bounded by the Avenues on the west, the Regent's Canal to the south, Maida Vale to the east and Kilburn Lane to the north. Parts of Maida Vale were also included in this. [10] The name "Maida Hill" had fallen out of use, but was resurrected since the mid-2000s by way of the 414 bus route (which from 2005 to 2021 gave its destination as Maida Hill and terminated on Shirland Road), [11] [12] and a new street market on the square at the junction of Elgin Avenue and Harrow Road. [13]
Just to the east of Maida Vale is St John's Wood, with Lord's Cricket Ground.
The area was originally owned by the Church, initially as part of St Margaret's, Westminster, then later by the Bishop of London after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. [14]
In 1742, a lease for future development was signed by Sir John Frederick. His daughter later married Robert Thistlethwaite, a Hampshire landowner, whose Hampshire holdings including Widley and Wymering are commemorated in Maida Vale street names. [14]
In 1816, an Act of Parliament allowed the trustees of Sir John Frederick's estate and the Bishop of London to begin developing the area. This began in the 1820s with development along Edgware Road. The area was first named on maps as Maida Vale in 1827. [14] John Gutch, surveyor to the Bishop of London, produced a plan for the area in 1827, which roughly corresponds to current road alignments. [14]
By 1868, a stretch of Edgware Road near the area had been officially named Maida Vale. [14] In 1960, the ownership of the area's freehold passed from the Bishop of London to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, whose function was to administer the church's assets. [14]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Maida Vale was a significant Sephardic Jewish district, to the extent that an 1878 magazine report reported that it was commonly called "New Jerusalem". [14] The 1896 Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, a Grade II listed building and headquarters of the British Sephardi community, is on Lauderdale Road. The actor Alec Guinness was born on this road. The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, lived within sight of this synagogue on Warrington Crescent. [15] The pioneer of modern computing, Alan Turing, was born at what is now the Colonnade Hotel in Warrington Crescent.
Maida Vale tube station was opened on 6 June 1915 on the Bakerloo line. Warwick Avenue tube station on the same line had been opened a few months earlier.
Maida Vale is home to some of BBC network radio's recording and broadcast studios. The building on Delaware Road is one of the BBC's earliest premises, pre-dating Broadcasting House, and was the centre of the BBC radio news service during World War II. The building houses seven music and radio drama studios. Most famously it was home to John Peel's BBC Radio 1 Peel Sessions and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
In 2018 the BBC announced plans to close the Maida Vale studios and relocate its functions to East London. [16]
Little Venice is a comparatively recent name for parts of Maida Vale and Paddington in the City of Westminster. It consists of the area surrounding the Little Venice basin and its canals. It is known for its Regency style white stucco buildings and its canals and moored boats. The name Little Venice is applied to Maida Avenue, Warwick Crescent and Blomfield Road, and the streets in the south of Maida Vale overlooking Browning's Pool, including the section of Randolph Avenue south of Warrington Crescent. [17]
According to one story, the poet Robert Browning, who lived in the area from 1862 to 1887, coined the name. [18] However, this was disputed by Lord Kinross in 1966 [19] and by London Canals. [20] Both assert that Lord Byron (1788–1824) humorously coined the name, which now applies more loosely to a longer reach of the canal system. Browning's Pool is named after the poet. It forms the junction of Regent's Canal and the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal.
