Hounslow, London Borough Genealogy

Guide to London Borough of Hounslow history, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.



History
As with the other London Boroughs, the British Government action of 1965 destroyed all traces of the original settlements from the point of view of Family History. The specific councils incorporated into the new Borough are: Chiswick, Brentford, Isleworth, Hounslow and Feltham. Researchers should instead consider researching Hounslow Borough in its original county of Middlesex. It should also be noted that the British Government eliminated Middlesex as a county entity when they made the changes in 1965.

Hounslow was first mentioned in Domesday Book and the name is a corruption of Old English words meaning ‘hound’s mound’. The mound may have been a burial tumulus but is not known whether the ‘hound’ element referred to the animal or a man of that name or nickname.

A Trinitarian friary was established around 1200, in the vicinity of the present-day police station on Montague Road. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, the friary was the richest Trinitarian house in England. The friary’s chapel subsequently evolved into Holy Trinity church.

Positioned on the Bath Road (where it forks to the Staines Road at the Bell Inn), Hounslow was centered around Holy Trinity Priory founded in 1211. The priory developed what had been a small village into a town with regular markets and other facilities for travelers heading to and from London. Although the priory was dissolved in 1539 the town remained an important staging post on the Bath Road. The adjacent Hounslow Heath that had been used as a military encampment by both Oliver Cromwell and James II developed a reputation as the haunt of highwaymen and footpads. Nearby important landowners included those of Osterley House, Syon House, Hanworth Park House and Worton Hall.

In 1756 Sir Thomas Morris established the base of his chicken farming empire. As a rich philanthropist who started from humble beginnings, he used his wealth to establish a school for the under privileged children of the town, believing every child had the right to education.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries Hounslow was the first stop outside London for nearly all the westbound coaches; in 1833 over 200 coaches passed through every day. Hounslow station opened in 1850 on a loop of the Windsor, Staines and South Western Railway and within a decade new roads were being laid out for suburban house building. Development was slow at first and accelerated only moderately after the arrival of the Metropolitan District Railway in the 1880s.

The building of the Great Western Railway line from London to Bristol from 1838 reduced long-distance travel along the Bath Road. By 1842 the local paper was reporting that the 'formerly flourishing village', which used to stable 2,000 horses, was suffering a 'general depreciation of property'. The Hounslow Loop Line was constructed in 1850, prompting new development.

The construction of the Great West Road (a revival of an earlier name for the Bath Road as a by-pass for it around the north of Brentford, Isleworth and Hounslow centers) in the 1920s attracted the building of the factories and headquarters of large companies. The factories were a great local source of employment until a decline in the 1970s, attracting workers from a wide area and leading to a great deal of housing development. In the next two decades offices largely replaced factories on the Great West Road and further expansion in hotel and housing stock has taken place, an example being the Blenheim Center.

Hounslow grew rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century due to a different form of travel, a connection to the largest of London's airports since the 1940s, Heathrow Airport which is in the Hounslow post town. Little known is that aviation dates to the early 1900s here when one of London's earliest airfields was situated on Hounslow Heath because of the extremely flat terrain. The Great West Road, which crosses the borough from Chiswick to Heathrow, at one time served nationally and globally famous manufacturers including Firestone, Gillette and Coty. As a result, the area became known as the "Golden Mile". A few of these factory sites remain today, such as Gillette Corner, and the Great West Road is still home to many prestigious names (see "famous companies" below), providing them with easy non-motorway access between Slough, London Heathrow Airport and Central London.

Today the name of Hounslow has become synonymous with transportation, and London's Heathrow Airport situated on it's western border (see picture above).

Cemeteries (Civil)
Borough Cemetery Powder Mill Ln Whitton TW2 6EJ Phone: +44 845 456 2853

Hounslow Cemetery Chapel 631 Hanworth Rd Hounslow TW4 5NH

Twickenham Cemetery 139 Hospital Bridge Rd Whitton, Twickenham TW2 6LE Phone: +44 20 8876 4511

Chiswick Cemetery 22 Staveley Gardens Chiswick, London W4 2SA Phone: +44 845 456 2853

New Brentford Cemetery Chapel 17 Harte Rd Hounslow TW3 4LD

Parishes
Holy Trinity Church address: 6 High St Hounslow TW3 1HG Phone: +44 20 8577 9048

