Old Map of West London in 1900 by G.W. Bacon & Co., Sheet 9 - Hanwell, Ealing, Acton

This map reproduces Sheet 9 of G.W. Bacon & Co.'s New Large Scale Atlas of London and Suburbs, first issued in 1900. Bacon's firm, based in the Strand, built its reputation through the late Victorian period on large-scale, clearly coloured plans of London's rapidly spreading suburbs, sold to house-hunters, cyclists, and local vestries who needed to keep pace with a city expanding faster than anyone could survey it. The atlas divided greater London into a grid of numbered sheets so that each volume owner could piece together the whole capital street by street; this sheet takes in the western edge of the county, where villages such as Hanwell and Ealing were only just being absorbed into the metropolitan fabric. Printed at the close of the nineteenth century, it captures a moment when horse-drawn traffic, new tram routes and the Great Western main line were all competing for space across the same stretch of Middlesex countryside.

The sheet is anchored by Hanwell, then best known for the Hanwell Asylum, one of the largest pauper lunatic asylums in the country, and by Ealing, whose Ealing Dean quarter and rising villa suburbs mark the area's transition from market-garden parish to London borough. Acton appears to the south-east, linked by Acton Lane and Horn Lane, while Little Ealing and Gunnersbury fill the ground between Ealing and the River Thames, close by the wooded grounds of Gunnersbury Park. Castlebar Hill rises above the surrounding streets, and to the west the map shows the wide meadows of Osterley Park running down toward the canal network. Thoroughfares including Uxbridge Road, Boston Road, Kew Bridge Road, Churchfield Road, South Ealing Road and Windmill Road are all traced in detail, giving a street-level record of how this corner of Middlesex was laid out just as the twentieth century began.

For anyone who has recently swapped postcodes for Hanwell, Ealing, or Acton, this sheet makes a thoughtful housewarming gift to mark the move, showing the same streets and parkland long before the Underground and modern housing estates arrived. It would also suit someone with childhood ties to Gunnersbury Park or the old Ealing Dean, or a collector assembling a set of Bacon's London sheets covering the capital borough by borough. Printed unframed and available across a full range of sizes, it can be scaled to suit anything from a hallway print to a dedicated wall piece.