Hounslow

From the records: “Local history accounts and an inscription outside the County Court claim that Julius Cæsar crossed the Thames here during his invasion of Britain in 54 BC, and fought a battle with Cassivellaunus close by.”

From the records: “One well known Iron Age piece from about 100 BC – AD 50 is the Brentford horn-cap – a ceremonial chariot fitting that formed part of local antiquarian Thomas Layton's collection, now held by the Museum of London.”

From the records: “The monument commemorates four major events in Brentford's history: the supposed crossing of the Thames by Julius Caesar in 54 BC; the Council of Brentford by King Offa of Mercia in 781; the defeat of King Canute by King Edmund Ironside at the first Battle of Brentford in 1016; and the second Battle of Brentford in 1642.”

From the records: “Chiswick was first recorded c. 1000 as the Old English Ceswican meaning 'Cheese Farm'; the riverside area of Duke's Meadows is thought to have supported an annual cheese fair up until the 18th century.”

From the records: “The monument commemorates four major events in Brentford's history: the supposed crossing of the Thames by Julius Caesar in 54 BC; the Council of Brentford by King Offa of Mercia in 781; the defeat of King Canute by King Edmund Ironside at the first Battle of Brentford in 1016; and the second Battle of Brentford in 1642.”

From the records: “Isleworth was a well-cultivated farming and trading settlement, more valuable than many of its neighbours at the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066.”

From the records: “Old Chiswick grew up as a village around St Nicholas Church from c. 1181 on Church Street, its inhabitants practising farming, fishing and other riverside trades including a ferry, important as there were no bridges between London Bridge and Kingston throughout the Middle Ages.”

From the records: “Hounslow was centred around the Holy Trinity Priory founded in 1211.”

From the records: “In 1227, when he took control of England from his childhood regents, Henry III seized Isleworth manor and other property of the Saint Valeri family and gave the manor to his brother, Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall.”

From the records: “In 1415 Henry V granted nuns from the Swedish Bridgettine order land on the bank of the Thames, firstly in Twickenham opposite his new Sheen Palace, where they built their first house Syon Monastery.”

From the records: “Forty-six years later, in 1594 Queen Elizabeth I granted a lease of the manor of Syon to Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland on his marriage to Dorothy Devereux the younger daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, who later received a grant of the freehold from King James I in 1604.”

From the records: “1616 – 1617 Pocahontas, a Native American woman, belonging to the Powhatan people, resided in Brentford with her husband, John Rolfe and son Thomas.”

From the records: “In November 1642 a Royalist army advancing on London overcame a much smaller Parliamentarian force in battle at Brentford.”

From the records: “By 1650 the town comprised 120 houses, of which a significant proportion operated as inns or alehouses to accommodate travellers.”

From the records: “Mary Cromwell, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, lived in Sutton Manor in Little Sutton from 1676 to her death in 1713.”

From the records: “In the 18th century, the poet Alexander Pope, author of The Rape of the Lock, lived in Chiswick between 1716 and 1719, in the building which is now the Mawson Arms at the corner of Mawson Lane.”

From the records: “Chiswick House was designed by the Third Earl of Burlington, and built for him, in 1726–29 as an extension to an earlier Jacobean house (subsequently demolished in 1788); it is considered to be among the finest surviving examples of Palladian architecture in Britain, with superb collections of paintings and furniture.”

From the records: “The artist William Hogarth bought the house now known as Hogarth's House in 1749, lived there until his death in 1764, and is buried in St Nicholas's churchyard.”

From the records: “It became fashionable in 1759 when Kew Bridge opened just upstream, with the royal family at Kew Palace nearby.”

From the records: “There is evidence of a Black community in Isleworth in the 18th century.”

From the records: “In 1784 the first accurate measurements were made on the heath to establish the base line for the Ordnance Survey trigonometrical survey of Great Britain.”

From the records: “New Brentford was first described as the county town of Middlesex in 1789, on the basis that it was the location of elections of knights for the shire (or Members of Parliament (MPs)) from 1701.”

From the records: “In 1793, the Cavalry Barracks were constructed and were extended with the Beavers Lane Camp.”

From the records: “Because the local economy was heavily reliant on transit the introduction of the railways during the 1830s and 1840s triggered an economic depression.”

From the records: “It was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built between 1855 and 1859 at the confluence of the River Thames and River Brent – part of the land was James Montgomrey's Montgomrey's Wharf.”

From the records: “Suburban building began in Gunnersbury in the 1860s and in Bedford Park, the first garden suburb, on the borders of Chiswick and Acton, in 1875.”

From the records: “The painter Vincent van Gogh spent three years in Chiswick in the 1870s, teaching Sunday school pupils in the newly-constructed Chiswick Congregational Church, which was on the site of the Arlington Park Mansions on Turnham Green; he wrote of Chiswick as a "verdant" district of London.”

From the records: “Yeats lived in Woodstock Road as a boy from 1879, and came back in 1887 to live in Blenheim Road, where, inspired by Chiswick Eyot, he wrote The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

From the records: “Another engineer, John Edward Thornycroft was born in Chiswick in 1872; his father, John Isaac Thornycroft, had founded the Chiswick-based John I.”

From the records: “Hounslow Heath Aerodrome was a grass airfield and was operational from 1910 to 1920.”

From the records: “The motor car manufacturer Aston Martin had its main factory in Feltham between 1926 (when it bought the former Whitehead Aircraft factory) and 1963.”

From the records: “Gillette, the American razor manufacturer, built its UK factory and HQ here in 1936–1937.”

From the records: “The first V-2 rocket to hit London fell on Staveley Road, Chiswick, at 6.43pm on 8 September 1944, killing three people, injuring 22 others and causing extensive damage to surrounding trees and buildings.”

From the records: “The borough was created in 1965 under the London Government Act 1963, covering the combined area of the former Municipal Borough of Brentford and Chiswick, the Municipal Borough of Heston and Isleworth and Feltham Urban District.”

From the records: “In April 1965 the Beatles film Help used the City Barge pub on the Thames as a backdrop and on 20 May 1966 the band filmed two of their earliest promotional films for the songs "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" in the grounds of Chiswick House.”

From the records: “Osterley/Isleworth has been home to satellite television broadcaster Sky since its launch in 1989 by Rupert Murdoch.”