| Edgware Road | |
| The Edgware Road at Paddington | |
| Road number | Part of the A5 road |
| Location | West London (Westminster, Camden, Barnet), UK |
| Length | 9 miles (14 km) |
| Construction began | 43 A.D. |
| Direction | North-west |
| Start | Marble Arch |
| End | Edgware |
| Landmarks | Marble Arch, Gaumont State Cinema, Tricycle Theatre, St Augustine's, Kilburn, St. Lawrence, Little Stanmore |
| Known for | Shopping; Lebanese cuisine; |
| Passes through | Marble Arch, Maida Vale, Kilburn, Cricklewood, Staples Corner, West Hendon, Burnt Oak |
Edgware Road is a major street which passes through the west of central London, England, starting at Marble Arch in the City of Westminster (south end) and working its way up to Edgware in the London Borough of Barnet. It is also the divider of several North London boroughs. The route has its origins as a Roman Road and today is part of the modern A5 road, undergoing several name changes along its length, including Maida Vale, Kilburn High Road, Shoot Up Hill and Cricklewood Broadway but the road is, as a whole, known as the Edgware Road, as it is the road to Edgware.
The southern part of the road near Marble Arch, noted for its distinct Middle Eastern cuisine and many late-night bars and shisha cafes, is known to Londoners by nicknames such as Little Cairo,[1][2] Little Beirut[3] and, especially near Camden, Little Cyprus.[4][5]
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As a road, it runs north-west from Marble Arch to Edgware on the outskirts of London. It crosses the Harrow Road and Marylebone Road (passing beneath the Marylebone flyover). The road passes through the suburbs of Maida Vale, Kilburn and Cricklewood. It is then joined by the North Circular Road before West Hendon at Staples Corner. After this, the road continues even further north, through The Hyde, Colindale, Burnt Oak, and finally, to Edgware.
The southernmost part of the Edgware Road forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such is part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. However, when the zone was extended in February 2007, the road became part of the "free through routes" which allows vehicles to cross the zone during its hours of operation without paying the charge.
As it passes through the suburbs, the road name changes several times, becoming Maida Vale, Kilburn High Road and Shoot-Up Hill (in Kilburn), and Cricklewood Broadway (in Cricklewood), before becoming Edgware Road once again with intermittent stretches as West Hendon Broadway, and The Hyde. Along the entire route, it retains its identity as the A5 road under the Great Britain road numbering scheme. The A5 continues beyond the end of the Edgware Road, following the old Roman route and finally terminating in Holyhead, Wales.
The name "Edgware Road" is also used to refer to an informal district of London, meaning the area around Marble Arch between Cumberland Gate, just south of Marble Arch, and the north-east corner of Hyde Park.[6] The district's northern boundary is the Marylebone flyover.[6]
The postal codes of the area are W1, W2 and NW1.
The portion of the road stretching between Marble Arch and the Marylebone Flyover also separates the areas of Marylebone and Bayswater.
Before the Romans, today's Edgware Road began as an ancient trackway within the Great Middlesex Forest.[6] The Romans later incorporated the track into Watling Street.[6]
Centuries later, the road was improved by the Edgware-Kilburn turnpike trust in 1711, and a number of the local inns functioned as a stop for coaches, some of which still exist.
During the 18th century, it was a destination for Huguenot migrants.[6] By 1811, Thomas Telford produced a re-design for what was then known as a section of the London to Holyhead road, a redesign considered one of the most important feats of pre-Victorian engineering.;[6] Telford's redesign emerged only a year after the area saw the establishment of Great Britain's first Indian restaurant.[6]
The area began to attract Arab migrants in the late 19th century during a period of increased trade with the Ottoman Empire. The trend continued with the arrival of Egyptians in the 1950s, and greatly expanded beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present when events including the Lebanese Civil War, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and unrest in Algeria brought more Arabs to the area.[6] They established the present-day mix of bars and shisha cafes, which make the area known to Londoners by nicknames such as "Little Cairo"[2][7] and "Little Beirut."[3] These shisha cafés have been hard hit by the enforcement of the England-wide smoking ban in 2007.
One of the two Edgware Road tube stations was one of the sites of the 7 July bombings. A bomb was detonated on a train leaving the tube station serving the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines) and heading for Paddington tube station. Six people were killed in the blast: Colin Morley, 52, Jennifer Vanda Ann Nicholson, 22, Johnathan Downey, 34, Laura Webb, 29, Michael Brewster, 52, and David Foulkes, 22. The perpetrator was the ringleader of the 7 July bombings, Mohammed Siddique Khan. On the first anniversary of the bombings, a memorial plaque to the victims was unveiled at the station.
The southernmost part of the road, south of the junction with Marylebone Road, is noted for its distinct Middle Eastern flavour. Many Lebanese restaurants, shisha cafes and Arabic-themed nightclubs line the street. The Odeon cinema, once the location of the biggest screen in London, often shows films in Arabic.
Edgware Road is unique as a district, rich in ethnic culture, yet also in a very central area of London.[8] The area is known for its distinctive and diverse communities from across the Middle East and Africa, with British Iranian comedian Omid Djalili describing Edgware Road as "after Damascus, Medina and Mecca, is probably the most Islamic place on the planet".[9][10]
In addition to branches of the typical Starbucks, Pret a Manger, Subway and Costa Coffee chains, Edgware Road is home to several Maroush restaurants, a whisky bar named Salt and a large variety of kebab and shawarma restaurants that remain open through the night. Edgware Road is noted for containing within it the famous Church Street Market.
Edgware Road is a major thoroughfare for a number of London bus routes, and is intersected by several London Underground lines along its length.
A number of schemes have been put forward in the past to construct an Underground railway line underneath Edgware Road, including a plan to extend the Bakerloo line north to Cricklewood and an unusual proposal to build an underground monorail system,[11] but these schemes did not succeed. Today, London Buses provide the only public transport along the length of the road.
Mainline rail stations:
Night bus route 16 is the only route to run the full length of the Edgware Road, from Victoria station to Edgware.
Day bus routes operating over a significant length of Edgware Road are: