Edgware Road

Coordinates: 51°30′48″N 0°09′37″W / 51.5133°N 0.1604°W / 51.5133; -0.1604
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Edgware Road
Tricycle Theatre, St Augustine's, Kilburn
,

Edgware Road is a major road in

Kilburn High Road, Shoot Up Hill and Cricklewood Broadway; but the road is, as a whole, known as the Edgware Road, as it is the road to Edgware
.

The road runs from central to suburban London, beginning at Marble Arch in the City of Westminster and heading north to Edgware in the London Borough of Barnet. It is used as the boundary for four London boroughs: Harrow and Brent to the west, and Barnet and Camden to the east.

Route

Edgware Road at Paddington

The road runs north-west from

North Circular Road before West Hendon at Staples Corner. After this, the road continues in the same direction, through the Hyde, Colindale, Burnt Oak, and then reaches Edgware
.

Shoot-up Hill, one of several names for Edgware Road.

The southernmost part of the Edgware Road forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such is part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. However, when the zone was extended in February 2007, the road became part of the "free through routes" which allows vehicles to cross the zone during its hours of operation without paying the charge.

The southern part of the road between

Camden, Little Cyprus.[4][5]

As it passes through the various neighbourhoods, the road name changes several times, becoming

Maida Vale, Kilburn High Road and Shoot-Up Hill (in Kilburn), and Cricklewood Broadway (in Cricklewood), before becoming Edgware Road once again with intermittent stretches as West Hendon Broadway, and the Hyde. Along the entire route, it retains its identity as the A5 road under the Great Britain road numbering scheme. The A5 continues beyond the end of the Edgware Road, following the old Roman road for much of its route and terminating at Holyhead, Wales (a port for Ireland
).

History

Roman Britain, with the route of Watling Street in red
Hyde Park toll gate

incorporated the track into Watling Street.[6]

Many centuries later, the road was improved by the Edgware-Kilburn turnpike trust in 1711, and a number of the local inns, functioned as stops for coaches, although they would have been quite close to the starting point of coach routes from London.

During the 18th century, it was a destination for

Indian restaurant.[6]

The area began to attract Arab migrants in the late 19th century during a period of increased trade with the Ottoman Empire. The trend continued with the arrival of Egyptians and Iraqis in the 1950s, and greatly expanded beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present when events including the Lebanese Civil War and unrest in Algeria brought more Arabs to the area.[6] They established the present-day mix of bars and shisha cafes, which make the area known to Londoners by nicknames such as "Little Cairo"[2][7] and "Little Beirut."[3] These shisha cafés have been hard hit by the enforcement of the England-wide smoking ban in 2007.

One of the two Edgware Road tube stations was one of the sites of the

Mohammed Siddique Khan
. On the first anniversary of the bombings, a memorial plaque to the victims was unveiled at the station.

Districts and surrounding area

The name "Edgware Road" is used to refer to informally to this area of London, meaning the area immediately to the north of Marble Arch. The district's northern boundary is the Marylebone flyover.[6]

The postal codes of the area are W1, W2, NW1 and NW2.

The part of the road between Marble Arch and the Marylebone Flyover also separates the areas of Marylebone and Bayswater.

Sculpture "The Window Cleaner" by Allan Sly outside the tube station.

Edgware Road is well represented in terms of communities from across the Middle East and North Africa.[8]

The 'Tyburn tree', once the principal site of executions in London

Transport

A number 16 bus
One of the Edgware Road tube stations

Edgware Road has several London bus routes, and is intersected by several London Underground lines along its length or nearby. A number of schemes have been put forward in the past to construct an Underground railway line underneath Edgware Road, including a plan to extend the Bakerloo line north to Cricklewood and an unusual proposal to build an underground monorail system,[9] but these schemes did not succeed. Today, London Buses provide the only public transport along the length of the road.

National Rail

Mainline and Overground rail stations:

London Underground

Bus routes

Night bus N16 is the only route to run the full length of the Edgware Road, from Victoria station
to Edgware.

Day bus routes operating over a significant length of Edgware Road are:

References

  1. ^ Times Online: London high life hit as rich Arabs decamp, retrieved 29/03/07
  2. ^ a b Telegraph: Never talk about what you wear...
  3. ^ a b This Is London: Little Beirut
  4. ^ Anthony, Andrew, "A Kentish Town killing", The Observer, 18 June 2000
  5. ISBN 978-0-85365-890-0
    , p.71
  6. ^
    PDF format) from the City of Westminster
    website
  7. ^ Times Online: London high life hit as rich Arabs decamp, retrieved 29 March 2007
  8. ^ BBC: Arabic London, retrieved 7 October 2007
  9. ISBN 1-85414-293-3
    .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edgware Road.

51°30′48″N 0°09′37″W / 51.5133°N 0.1604°W / 51.5133; -0.1604

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