Bedfont
Bedfont is a district inside 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 is informally called North Feltham along with the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is referenced within 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. Before Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was built, just a few 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 eras.
The population 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 triggered increasing demand for neighbourhood housing, particularly 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 around the south side of the Green and dates from the sixteenth century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.
