Bedfont
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 consists of 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 come 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. Just before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was constructed, just a couple of miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists found Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that individuals had been living in and around Bedfont in these times.
The populace of Bedfont stood at 12,701 at the 2011 census. The number of inhabitants began to increase when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This brought on increasing demand for neighbourhood housing, specifically as the village of Heathrow was lost together with some 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 15th century. Fawns Manor is on the south side of the Green and dates back to the sixteenth century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.
