Historic Shepherd's Bush

And now .. for some local history! How much do you know about how the Bush came about? Most of the expansion that shaped the London that we know today happenned in the 19th century.

I'm told Shepherds Bush is so called because the drovers would rest and trade here before driving their flocks all the way into Smithfields meat market in EC1. I used to work in Farringdon near that market and it ws pretty gory then so imagine what a victorian slaughter house in the middle of the city looked like - and the traffic all the way there

London experienced a massive population explosion throughout that century including my own family who lived in London throughout the 1800s. They lived in an area called Walworth but now better known as Lambeth. I'm proud to say one of them served time in a  real life debtors prison!

Most of Walworth, and Shepherds Bush, and suburbs like it all over the city were built by the victorians to house all these middle classes and were usually given grandiose sounding names to counter the fact that country gentry still looked down on anyone that lived in the city. One side of Uxbridge Road is obviously genuinely Victorian and the pics below are of the lower half of Uxbridge Road near the H&C tube. Built in 1874 they are called "St Stephen's Villas" , complete with a gargoil of st stephen, but almost straight away they would have been divided into smaller flats as indeed they are still.