Edgware Road, Paddington, Middlesex (1790–1830)
(From Clunn, Harold P. The Face of London. Spring Books, London, c.1955, p.434f.)
Paddington was in the early years of the nineteenth century the most distant village completely united to London. Fifty years earlier it was already joined to the capital by a long line of buildings on the east side of Edgware Road, and in 1783, on a map of London by Carington Bowles, Edgware Road north of the New Road, now called Marylebone Road, figures under the name of Paddington, although the village itself was situated to the west of Edgware Road.
As recently as 1820 Paddington, although joined to the metropolis, still possessed many rural spots which appeared as secluded as though they had been a great distance from the town. The small population of Paddington was wholly absorbed in agriculture; although they lived at so short a distance from the two rich towns of London and Westminster, they made no greater advances in civilization than those who lived in the remotest village in England.
Opposite the Marble Arch is the junction of Oxford Street with Edgware Road, and here stood the Tyburn Gate until 1829. Its site is marked by a stone tablet near the entrance to Hyde Park. Although the entire east side of Edgware Road from Hyde Park to Paddington had been covered with streets and buildings at the dawn of the nineteenth century, no building operations of any importance were commenced on the west side until about 1820. Thus Paddington formed for many years the outer limit of the metropolis, and as late as 1830 was still regarded by many people as a rustic village.
But although Edgware Road itself remained unbuilt on the west side between Paddington village and Hyde Park, a village somewhat resembling the unsightly bungaloid growths . . . had arisen in the fields a short distance to the west of Edgware Road. Thus Lysons, writing of Paddington in 1794, says that, this parish being chiefly church land, there had been but little increase of buildings till about 1790, since which time nearly one hundred small wooden houses had been erected a little north of Tyburn turnpike.
These cottages were let at from £7 to £12 per annum, and were inhabited principally by journeymen artificers who worked in London, forming with their families a colony of about six hundred persons. This colony of cottages, built nearly opposite George Street, . . . was called Tomlin’s New Town. After 1816, as a result of a Building Act obtained by the Bishop of London, these journeymen artificers had to vacate this land in order to make way for the construction of Connought Terrace and better houses for the rich. During the winter evenings the muddy roads which led to these cottages were in total darkness. No provision had of course been made for the effective drainage or sanitary arrangements of these cottages, built in the open fields and occupied as fast as they were completed. They were sought after by the poor as a kind of country retreat, but were in fact breeding centres of disease, filth, and misery . . .
In 1795 there were still upwards of 1,100 acres of grass-land in Paddington, of which only eighty-five were arable or garden land, and for a long time the tenants of the Bishop of London’s estate at Paddington were as celebrated for the quality and quantity of their milk as they are now for the number and the size of their houses. Within the short space of twenty years a city of palaces had sprung up on the Bishop’s Estate, and one of our leading railways, the Great Western, had opened its terminus here, from which were carried to and from this great city a larger number of human beings in one year than could be found in all England only a short time before. . .
The Paddington Canal, which commences at the dock at the back of Paddington Station, was opened in 1801 and joins the Grand Junction canal at Bull Bridge, in the vicinity of Northwood, in Middlesex . . .
On the opening day, 10 July 1801, no less than twenty thousand people came to Paddington to welcome the mighty men who had so altered this hitherto quiet village. Unfortunately, as time went on, the banks of this canal were used for stowing not only dirt and ashes, but the filth of half London, which was brought to ‘stinking Paddington’, as it was then nicknamed.
Public conveyances from Paddington to the City were first started at the beginning of the nineteenth century by a Mr Miles with his pair-horse coaches. The journey to Holburn Bars was performed by them in slightly over three hours, the charge for each outside passenger being two shillings, and the inside ones three. The first omnibuses were started in 1829 by Mr Shillibeer, and the aristocracy of Paddington Green were quite shocked at the disgrace this brought to the parish, and petitioned the Vestry to rid them of the nuisance.
