| Paddington | |
St Mary's Hospital |
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Paddington
Paddington shown within Greater London |
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| OS grid reference | TQ267814 |
|---|---|
| London borough | Westminster |
| Ceremonial county | Greater London |
| Region | London |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LONDON |
| Postcode district | W2 |
| Dialling code | 020 |
| Police | Metropolitan |
| Fire | London |
| Ambulance | London |
| EU Parliament | London |
| UK Parliament | Cities of London and Westminster |
| London Assembly | West Central |
| List of places: UK • England • London | |
Paddington is a district within the City of Westminster, in central London, England. Formerly a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddington station, designed by the celebrated engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened in 1847; St Mary's Hospital and Paddington Green police station (the most important high-security police station in the United Kingdom).
A major project called Paddington Waterside aims to regenerate former railway and canal land between 1998 and 2018, and the area is seeing many new developments.
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The earliest extant reference to Padington, historically a part of Middlesex, was made in 1056.
In the later Elizabethan and early Stuart era, the rectory and associated estate houses were occupied by the Small (or Smale) family. Nicholas Small was a clothworker sufficiently well connected to have his new wife's (Jane Small) portrait painted by Holbein. Nicholas died in 1565 and his wife married again, to Nicholas Parkinson, who also resided in Paddington. Parkinson went on to be the Master of the Clothworker's company. Jane Small continued to live in Paddington after her second husband's death, and her manor house was big enough to have been let to Sir John Popham, the attorney general, in the 1580s. At this time there was an inn attached to the estate, named Blowers.[1]&[2]
By 1773, a contemporary historian determined that "London may now be said to include two cities, one borough and forty six antient villages", Paddington and adjoining Marybone (Marylebone) being named as two of those villages.[3]
Roman roads formed the parish's north-eastern and southern boundaries from Marble Arch: Watling Street (later Edgware Road) and the Uxbridge road, known by the 1860s as Bayswater Road. They were toll roads in the 18th century, before and after the dismantling of the permanent Tyburn gallows "tree" at their junction in 1759. By 1800, the area was also traversed by the Harrow Road and an arm of the Grand Union Canal.[4]:p 174
Webster's dictionary[5] defines three slang terms related to Paddington: "Paddington Fair Day" which refers to a public hanging day at the Tyburn Gallows (Tyburn being part of Paddington Parish); "Paddington Fair" which means a public execution; and "To dance the Paddington frisk" which means "to be hanged". Webster's dictionary cites Brewer's Dictionary and the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811, for these uses of Paddington. Public executions were abolished in England in 1868.[6]
Paddington station is the terminus for commuter services to the west of England (e.g., Slough, Maidenhead, Reading, Swindon) and mainline services to Oxford, Bristol, Bath, Taunton, Exeter, Plymouth, Cornwall and South Wales (including Cardiff, Bridgend and Swansea). The Heathrow Express serves Heathrow Airport.
In the station are statues of its designer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and the children's fiction character Paddington Bear.
Commercial traffic on the canal dwindled in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and freight moved from rail to road after World War II, leading to the abandonment of the goods yards in the early 1980s. The land lay derelict until the Paddington Waterside Partnership was established in 1998 to coordinate the regeneration of the area between the Westway, Praed Street and Westbourne Terrace. This includes major developments on the goods yard site (now branded PaddingtonCentral) and around the canal (Paddington Basin).
Kingfisher plc has its head office in Paddington.[7]
The Victorian poet Robert Browning moved from No. 1 Chichester Road to Beauchamp Lodge, 19 Warwick Crescent, in 1862 and lived there until 1887.[4]:pp 198-204 He is reputed to have named that precinct, on the junction of two canals, "Little Venice", a legend that was disputed by Lord Kinross in 1966[8] and by London Canals.[9] Both assert that Lord Byron humorously coined the name, which is now applied more loosely to a longer reach of the canal system.
St Mary's Hospital in Praed Street is the site of several notable medical accomplishments. In 1874, C R Alder Wright synthesised heroin (diacetylmorphine). Also there, in 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming first isolated penicillin, earning the award of a Nobel Prize. The hospital has an Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum[10] where visitors can see Fleming's laboratory, restored to its 1928 condition, and explore the story of Fleming and the discovery and development of penicillin through displays and video.
Edward Wilson, physician, naturalist and ornithologist, who died in 1912 on Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated British Antarctic expedition, had earlier practised as a doctor in Paddington. The former Senior Street primary school was renamed the Edward Wilson School after him in 1951.[4]:pp 265-271
Seventeenth century Paddington is one of the settings in the fiction based on fact novel 'A Spurious Brood', which tells the story of Katherine More, whose children were transported to America on board the Pilgrim Fathers' ship, the Mayflower.
Paddington Bear, from deepest, darkest, Peru, immigrated to England via Paddington Station.
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