Through Time
2 total works
Throughout most of its history, Cowley has been a small country village just two miles south of the market town of Uxbridge. Its origins are in the Saxon period, and St Laurence church is mentioned in the Domesday Book. However, in 1901 the population was only 214. The opening of a railway station in 1905 heralded expansion, initially, between the two wars, and this has continued since then. Recent years have been dominated by the arrival and growth of Brunel University in the north of the district. Ken Pearce shows, through old and new photographs, just how the area has changed.
For centuries Uxbridge, whose origins lie in Saxon times, was a market town serving much of West Middlesex and South Buckinghamshire. At one time there were thirteen water mills in the area where corn was processed. Situated on the London - Oxford road, it was an important town in the stagecoach era. This collection of images old and new charts the history of the area, and reveals many hidden aspects of this urban sprawl. In the early twentieth century London sprawled out westward, and the town became an outer London suburb. In recent times, because of its closeness to Heathrow Airport and three motorways, it has become an office centre. These pages reveal how the town has been largely rebuilt in the last eighty years. Join Ken Pearce on this nostalgic visual journey back through time.