Bedfont is a district in the London Borough of Hounslow in West London. It is 13 miles west-southwest of Charing Cross and two miles from Heathrow Airport. It contains the area which is informally called North Feltham and the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is referred to within the Domesday Book as ‘Bedefunde’, which is believed to result from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘Bedfunta’, which means ‘bed’s spring’. It states that the manors of Bedfont, Hatton and Stanmore had been all held by William Fitz Other. Before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was built, just a few miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists discovered Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that people were living in and around Bedfont in these periods.
The citizenry of Bedfont stood at 12,701 in the 2011 census. The number of inhabitants began to increase when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This brought on rising demand for local housing, particularly as the village of Heathrow was lost together with part of the Hamlet of Hatton.
Bedfont has two surviving manor houses: Pates Manor, once owned by the Page family, and Fawns Manor. Pates Manor is behind the Church of St Mary the Virgin and dates from the late 15th century. Fawns Manor is around the south side of the Green and dates back to the 16th century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.