Bedfont
Bedfont is a district inside 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 is informally referred to as North Feltham and the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is referred to within 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 were all held by William Fitz Other. Before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was constructed, just a few miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists discovered Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that individuals had been living in and around Bedfont during these times.
The populace of Bedfont stood at 12,701 in the 2011 census. The amount of inhabitants started to rise when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This triggered increasing demand for nearby housing, especially as the village of Heathrow was lost in addition to 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 fifteenth century. Fawns Manor is on the south side of the Green and dates back to the 16th century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.
