Bedfont is a district within the London Borough of Hounslow in West London. It is 21 km west-southwest of Charing Cross and 2 miles from Heathrow Airport. It contains the area that is informally referred to as North Feltham and the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is identified in the Domesday Book as ‘Bedefunde’, which is believed to come from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘Bedfunta’, which means ‘bed’s spring’. It states that the manors of Bedfont, Hatton and Stanmore were all held by William Fitz Other. Just before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was built, just a couple of miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists found Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that people were living in and around Bedfont over these periods.
The populace of Bedfont stood at 12,701 in the 2011 census. The number of inhabitants began to rise when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This caused rising demand for neighbourhood housing, specifically as the village of Heathrow was lost as well as 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 back to the late fifteenth century. Fawns Manor is around the south side of the Green and dates from the sixteenth century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.