Ealing

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Template:Infobox London place Ealing is a place in the London Borough of Ealing. It is a suburban development situated 7.7 miles (12.4 km) west of Charing Cross.

Ealing derives its name from Gillingas, meaning the people of Gilla, who may have been an Anglo-Saxon settler. Over the centuries, the name has changed, and has been known as Yealing, Zelling and Eling, until Ealing became the standard spelling in the nineteenth century.

Ealing is home to Thames Valley University and the West London College.

1 History
2 Ealing Studios
3 Trivia
4 External links

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History

Archaeological evidence shows that some parts of Ealing have been occupied for at least 7,000 years - iron age pots have been discovered on Horsenden Hill. The name Ealing comes from the Saxon place-name Gillingas, and a settlement is recorded here in the twelfth century, amid a great forest that carpeted the area to the west of London.

The earliest surviving English census is that for Ealing in 1599. The list was a census of all 85 households in Ealing village giving the names of the inhabitants, together with their ages, relationships and occupations. It survives in manuscript form in the Public Record Office (PRO E 163/24/35), and has been transcribed and printed by K J Allison. Image:Ealing Town Hall front.jpg Settlements were scattered throughout the parish. Many of them were along what we would now call St. Mary's Road, near to the church, which was in the centre of the parish. There were also houses at Little Ealing, Ealing Dean, Haven Green, Drayton Green and Castlebar Hill.

The Church of St. Mary's, Ealing, the parish church, dates back to at least the early twelfth century. The parish of Ealing was divided into manors, such as those of Gunnersbury and Pitshanger. These were farmed, the crops being mostly rye, but also wheat and maslin. There were also animals, such as cows, sheep and chickens.

The first maps of Ealing were made in the 18th century and give an impression of what the parish looked like. It was mostly made up of open countryside and fields, where, as in previous centuries, the main occupation was farming. However, there was an important road running from west to east through the centre of the parish. This road, later to be known as the Uxbridge Road, ran eastwards to London and westwards to Oxford. Along this route were many inns, where horses could be changed and travellers refresh themselves. Those in Ealing were The Feathers, The Bell, The Green Man and The Old Hats. Image:Ealing civic centre front.jpg As London developed, the area became predominantly market gardens. In the 1850s with improved travel (the Great Western Railway (God's Wonderful Railway) and two branches of the Grand Union Canal) villages started to grow into towns, and then merged into unbroken residential areas. It also became known as the "Queen of the suburbs".

The most important changes to Ealing happened in the 19th century. The building of the Great Western Railway in the 1830s, part of which passed through the centre of Ealing led to the opening of a railway station on Ealing Broadway in 1838. In the next few decades, there was a large amount of speculative building throughout Ealing. These were mostly semi-detached houses, designed for the rising middle class. Better transport links, including horse buses as well as trains, meant that people could more easily travel to work in London but live in what was still considered to be the countryside. Of course, the countryside was rapidly disappearing. Fortunately, parts of it were preserved as public parks, such as Lammas Park and Walpole Park.

It was during the Victorian period that Ealing became a town. This meant that roads had to be built, drainage provided, schools and public buildings erected. The man responsible for much of all this was Charles Jones, Borough Surveyor from 1863-1913. He also designed the Town Hall, both the present one and the older one that is now a bank, on the Mall. Ealing Broadway became a major shopping centre.

In 1901 Walpole Park was opened and the first electric trams ran along the Uxbridge Road - a mode of transport due to be reintroduced some 110 years later in the form of the West London Tram scheme. There is great resistance to this and many of the residents have anti tram posters up in their window. Also in 1901 Ealing Urban District was incorporated as a municipal borough.

The building of the new shopping centre, opened in 1985, drastically altered part of the centre of Ealing.

At midnight, Thursday, August 2, 2001 a 40kg bomb hidden in a vehicle exploded outside Ealing Broadway railway station, destroying numerous shops in the immediate vicinity. Seven people suffered mild injuries. The bomb was placed by "Irish dissidents" thought to be members of the Real IRA.

Towards the end of the century, Ealing saw a dramatic increase in scumbag kids roaming the streets after dark. Many thought this to be part of an evil plan hatched by a super-criminal the likes of which have not been seen since Superman defeated the evil Lex Luther in Superman III. However, it was soon proved that these aggressive, cap-wearing youths were in fact residents of the borough intent on reeking havoc in the once placid streets of suburbia.

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Ealing Studios

Template:Main Ealing's claim to fame was the film Studios which produced a series of well-known comedies in the 1950's – Kind Hearts and Coronets, Passport to Pimlico, The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob, etc. The studios were taken over by the BBC in 1955, and bits of Ealing started appearing in television programmes ranging from Doctor Who to Monty Python's Flying Circus.

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Trivia

In James Hilton's famous novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934), Katherine, the lovely young wife of the shy schoolmaster protagonist Mr. Chipping, is said to have been living with an aunt in Ealing following the death of her parents.

The political couple, former European commissioner and leader of the labour party Neil Kinnock and his wife Glenys Kinnock who is a member of the European Parliament have their London home in Ealing.

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