South Maida Vale, a prime residential area, [21] also has a reputation for shops and restaurants and for the Canal Cafe Theatre, the Puppet Theatre Barge, the Waterside Café and the Warwick Castle pub. A waterbus service operates from Little Venice eastwards round Regent's Park, calling at London Zoo and on towards Camden Town. The Inland Waterways Association has hosted since 1983 a Canalway Cavalcade in Little Venice. [22]
Maida Vale is noted for wide tree-lined avenues, large communal gardens and red-brick mansion blocks from the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The first mansion blocks were completed in 1897, with the arrival of the identically designed Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Mansions West and Lauderdale Mansions East in Lauderdale Road. Others followed in neighbouring streets: Elgin Mansions (Elgin Avenue) and Leith Mansions (Grantully Road) in 1900, Ashworth Mansions (Elgin Avenue and Grantully Road) and Castellain Mansions (Castellain Road) in 1902, Elgin Court (Elgin Avenue) and Carlton Mansions (Randolph Avenue) in 1902, Delaware Mansions (Delaware Road) and Biddulph Mansions (Elgin Avenue and Biddulph Road) in 1907 [14] and Randolph Court in 1910. [23]
Among the buildings of architectural interest is the Carlton Tavern, a pub on Carlton Vale. Built in 1920–1921 for Charrington Brewery, it is thought to be the work of the architect Frank J. Potter and is noted for its 1920s interiors and faience tiled exterior. The building was being considered by Historic England for Grade II listing when it was unexpectedly demolished in March 2015 by the property developer CLTX Ltd to make way for a block of flats. [24] The pub was subsequently rebuilt and re-opened following a community campaign and planning appeals. [25]
Maida Vale has a namesake electoral ward and in the 2022 local election returned three Labour councillors for Westminster City Council. The 2011 census counted a population of 10,210 in the ward. Ethnicity-wise, 62.4% of the population were White (38% British, 3% Irish, 22% Other), 11.7% were Asian, and 7.1% were Black. Maida Vale also had a large Arab community, who formed 9.2% of the population, and by far the most spoken foreign language was Arabic. Of the 4,480 households, the number of homes owned or privately rented were about even, with socially rented a bit less but still significant. Properties are predominantly in the flats/maisonettes/apartments category (over 90 percent of the households). The median age was 33. Being in the inner city, the majority of residents do not own a car or van. [26]
The principal church in Kilburn is St Augustine's, sometimes referred to as "The Cathedral of North London"; the area is also served by St Mark's parish church, Hamilton Terrace [27] and by St Saviour's Church, Warwick Avenue, a building constructed in 1972–1976 in a "modern" style. The latter building was referred to by some local residents as "the God Box". [28] Between 1870 and 1906, the incumbent at St Mark's was Robinson Duckworth. [29]
Lauderdale Road Synagogue, a Sephardic Jewish place of worship, is in Maida Vale. Saatchi Shul, an independent Orthodox Jewish synagogue, was founded in Maida Vale in 1998. [30]
![]() | This section appears to contain trivial, minor, or unrelated references to popular culture .(May 2020) |
Maida Vale has also been referenced in several films and television programmes:
Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, 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.
Warwick Avenue is a London Underground station in Little Venice in the City of Westminster in northwest London. The station is on the Bakerloo line, between Paddington and Maida Vale stations, and is in Travelcard Zone 2.
Maida Vale is a London Underground station in Maida Vale in inner north-west London. The station is on the Bakerloo line, between Kilburn Park and Warwick Avenue stations, and is in Travelcard Zone 2.
Regent's Canal is a canal across an area just north of central London, England. It provides a link from the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, 550 yards (500 m) north-west of Paddington Basin in the west, to the Limehouse Basin and the River Thames in east London. The canal is 8.6 miles (13.8 km) long.
Westminster North is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 recreation by Karen Buck, a member of the Labour Party. Its previous 1983 to 1997 existence is also covered by this article.
Paddington North was a borough constituency in the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington in London which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system. It was created in 1885, and abolished for the February 1974 general election.
Lauderdale Mansions South is a block of 142 apartments in Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, London W9. Built in 1897, Lauderdale Mansions South was the first of a swathe of mansion flat buildings for the middle classes that spread across central Maida Vale in the 1897–1907 period.
Warwick Avenue is a residential avenue in the Little Venice area of Maida Vale, London. Its southern end is situated adjacent to Paddington Basin, to the north of Paddington station.
Paddington Green is a green space and conservation area in the City of Westminster located off Edgware Road and adjacent to the Westway. It is the oldest part of Paddington and became a separate conservation area in 1988, having previously formed part of Maida Vale conservation area. At one time, the Green was surrounded by large Georgian houses, but now only two remain on the east side of the Green.
