Bedfont
Bedfont is a district in the London Borough of Hounslow in West London. It is 21 km west-southwest of Charing Cross and 2 miles from Heathrow Airport. It includes the area which is informally known as North Feltham along with the neighbourhood of Hatton.
Bedfont is referred to in 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 couple of miles north of Bedfont, archaeologists found Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman artefacts, suggesting that individuals had been residing in and around Bedfont in these eras.
The populace of Bedfont stood at 12,701 in the 2011 census. The number of inhabitants started to rise when Heathrow Airport was opened in 1946. This brought on rising demand for neighbourhood housing, especially as the village of Heathrow was lost together with 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 around the south side of the Green and dates from the sixteenth century, now belonging to the British Airways Housing Association.