Paddington: Past and Present

by William Robins

The manor of Kensington answered for ten hides; and was held by Aubrey de Ver. Lilestone answered for five hides; Tybourn for five hides; Willesden for fifteen, with pannage for five hundred hogs; and Chelsea [5d] and Hampstead are duly accounted for. But Paddington in Middlesex is not named. A manor of “Padendene” existed at this time, and is mentioned in the survey, but it was situated in the county of Surrey; and singularly enough was shortly after held by the same family—the De Veres—who held Kensington, and who afterwards, also, held Tybourn.

Were there, then, no dwellings, no cultivated lands in Middlesex known by the name of Paddington, in 1086—the date of the Conqueror’s survey? Was Paddington at this period an uncultivated portion of the great Middlesex Forest; or did a few of the King’s cottagers live here, unnoticed and unknown, before this scrutiny discovered them? Were the broad acres, subsequently claimed by the monks of Westminster, accounted for in the territories of the neighbouring lords; or did they form but a portion of the home domain of the Convent? Was the village, and the land, known by any other name?

Of all these possible suppositions, which is the most probable?

To enter fully into a discussion of these questions would require a greater amount of antiquarian knowledge than I possess; and would occupy more space in this work than I can spare. To obtain an answer to the last question satisfactory to my own mind, it is true I have made some researches, and I will, as concisely as possible, convey to my readers the opinions at which I have arrived; detailing in this place only so many of the topographical facts as may be necessary to shew upon what foundations those opinions have been formed.

We know, from Fitz Stephen, that an immense forest, “beautified with wood and groves,” but “full of the lairs and coverts of beasts and game, stags, bucks, boars, and wild bulls,” [6a] existed even in the twelfth century at no great distance from what then constituted London. Small portions only of this forest appear to have been, at any time, the property of the crown. It formed a part of the public land which was entrusted to the charge of the elected governors of the people. In it the citizens had free right of chase, preserved by many royal charters: it was disafforested by Henry the third in 1218. [6b] And during the Saxon period it would have been no difficult matter to have obtained a settlement even in the most desirable parts of it. To shew the extent of this forest in Middlesex, and the paucity of fixed inhabitants in it, when for the purposes of government, families arranged themselves into tens, and hundreds, we have only to remember that the Hundred of Ossulston occupied nearly half the county; although it included both London and Westminster.

The Fleete, the Tybourn, and the Brent, were the three notable streams which carried the waters from the hills north of the Thames through this forest to the great recipient of them all. And it is probable that the Saxons early settled on the elevated banks of these streams, finding there a more healthful and safer retreat than could be found on the banks of “the silent highway” which was so frequently traversed by the Danes.

Another powerful inducement existed in this locality to fix the wandering footsteps of the emigrant. Two roads made through the forest by the skill of the previous conquerors of the country, united in this spot; and remained to show the uncultivated Saxon, what genius and perseverance could effect. These having served the purpose of a military way to conduct the Roman Legions from south to north, and from east to west, were now ready to be used in aid of civilized life. And it is scarcely conceivable that a spot so desirable could have remained long unoccupied by the seekers of a home.

This locality is the present site of Paddington by whatever name it was then called. And it was, in all probability, at a very early period of our history occupied by the Saxon settler.

The question whether those who settled here were conveyed with the soil to some spiritual, or temporal, lord, previous to, or immediately subsequent to, the Norman conquest, cannot be so satisfactorily determined. Traditions are at variance; documents are not trustworthy; and names have been altered; so that two opinions may be entertained about the things described even in the instruments which exist. There is, however, one general rule which will assist us in coming to a correct decision as to the boundaries we find laid down.

When the science of making and interpreting artificial signs had acquired all the potency of a black art; when the acquisition of this art was strictly guarded by all the rules of a craft; and when this art was used to describe a title to lands, and to define the extent of those lands, it still remained necessary, for the safety of those who held this book-land, that the natural signs should be used, if any knowledge of these things was to be preserved by the people, who were carefully excluded from any dealings with so subtile an agency as the lawyer’s quill. And I think we may safely conclude that the most prominent and permanent objects, natural or artificial, would be invariably chosen to point out the bounds of original settlement, when the time had come to render land marks necessary.