The Paddington Canal or Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal is a 13+1⁄2-mile (22 km) canal to Paddington in central London, England. It runs from the west of the capital at Bull's Bridge in Hayes. Little Venice — its only junction — is with the Regent's Canal, London that runs to Limehouse Basin to the east. The arm and the two canals it links are fed by water by the Brent Reservoir. The Paddington Arm is part of a long pound that stretches for nearly thirty miles.
Little Venice is an affluent residential district in West London, England, around the junction of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, the Regent's Canal, and the entrance to Paddington Basin. The junction forms a triangular shape basin. Many of the buildings in the vicinity are Regency white painted stucco terraced town houses and taller blocks (mansions) in the same style. The area is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west-north-west of Charing Cross and immediately north-west of Paddington.
Little Venice is an electoral ward of the City of Westminster. The population at the 2011 Census was 10,633. The ward covers the area south of Maida Vale and north of Paddington, bound by the Westway, Edgware Road and Grand Union canal. The Regent's Canal runs through the ward to Little Venice basin, and it is served by Warwick Avenue station on the Bakerloo line, in addition to several bus routes running through the area. There are three primary schools, St Joseph's RC Primary School, St Saviour's CofE Primary School and Ark Paddington Green Primary Academy, and one GP surgery in the ward.
Maida Vale is an electoral ward of the City of Westminster. The population at the 2011 Census was 10,210. The ward covers the area south of Kilburn, north of Little Venice and west of St John's Wood, bordered by Maida Vale (A5), Shirland Road, Sutherland Avenue and Kilburn Park Road. The ward contains Paddington Recreation Ground, Lauderdale Road Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, Saint Augustine's church and is home to the BBC Maida Vale Studios. The area is served by Maida Vale station on the Bakerloo line, in addition to several bus routes running through the locality. There are two primary schools, Essendine Primary School and St Augustine's Primary School, two secondary schools, St Augustine's CE High School and St. George's Catholic School, in addition to three GP surgeries located in the ward.
Elgin Avenue is a street in Maida Vale in London. Located in the City of Westminster, it runs east to west from the A5 road close to Maida Vale tube station west to the Maida Hill area where it meets the Harrow Road. Sutherland Avenue runs roughly parallel to the south and is connected to Elgin Avenue by Lauderdale Road. The road continues east of the A5 as Abercorn Place which runs through St. John's Wood.
Randolph Avenue is a street in Maida Vale in London. Located in the City of Westminster, it is a long avenue running from north to south. The southern end is located in Little Venice near to the Paddington branch of the Grand Union Canal. The street runs northwards, crossing Clifton Gardens, Sutherland Avenue, Elgin Avenue and Carlton Vale. The road then continues as Randolph Gardens until it meets Kilburn Park Road. The Edgware Road runs directly parallel to Randolph Avenue to the east.
Warrington Crescent is a street in Maida Vale in London. Located in the City of Westminster, it is a crescent curving north eastwards from Warwick Avenue until it reaches a roundabout where it meets including Randolph Avenue, Sutherland Avenue and Lauderdale Road. Warrington Gardens and Formosa Street both lead westwards off Warrington Crescent.
Sutherland Avenue is a street in Maida Vale in London. Located in the City of Westminster on the northern edge of Little Venice. it is an avenue running east to west from the Edgware Road to Harrow Road. Along the route it is crossed or joined by Randolph Avenue, Warrington Crescent, Lauderdale Road, Castellian Road, Warwick Avenue and Shirland Road. Elgin Avenue runs directly parallel to the north.
Lauderdale Road is a street in the Maida Vale district of London. Located in the City of Westminster, it runs north westwards from Sutherland Avenue to Elgin Avenue. Its southern end also meets Warrington Crescent and Randolph Avenue at a roundabout.
Maida Avenue is a road in the Little Venice area of Maida Vale in London. Located in the City of Westminster, it follows the southern bank of the Regent's Canal close to its junction with the Grand Union Canal. It runs between Warwick Avenue and Edgware Road. Directly across the canal Blomfield Road runs parallel to Maida Avenue.
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