Bedfont is a district in the London Borough of Hounslow in West London. It is 13 miles west-southwest of Charing Cross and 2 miles from Heathrow Airport. It includes the area which is informally referred to as North Feltham as well as the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is described in 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 were all held by William Fitz Other. Just before Heathrow’s Terminal Five was built, just a couple of miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists discovered Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that people were living in and around Bedfont during these periods.
The citizenry of Bedfont stood at 12,701 in the 2011 census. The amount of inhabitants began to increase when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This brought on increasing demand for neighbourhood 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 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.