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Maida Vale is an affluent residential district in Central London, England, north of Paddington, southwest of St John's Wood and south of Kilburn, on Edgware Road. It is part of the City of Westminster and is three miles (five kilometres) northwest of Charing Cross. It has many late Victorian and Edwardian blocks of mansion flats. The area is home to the BBC Maida Vale Studios.
The name of the area is derived from a pub and an Italian battle during the Napoleonic Wars. The original pub called The Hero of Maida stood on Edgware Road near the Regent's Canal until it closed in 1992. In the early 19th century, its hanging board displayed the likeness of the Georgian era General Sir John Stuart, under which was the legend Sir John Stuart, the hero of Maida. General Sir John Stuart was made Count of Maida (a town in Calabria) by King Ferdinand IV of Naples and III of Sicily after the British victory at the Battle of Maida in 1806. As the expansion of London gathered pace, the name stuck as the farmland around the pub was used for urban development in the 1820s.
The area is bounded by Maida Avenue and the Regent's Canal to the south, Maida Vale (the road of the same name) to the north-east, Kilburn Park Road to the north-west, and Shirland Road and Blomfield Road to the south-west: an area of around one square kilometre (½ square mile). It makes up most of the W9 postal district.
The southern part of Maida Vale, at the junction of Paddington Basin with Regent's Canal with many houseboats, is known as Little Venice. Paddington Recreation Ground is also located in Maida Vale.
The area to the west of Maida Vale, is known as "Maida Hill". It is a recognised postal district bounded by the Avenues on the west, the Regent's Canal to the south, Maida Vale to the east and Kilburn Lane to the north. Parts of Maida Vale were also included in this. The use of the name "Maida Hill" declined, but increased again since the mid-2000s as the 414 bus route (from 2005 to 2021) gave its destination as Maida Hill, and a new Maida Hill market was introduced on the square at the junction of Elgin Avenue and Harrow Road. Maida Hill is also known as "West Kilburn", with the two names being used interchangeably.
Just to the east of Maida Vale is St John's Wood, with Lord's Cricket Ground.
The area was previously owned by the Church, initially as part of St Margaret's, Westminster, then later by the Bishop of London after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
In 1742, a lease for future development was signed by Sir John Frederick. His daughter later married Robert Thistlethwaite, a Hampshire landowner, whose Hampshire holdings including Widley and Wymering are commemorated in Maida Vale street names.
In 1816, an act of Parliament[which?] allowed the trustees of Sir John Frederick's estate and the Bishop of London to begin developing the area. This began in the 1820s with development along Edgware Road. The area was first named on maps as Maida Vale in 1827. John Gutch, surveyor to the Bishop of London, produced a plan for the area in 1827, which roughly corresponds to current road alignments.
By 1868, a stretch of Edgware Road near the area had been officially named Maida Vale.[14] In 1960, the ownership of the area's freehold passed from the Bishop of London to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, whose function was to administer the church's assets.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Maida Vale was a significant Sephardic Jewish district, to the extent that an 1878 magazine report reported that it was commonly called "New Jerusalem". The 1896 Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, a Grade II listed building and headquarters of the British Sephardi community, is on Lauderdale Road. The actor Alec Guinness was born on this road. The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, lived within sight of this synagogue on Warrington Crescent. The pioneer of modern computing, Alan Turing, was born at what is now the Colonnade Hotel in Warrington Crescent.
Maida Vale tube station was opened on 6 June 1915 on the Bakerloo line. Warwick Avenue tube station on the same line had been opened a few months earlier.
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