St Paul's Church address: 287 Bath Rd Hounslow TW3 3DB Phone: +44 20 8581 5537

St Stephen Church address: Parkside Rd Hounslow TW3 2BP Phone: +44 20 8570 3056

St Phillip's and St James' Church address: Hounslow Rd Twickenham TW2 7DY Phone: +44 20 8898 2694

St John the Baptist Church address: 2 Nottingham Rd Isleworth TW7 6PB

St John

Heath

St Luke

St Mary the Virgin Church address: Worton Rd Isleworth TW7 6ER Phone: +44 20 8577 9048

Non Conformists

 * Baptist
 * Christ Church
 * Evangelical
 * Jubilee Church
 * Living Hope
 * Methodist
 * Pentecostal
 * Salvation Army
 * Seventh Day Adventist
 * Unified body of Christ

Additionally the following non-Christian groups have assemblies in Hounslow Borough:


 * Baha'i
 * Buddhist
 * Hindu
 * Jewish
 * Muslim
 * Sikh

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths records have been kept by the UK government since July 1837 to the present day. Prior to that, local parishes of the Episcopal Church, and other religious organizations, were the only repositories of this information.


 * Hounslow Borough BMD records


 * UKBMD: Hounslow BMD records


 * UKOfficialRecords: Hounslow BMD


 * UKBMD: Middlesex Parish records

Local Histories

 * London Borough of Hounslow Council: History


 * HiddenLondon: Hounslow


 * Voices of Ealing and Hounslow by Sue McAlpine


 * Wordery.com: Chiswick through Time by Peter Hammond and Carolyn Hammond


 * Wordery.com: Brentford through Time by Gilliam Clegg


 * Jet.com: Twickenham by Joseph Charles Barrow


 * Feltham, Hanworth and Bedfont: A Pictorial History by Andrea Cameron

Maps and Gazetteers

 * Google Maps: London Borough of Hounslow


 * Openstreetmap: Hounslow Borough


 * Oldmapsonline: Hounslow


 * FrancisFrith: Old map of Chiswick


 * FrancisFrith: Old map of Brentford


 * FrancisFrith: Old map of Isleworth


 * FrancisFrith: Old map of Feltham


 * Hidden-London: Hounslow Heath gazetteer


 * Hidden-London: Chiswick gazetteer


 * Hidden-London: Isleworth gazetteer

Newspapers
All the major London papers are available in Hounslow Borough. For local news, the following might be helpful:


 * Get West London: Hounslow news


 * The London Evening Standard: Hounslow

Occupations
Due to its proximity to London's Heathrow Airport, the seventh busiest in the world rankings based on passenger numbers, much of the Borough's employment opportunities are related to air traffic. Associated with the airport are such enterprises as: auto rental companies, hotels, bus and underground rail transportation, and security companies. Additionally the Borough has two thriving Business Parks, one in Chiswick and one in Hounslow itself.

The borough is home to the headquarters of such major companies as GlaxoSmithKline and Sky plc, both based in Brentford's 'Golden Mile' stretch of the A4 Great West Road, once known across the globe for its cluster of factories and offices, and is currently going under extensive re-development in the form of new apartment blocks and offices. Fuller's Griffin Brewery is also in the borough, in Chiswick.

DHL Air UK has its head office in Hounslow.

Air France-KLM's head office for United Kingdom and Ireland operations, which includes facilities for Air France and KLM, is located in Plesman House in Hatton Cross in the borough. The Plesman House, outside of Terminal 4 of London Heathrow Airport, has the UK commercial team, sales team, and support team. Sega Europe has its head office in Brentford. Menzies Aviation has its head office by the airport in Feltham. JCDecaux UK has its head office in Brentford.

Societies

 * West Middlesex FHS


 * Hounslow and District History Society


 * London, Westminster, and Middlesex FHS

Archives

 * Hounslow Borough Archives


 * The National Archives: Hounslow


 * Historical Newspapers: Hounslow


 * The National Archives: Chiswick and Brentford


 * City of London: Middlesex County Archives

Websites

 * Borough of Hounslow Council


 * Wikipedia: London Borough of Hounslow


 * Wikipedia: Hounslow


 * Wikipedia: Chiswick


 * Wikipedia: Brentford


 * Wikipedia: Isleworth


 * Wikipedia: Feltham