Ealing, London Borough Genealogy

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



History
As with most of 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. Researchers should instead consider researching Ealing in its original county of Middlesex.

Ealing was a local government district from 1863 to 1965, formed around the town of Ealing which was part of the built up area of London until 1965, where it officially became part of Greater London.

It was created an urban district in 1894, by the Local Government Act 1894. In 1901 it was granted a charter of incorporation to become the first municipal borough in Middlesex. The urban district council was replaced by a corporation consisting of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councilors. Ealing Town Hall was built in 1886, replacing an earlier hall on the same site.

The borough was greatly enlarged in 1926 when it absorbed the urban districts of Greenford (including the parishes of Perivale and West Twyford) and Hanwell.

In 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, the municipal borough was abolished and its former area transferred to Greater London to be combined with the Municipal Borough of Acton and Municipal Borough of Southall to form the present-day London Borough of Ealing.

Early settlement is attested by finds of Palaeolithic articles, chiefly around Ealing common and the main railway line, Neolithic implements, coins of the Iron Age, and Romano-British burials at Hanger Hill. Although no Anglo-Saxon settlement is recorded, the name Ealing denotes the Gillingas, or Gilla's people, of c. 700.

Ealing village and the medieval church lay at the center of the parish, between two streams and south of Uxbridge Road. Smaller hamlets arose to the west at Ealing Dean and to the south-west at Little Ealing, both of them between the more westerly stream and the Brent. South-east of Ealing village lay the manor house of Gunnersbury. North of Uxbridge Road the heavy clay land was less attractive to early settlement. Hanger Hill was so called from a hangra or 'wooded slope', where a wood existed in 1393 and 1539, as was the farm at Pitshanger, whose name occurred in 1222. Drayton Green, close to Ealing Dean, and Haven Green, an extension of Ealing village, were the only settlements north of Uxbridge Road in the early 19th century. There was then a contrast between the large estates north of the road, with their farms and parkland, and the more populous area to the south, with its market gardens joining those of Brentford.

Ealing village, where there was a church by c. 1127, was also known in 1274 and 1393 as Church Ealing and from 1593 as Great Ealing. It was linear in shape, extending northward from the church along a street, much of it bordered by a narrow green, almost to Uxbridge Road. The village, with no medieval manor house and with no inn in 1599, won little notice from travelers until the late 18th century, although in assessments of 1711 and later it was sometimes described as Ealing town. Objects found in Grange Road and at the north end of Ealing green suggest that by 1700 buildings stretched the length of the modern St. Mary's Road. The finds from Grange Road may have come from Ealing House, which, with the adjoining Ealing Grove, originated in an estate of the late 16th century.

By 1746 there had been little building south of the church, except a boys' school in South Ealing Road, but houses stood on either side of St. Mary's Road, those at the northern end facing each other across Ealing green. There was a pond on the green near the entrance to Mattock Lane, Maddock Lane in 1766, south of Ashton House or its forerunner. The village was extended still farther north by some buildings at the corner of Uxbridge Road. The high road itself was almost empty, apart from the Feathers and, to the east, the Bell. Beyond the Feathers, north of the road, houses stood on the north and east sides of the Haven or Haven Green, an area normally assessed separately from Ealing village in the 18th century.

The railway station, opened in 1838, was thought in 1845 to have brought many visitors to a pretty but previously little known place, and already to have stimulated building to the north. Within the old village the Park was laid out by Sidney Smirke as a residential side street off the east side of St. Mary's Road in 1846, when it was also agreed to build on 9 a. belonging to Ashton House between Mattock Lane and Uxbridge Road. Some large villas there constituted Ealing's first successful building scheme on such a scale, although completion proved slow: Ashton House itself survived in the mid 1860s, when much of the Uxbridge Road frontage but only part of Mattock Lane had been built up. Meanwhile at the south end of the village smaller houses were being planned around Ranelagh Road on the Old Rectory estate, which had been bought c. 1852 by the Conservative Freehold Land Society, the first land society to obtain a foothold in Ealing. Progress was slow, only c. 20 houses being ready by the mid 1860s, presumably because the railway station was too far away.

In 1893 most business premises were in High Street, the Broadway, and the Mall, or in Spring Bridge Road, leading to the west side of Haven Green, and the Parade, a row of shops near the station at the south-east corner of Haven Green. The almshouses made way for shops on the south side of the Mall in 1902. Bond Street, leading due north from Ealing green to Uxbridge Road, was under construction in 1904, when Ashton House was finally pulled down. Shopping parades were built in 1905 both there and along the south side of the stretch of Uxbridge Road known as New Broadway, where electric trams had run since 1901. So was created an urban center along Uxbridge Road and its shorter offshoots, in contrast with the much quieter old village along Ealing green and St. Mary's Road.

Between the World Wars building covered most available plots and was carried to the edges of the borough, except where open spaces had been preserved. In the north-west corner the Cleveland estate off Argyle Road was planned in 1924. Semi-detached houses in Avalon Road ran from Vallis Way to the Crossway by 1928 and to Ruislip Road by 1932, while Cavendish Avenue ran along the Hanwell boundary by 1939. In the north-east corner Kingfield, Mulgrave, and neighboring roads had been built up east of Brentham by 1935 and detached houses were built before and after the Second World War in avenues east of Hanger Lane. South of Uxbridge Road housing stretched from Ealing Dean or West Ealing southward to Little Ealing, except where allotments survived at the north end of Northfield Avenue: Camborne Avenue and Leyborne Avenue, projected in 1920, had been built up by 1934. In the southeastern corner of the borough, building drew closer to Gunnersbury park. Sunderland and Durham roads in 1920 led from South Ealing Road only as far as Roberts Alley, later Olive Road, but by 1934 they stretched eastward along Maple Grove and its neighbors between the District railway and Pope's Lane. Infilling included Ealing Village, where 128 flats in four-storeyed blocks, apart from the gatehouse, formed a cheaply built private estate on a previously neglected strip of ground near the railway north-east of Ealing Broadway station.

