Bedfont
Bedfont is a district in the London Borough of Hounslow in West London. It's 13 miles west-southwest of Charing Cross and 2 miles from Heathrow Airport. It contains the area that's informally known as North Feltham plus the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is referred to inside the Domesday Book as ‘Bedefunde’, which is thought 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 few miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists found Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that people had been living in and around Bedfont over these eras.
The populace of Bedfont stood at 12,701 in the 2011 census. The number of inhabitants started to increase when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This caused increasing demand for local 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 from the late fifteenth century. Fawns Manor is around the south side of the Green and dates from the 16th century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.
