Bedfont is a district inside the London Borough of Hounslow in West London. It is 21 km west-southwest of Charing Cross and two miles from Heathrow Airport. It includes the area that is informally known as North Feltham plus the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is identified inside the Domesday Book as ‘Bedefunde’, which is believed to derive 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 few miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists found Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that people were residing in and around Bedfont in these eras.
The population 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 brought on escalating demand for neighbourhood housing, specifically as the village of Heathrow was lost as well as a 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 on the south side of the Green and dates from the 16th century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.