Bayswater: home of the original pipeline

‘Bayswater’ sounds faintly lace curtained to me. Just a slight slip with spellchecker and you have ‘Backwater’. And somehow, although Bayswater had much of the same grand stucco as Belgravia, it never seemed to quite reach the premier league of London property locations. The stucco always seemed a bit dusty in Bayswater. 

There are a couple of very interesting things about Bayswater though, from a historical point of view. The name comes from Bayard’s Watering, a spring near Queensway. Bayswater Road is part of an original Roman road known as the Via Trinobantia. That isn’t the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that from 1439 to 1812 a water pipe known as the Bayswater Conduit ran all the way from Bayswater to the City of London to provide the City with a water supply. I just think that’s incredible that you could transport water that far in something made of bits of wood slotted together.

The other interesting thing about Bayswater is that it’s where most criminals were executed until 1783. The gallows - known as “Tyburn tree” - stood at the junction of Edgware Rd and Bayswater Road. That’s where Tybyurnia, the eastern part of Bayswater near Hyde Park Corner and Edgware Road, gets its name. Charming.

Connaught Place was built between 1807 and 1815 and took its name from the Earl of Connaught who built a house in the area. This started the process of making the area north of Hyde Park fashionable. Connaught Square was built in the 1820s.

The Bishop of London owned an estate here, known as the Hyde Park estate, and this was developed in the 1830s. The style – mansions faced with stucco - followed the style of John Nash’s terraces in Regent’s Park. The Bishop of London’s estate is now owned by the Church Commissioners. From the 1930s onwards, they redeveloped parts of the Bayswater area where houses had fallen into disuse. After the construction of Tyburnia, building spread further west to include Lancaster Gate and more large terraces and squares with massive and luxurious houses were built in the 1860s. A particular feature of the area was the planting of a considerable number of trees in the terraces and streets, many of which are still there.