Ealing and Its Vicinity

This modest volume, first published in the early twentieth century, offers an intimate portrait of Ealing when it still carried the feel of village England at the edge of expanding London. Sykes writes not for antiquarians but for the curious resident and the wandering stranger, weaving together the threads of local history, geography, and social life into something more nourishing than a mere guidebook yet less forbidding than scholarly tomes. Here are the facts that matter to anyone who has walked these streets: the parish's boundaries stretching from the Thames to the river Brent, the ancient spelling variants of the name itself (Yelling, Yealinge, Zellin), the mysterious etymology possibly connected to a Saxon bea-meadow, and the curious custom of copyhold tenure that bound tenants to the See of London since time immemorial. The author guides readers through the distinction between Upper Ealing and the Lower side toward Brentford, the old Tyburn Turnpike as a reference point for distance, and the silence of Domesday Book where Ealing's name should appear. What emerges is a window into a London suburb on the cusp of transformation, preserving the parish's character before the twentieth century reshaped it entirely.