Feltham History

📜 Home in the fields

The name is Old English: feld, an open field or clearing, and ham, a homestead. Home in the fields. It describes a settlement in a clearing south of the Roman road to Staines, centuries before the Normans arrived.

It appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Felteham — 21 households, ten ploughlands, and an annual value of six pounds. The lord was Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother to William the Conqueror.

After Mortain’s son rebelled and forfeited his lands, the manor passed through the Redvers family, then the de Burghs, and in 1228 to Henry III along with neighbouring Kempton. Henry VIII annexed Feltham to the manor of Hampton Court, where it stayed until 1631.

There is a second theory about the name: felte, the Old English word for mullein, a soft woolly-leaved plant. Less tidy, but local historians keep it on the table.

🔥 1634: the year Feltham lost its past

In 1634 the village burnt down. Not partially — the fire appears to have destroyed the parish records along with the buildings.

That is why Feltham’s written history has a hole in it. Almost nothing survives from before that year, and much of what is known about medieval Feltham comes from records held elsewhere.

The exception is St Dunstan’s Church, which keeps a list of its priests going back to 1322. The church is thought to have been dedicated to Dunstan around 988, at the very end of his life — he had been Archbishop of Canterbury. The present building was rebuilt in 1802, and celebrated its bicentenary in 2002.

🚢 The river that was dug by hand

The Longford River running through Feltham is not a natural watercourse. It was cut in 1638 on the orders of Charles I.

It branches off the Colne at Longford and winds across what was Hounslow Heath, and its purpose was practical: to give Hampton Court Palace a better water supply for its ornamental fountains.

The official reason for the work was to provide employment for “idle soldiers”. Over the centuries it has been called the New River, the King’s River, the Queen’s River, the Cardinal’s River and the Duke of Northumberland’s River.

Three hundred and ninety years later it is still flowing through the middle of town, and most people walk over it without knowing a king had it dug.

🚃 1848: the village becomes a town

The railway arrived in 1848, and everything changed.

Before it, Feltham was farmland. Afterwards, the centre of the village moved north, away from St Dunstan’s Church and towards the station — which is roughly where the town centre still sits today.

The numbers tell it plainly. The population was 1,109 in 1851. By 1861 it was 1,837 — up two-thirds in a decade. City workers could now live in the countryside and work in London, and large houses went up to accommodate them.

Feltham became an Urban District in 1903, absorbed East Bedfont and Hanworth in 1930, and in 1965 Middlesex was abolished and Feltham became part of the new London Borough of Hounslow.

🏭 Gunpowder, then Ford

For most of its history Feltham was agricultural, with two notable exceptions: gunpowder mills at North Feltham and at Hanworth. Dangerous work, sited away from housing for obvious reasons.

The twentieth century brought heavy industry. The Ford Motor Company opened a plant in Feltham in 1923, and for sixty years it was a mainstay of the local economy. Its closure in the 1980s pushed the town towards retail, services and light industry — the shape it still has.

And then Heathrow. The airport’s growth made Feltham a freight and logistics town, which is why so many of the jobs advertised here now are air cargo, import and export.

🎸 Two members of Queen grew up in Feltham

Everyone knows about Freddie Mercury. Fewer people know Brian May grew up here too, a short distance away.

22 Gladstone Avenue

Farrokh Bulsara’s family arrived in Britain from Zanzibar in 1964, fleeing the revolution. His parents Jer and Bomi chose Feltham because Jer already had a sister living locally. Freddie was 17.

He lived at 22 Gladstone Avenue, TW14 9LL until 1969, when he left to commit to the band. He had a holiday job washing dishes at Heathrow. His sister Kashmira remembers competing for the house’s only bathroom with a brother who spent hours on his hair.

The Hendrix record

It was in the back bedroom of that house that it started. Brian May, at the plaque unveiling, remembered visiting:

He had a Dansette record player and I distinctly remember him putting a Jimi Hendrix record on. He said ‘Listen to this, this is what we have to do!’ And I said to him, ‘Well, can you sing?’

May added: “As boys we conquered the world in a way that was beyond our wildest dreams.”

The blue plaque

English Heritage unveiled a blue plaque at the house in September 2016, twenty-five years after Mercury’s death. Brian May and Kashmira Cooke did the honours. It is the only English Heritage blue plaque to Freddie Mercury anywhere in London.

If you visit: it is a private home on a quiet residential street. Look from the pavement, and respect the people who live there.

Elsewhere in Feltham

Part of Hanworth Road has been renamed Freddie Mercury Close — the address of the World Zoroastrian Organisation’s headquarters. Mercury was born a Zoroastrian.

And the Freddie Mercury Memorial Garden at Feltham Green is maintained by the Friends of Feltham Green, who also look after the pond and the Eco Cabin.

📚 Finding out more

Friends of Feltham Green research and publish local history, and maintain the Memorial Garden and Eco Cabin — felthamgreen.org

Feltham Community Hub & Library holds local studies material and can point you at the Hounslow local history collection. Library details →

St Dunstan’s Church keeps its own records, including the list of priests from 1322.

If you have photographs, memories or corrections, we would like to hear them — roundaboutfeltham@gmail.com