Perivale is a mainly residential suburban town of Greater London, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) west of Charing Cross. It is the smallest of the seven towns which make up the London Borough of Ealing.
Perivale is predominately residential, with a library, community centre, a number of parks and open spaces, as well as a large industrial estate. Landmarks include the grade II* listed Art Deco Hoover Building, as well as St Mary's Church (c. 12th century), Horsenden Hill park and Perivale Wood Local Nature Reserve run by the Selborne Society. Perivale forms part of the UB6 postcode area, along with Greenford.
The name of Perivale was first used in 1508, where it was spelt "Pyryvale". The word seems to be a compound of perie (pear tree) and vale, a wide valley. Until then, Perivale was often called "Little Greenford" or "Greenford Parva", to distinguish it from its larger neighbour Great Greenford.
Historically, it was a parish in the hundred of Elthorne, in the county of Middlesex. Perivale was one of the county's smallest parishes up until the early twentieth century, at just 633 acres (256 hectares) and a negligible population.
The church of St Mary's, Perivale is one of London's oldest churches, dating to at least the early thirteenth century. The church is south of the A40, off Perivale Lane. The neighbouring fifteenth-century Rectory House was demolished in 1958. Perivale was a farming area from at least the fourteenth century. At this date, Perivale consisted of woodland and fields used for arable farming.
During the fifteenth century, a grand, three-storey manor house, Perivale Manor, was commissioned by Henry Myllett, a prominent Perivale resident. The house was surrounded by a moat, gardens, orchards and outbuildings. Perivale Manor, which was close to St Mary's Church, was demolished around 1784.
From the sixteenth century, wheat was the main crop in the area, a crop for which Perivale gained a high reputation. With industrialisation, much of Perivale's land began to be used to grow grass for hay to feed London's horses. The building of the Paddington Branch of the Grand Union Canal in 1801 (which still runs through Perivale today) led to a high demand for Perivale's hay. By 1839, almost all of Perivale's land grew hay for the London market, a scene described in the ending of John Betjeman's poem Return to Ealing: "...And a gentle gale from Perivale/blows up the hayfield scent."
The pre-twentieth-century population of Perivale remained low. Just 28 people lived in Perivale in 1801. An 1841 census recorded just five inhabited residential buildings, all farm houses; Horsenden Farm to the northwest, Grange Farm and Church Farm in the southwest, Manor Farm to the east and Alperton farm to the north. In 1901, the population remained tiny at 60 people.
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