Paddington - History

History

The earliest extant reference to Padington, historically a part of Middlesex, was made in 1056.

In the later Elizabethan and early Stuart era, the rectory and associated estate houses were occupied by the Small (or Smale) family. Nicholas Small was a clothworker who was sufficiently well connected to have Holbein paint a portrait of his wife, Jane Small. Nicholas died in 1565 and his wife married again, to Nicholas Parkinson, who also resided in Paddington. Parkinson went on to be the Master of the Clothworker's company. Jane Small continued to live in Paddington after her second husband's death, and her manor house was big enough to have been let to Sir John Popham, the attorney general, in the 1580s. At this time there was an inn attached to the estate, named Blowers.

By 1773, a contemporary historian determined that "London may now be said to include two cities, one borough and forty six antient villages", Paddington and adjoining Marybone (Marylebone) being named as two of those villages.

Roman roads formed the parish's north-eastern and southern boundaries from Marble Arch: Watling Street (later Edgware Road) and the Uxbridge road, known by the 1860s as Bayswater Road. They were toll roads in the 18th century, before and after the dismantling of the permanent Tyburn gallows "tree" at their junction in 1759. By 1800, the area was also traversed by the Harrow Road and an arm of the Grand Union Canal.