Ealing has never been more than a small village that later grew to a large town, and was finally incorporated into the Greater London urban area.

Ealing is now the major repair and rebuild center for the London Tube underground system.

Cemeteries (Civil)
Ealing and Old Brentford Cemetery 28 Chilton Ave London W5 4RU

Greenford Park Cemetery Windmill Ln Greenford UB6 9DR Phone: +44 20 8825 6030

Gunnersbury Cemetery 143 Gunnersbury Ave London W3 8LE Phone: +44 20 8992 2924

Acton Cemetery 308 Park Royal Rd London W3 0PH Phone: +44 20 8825 6030

Parishes
Christ the Saviour Church address: New Broadway Ealing, London W5 2XA Phone: +44 20 8567 1288

Ealing Common

Ealing Dean

St Paul's Church address: Ridley Ave London W13 9XW Phone: +44 20 8579 9444

St Mary's Church address: St Mary's Rd London W5 5RH Phone: +44 20 8579 7134

St Peter's Church address: Mount Park Road Ealing London W5 2RU Phone: +44 20 8997 3655

St Stephen's Church address: 1 St Stephen's Rd London W13 8HB Phone: +44 20 8991 0164

Acton Green St Alban the Martyr

Acton Green St Peter

Acton Vale

St John's Church address: St James' Ave London W13 9DJ Phone: +44 20 8840 2586

St John with St. James Church address: Mattock Ln London W13 9LA Phone: +44 20 8566 3507

Hanwell St Mark Hanwell St Melitus Hanwell St Mary

St Matthew's Church address: N Common Rd London W5 2QA Phone: +44 20 8567 3820

Non Conformists

 * Baptist
 * Bliss Community Church
 * Church of Christ
 * Church of the Assension
 * Ealing Christian Center
 * Living Hope Church
 * Methodist
 * Pentecostal
 * Salvation Army
 * Seventh Day Adventist
 * The Vineyard Church

Additionally the following non-Christian groups have assemblies in the region of Glasgow:


 * 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.

Ealing does have a BMD records office as listed below:

Ealing Register Office Ealing Town Hall New Broadway, London W5 2BY Tel: 020 8825 7171

Online documents can be obtained from:


 * Ealing Borough Council
 * FreeBMD
 * UKBMD: Ealing
 * UKBMD: Middlesex Parish records

Local Histories

 * Ealing Council: Area History


 * Vision of Britain: Ealing


 * National Archives: Ealing Local History Center


 * Ealing, a Concise History by Peter Hounsell


 * Ealing then and Now by Jonathan Oates and Paul Howard Lang

Maps and Gazetteers

 * Viamichelin: Map of Ealing


 * Ealing Council: Maps


 * Oldmapsonline: Ealing


 * Vision of Britain: Ealing Gazetteer


 * GENUKI: Ealing Gazetteer

Newspapers

 * Getwestlondon: all about Ealing


 * Ealingtoday: internet newspaper


 * The Ealing Times


 * The London Evening Standard: Ealing news

Occupations
Ealing's major claim to fame are its film studios, which are the oldest in the world and are known especially for the Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets, Passport to Pimlico, The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob. The studios were taken over by the BBC in 1955, with one consequence being that Ealing locations appeared in television programs including Doctor Who to Monty Python's Flying Circus. Most recently, these studios have again been used for making films, including Notting Hill and The Importance of Being Earnest. Most recently, St Trinian's, a remake of the classic film, was produced by Ealing Studios; some locations in Ealing can be seen in this film.

Since the UK eliminated the 10:00 pm closing time for all pubs and night clubs, Ealing has a developed night-time economy that is backed by numerous pubs and restaurants located on The Mall, The Broadway and New Broadway (forming part of the greater Uxbridge Road).

At the center of West London between London’s West End and Heathrow airport, Ealing is in a strong economic position. West London is a strong attraction for visitors and tourists and this tourism alone is said to generate over £2 billion annually.

Major companies/employers with a presence in Ealing include: AMT Coffee, Bestway, Carphone Warehouse, Diageo, Ealing Studios, Ealing Hospital NHS Trust, Glaxosmithkline (GSK), Initial Security Ltd, JRS Asian Foods, Katsouris Fresh Foods, MW Kellogg Ltd, Noon Products Ltd, Northworld Ltd, Sunrise Radio, The Tetley Group, TNS, Ultra Electronics, United Biscuits, Walkers and West LondoMental Health Trust.

In the North East of the borough is the Park Royal Industrial Estate, shared with the London boroughs of Brent and Hammersmith & Fulham. This is the largest industrial estate in Europe, covering about 263 hectares (650 acres). Park Royal Industrial Estate started in the 1940s with a focus on heavy industries, including the production of jet engines.Current specialities are: food (in particular ethnic food) film & TV transport & logistics.

Societies

 * London, Westminster and Middlesex Family History Society


 * The Middlesex Genealogy Society


 * London Roots research Group


 * Ealing History Society

Archives

 * The National Archives: Ealing


 * Ealingewsextra: Archives


 * Newspaperarchives: Ealing

Websites

 * Albans wikipedia; St Albans


 * St Albans District Council


 * Hertfordshire County Council