Hatton, London
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Hatton is a small hamlet in the London Borough of Hounslow. It is bordered by the town of Feltham to the South, the village of Bedfont to the West and Heathrow Airport to the North. It also forms a boundary with the London Borough of Hillingdon straddling the A30 Great South West Road, though until 1994 this area including Hatton Cross tube station and Heathrow Airport fell within Hounslow's borough boundaries.
Hatton's main architectural features now are a collection of rather non-descript industrial buildings providing ancillary services to Heathrow Airport. However, there is a quaint and attractive pub ["The Green Man"] [1][Greene King brewers] which has a large car park and garden which is very popular with families as it usually includes a 'bouncy castle' in the Summer.
Adjoining the Green Man is a charming field where horses, geese, cows and other livestock seem to co-exist quite happily with the noisy occupants of the skies overhead on the southern approach to Heathrow. Hounslow Urban Farm [ http://www.hounslow.info/urbanfarm ] (next to Hatton Cemetery), the largest city farm in London, is nearby and provides another popular attraction for families.
Hatton has no shops or post office, though there is a convenience store and newsagents within Hatton Cross station. This hardly seems to inconvenience residents though since there is a 24 hour Tesco Extra hypermarket adjoining the urban farm. The hamlet no longer possesses a church, since the chapel building in Steam Farm Lane was converted for office use in 2000. Most of the local housing is mainly semidetached or maisonettes built between 1930's and the 1950s. Several older properties exist in Green Man Lane, including the old Manor house, now the head quarters to a Car leasing company and two other 18th Century dwellings. The 17th Century blacksmiths has long since been converted into a family home and the stables converted to living space. The now disappeared Steam Farm was so named because it was the first in the area to possess a steam plough.
A word of warning to commuters; street parking in the area is now controlled during daytime hours to discourage air travellers, commuters and workers at the airport from parking in Hatton. Parking your car in the Green Man car park, whilst not being a customer results in an £80 fine.
Local legend has it that infamous highwayman Dick Turpin knew this area well and regularly travelled between its ale houses using secret tunnels. This rather romantic notion however is quashed by several facts. Dick Turpin most likely never frequented the great Hounslow Heath of which Hatton once formed part. The water table is so high that a pond was sustained at the junction of Green Man lane and Faggs Road until the mid 19th Century, negating the ability to have any tunnels in the area, in fact the local pubs cellar is at floor level for this very reason. The local pub shows a window into one of these supposed tunnels next to the fire place, when in fact this is a natural air vent to prevent the wood from rotting. Stagecoaches however would once have traversed the area en route from London to the South West, a heritage remembered now by this being one of the depots of Ashford Luxury Coaches, whose "Windsorian" branding causes some amusement when coaches from Hatton are used to ferry minor royals to great state events such as the Golden Jubilee Celebrations in 2002. The nearest tube station is Hatton Cross tube station. Many bus links also serve Hatton Cross as do some longer distance National Express services before calling at Heathrow Terminals 1,2 and 3 in the central area. During 2005 and 2006. a bus link will be serving Heathrow Terminal 4 from Hatton Cross while the London Underground station at Terminal 4 is closed for the construction of the Piccadilly line extension to the new Terminal 5.
Hatton's name came from Anglo-Saxon Hǣþtūn = "heath farmstead".
| Section 9: | London Outer Orbital Path | Section 10: |
|---|---|---|
| Kingston upon Thames | Hatton Cross | Hayes |
