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 includes the area which is informally known as North Feltham and also the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is identified in the Domesday Book as ‘Bedefunde’, which is believed to originate 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 5 was constructed, just a couple of miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists discovered Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that people were living in and around Bedfont in these periods.
The citizenry of Bedfont stood at 12,701 at the 2011 census. The number of inhabitants started to rise when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This triggered increasing demand for local housing, especially as the village of Heathrow was lost in addition to 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 from the late 15th century. Fawns Manor is on the south side of the Green and dates from the sixteenth century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.
