Norwood, Middlesex

Historical Description

Norwood (Middlesex) is a parish which also has the title (unique so far as it relates to such a large area) of Precinct. This title it received when Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, built the church of Norwood in 1439. Up to that time Norwood was an extreme outlying part of Hayes, of which parish the Archbishops of Canterbury were for a long time patrons; they were also lords of the manor of Hayes and Norwood. Archbishop Chichele, whose beneficence was princely (he was the founder of All Souls' College, Oxford), built for the people of Norwood a church or chapel, and detached from Hayes parish 2240 acres, making this over as a separate parish for Norwood, but gave the parish the title of Precinct. This title it has always preserved, though it has, and has had, all the customs and traditions of an old parish-levying its own rates, maintaining its own poor, electing its own churchwardens, &c. The civil parish. of Norwood includes as well as Norwood proper Southall and Southall Green, and has within its boundaries Hanwell Lunatic Asylum. There is a post, money order, and telegraph office at Southall, and a post office, of the name of Norwood Green, under Southall. Population of the civil parish, 7627; of the ecclesiastical, 2885. The church is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, and has some good architectural features, especially a very spacious chancel, in which there is an altar-tomb of Edward Cheeseman, cofferer to Henry VII. and lord of the manor of Norwood, and some old brasses and other monuments. The modern adornments of the church are rich and appropriate. The living is a rectory in private patronage. In the churchyard there is a cross with the following inscriptions:-

Norwood Green (the village) is within 9 miles of the Marble Arch, 1 mile from Southall station on the G.W.R., and 1 by footway of Osterley station on the District Metropolitan railway. Lord Jersey's beautiful seat, Osterley Park, is within ten minutes' walk. The neighbourhood is strikingly pretty on account of a number of fine old elm trees which stud the green, and it appears as rural and as primitive as if it were hundreds of miles from London; it is also particularly healthy.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Norwood from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Norwood)

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Middlesex is online.