IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Market Square, UXBRIDGE, UB8 1LH

Looking across Cross Street and down Grainges yard. The entrance of Grainges car park and the delivery entrance for The Pavilions shopping Mall.

The Fig Tree pub on the right used to be the Police Station. Uxbridge was an important market town and coaching stop in the past, with many fine old buildings. Unfortunately it suffered in the 1960s from redevelopment which can best be described as vandalism and most of the old buildings have disappeared, with the town consequently losing its character. Windsor Street is one of the few remaining old parts of the town. The scene is marred by the office building in the distance, which is typical of modern Uxbridge.

This pub on Windsor Street, close to the Underground station and the church, was built in the 19th century but it is known that there has been a public house here since at least 1544 and possibly much earlier. The pub survived an arson attack in 1966.

Dating from 1546, this is reputed to be the oldest pub in Uxbridge, a town which had a large number of coaching inns, being on the route from London to Oxford.

This is the High Street entrance to the station, which was opened in 1938, enabling the closure of the previous Underground terminus off Belmont Road. The opening, and the introduction of fast direct trains to London from the centre of Uxbridge, saw the rapid demise of one of the Great Western Railway's terminus stations in the town, High Street, which closed to passengers in 1939 on the outbreak of the Second World War and never reopened afterwards, while the other former Great Western terminus station at Vine Street lingered on until closure in 1962. Today both Metropolitan and Piccadilly Line trains operate from here. Under the current scheduling the earliest weekday Metropolitan Line train leaves at 0512 and the last Piccadilly Line train arrives back at 0131 hours so the station is hardly shut at all.

This is the High Street entrance to The Pavilions shopping centre, one of two in Uxbridge, the other being the Chimes.

Along with Image St Margaret's occupies a triangular site, here at the top end of Windsor Street at its junction with the High Street. The later Market House was built on the High Street side of the church so the church no longer has a High Street frontage. There is a comprehensive history of the church here http://www.alanrix.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ Image can be seen just to the left of the mini-roundabout.

The building dates from 1789 and replaced an earlier structure that was itself a replacement for an even earlier one. This long frontage on the High Street effectively concealed Image from the main thoroughfare through the town. The upper floor is supported with Tuscan columns although the ones to the right are currently hoarded off. The whole building is capped with a clock turret supporting a cupola. As ever the usual test of determining how well a building is looked after and cared for is the status of the clock, if it has one, and it's good to report that the clock on this building was telling the correct time!

Image to the left, Image to the right, and the sign for Image in the foreground, this used to be the main A40 London to Oxford road.