Bedford Park
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This section will look at a development that Sir John Betjeman, who founded the Victorian Society, called “the most significant suburb built in the last century, probably the most significant in the Western world.” Writing in the Daily Telegraph in August 1960, Betjeman's description of Bedford Park echoed the great architectural writer Herman Muthesius who, as far back as 1906, wrote: “There was at the time virtually no development that could compare in artistic charm with Bedford Park... and herein lies the immense importance of Bedford Park in the history of the English house."
Early History of Bedford Park[edit]
Bedford Park sits on the main Roman Road through London to Bath in the West, which followed the same straight line as today’s Oxford Street through what is now Acton Green. Until the 19th century, while Bedford Park and Stamford Brook were made up of market gardens and small hamlets and is bisected at various points by the Stamford Brook and its tributary the Bollo (‘bull hollow’) on their course to the Thames at Hammersmith.
The area of land that eventually became Bedford Park previously had a number of large villas occupied by eminent people including Melbourne House, one of three Georgian houses built by John Bedford in 1793. The others were Sydney House (on the site of the flats in Woodstock Road of the same name) and Bedford House which was the home of Dr John Lindley, the botanist and later, the father-in-law of Bedford Park's developer Jonathan Carr.