The Place Where Four Roads Meet.

Two hundred years ago two ancient villages stood in open fields, on either side of Edgware Road. Paddington and Lissing (Lisson) were as they had been for centuries, far outside London. Yet today the area is a bewildering confusion of traffic noise. The history of the different roads which make this junction is the key to the area. Unraveling their stories will set the framework within which everything else fits.

Map 2 shows that about the year 1700 there were a few houses in Oxford Street (Road) and a farm was set in the angle with Tottenham Court Road. The tiny villages of Marylebone, Lissing (sic) and Paddington were surrounded by fields. Yet today, standing in Edgware Road, under Westway, we are in chaos.

Map 3 shows the present traffic system which is so bewildering to anyone seeing it for the first time, so noisy, frightening and anti-human. This book is the story of the change from the old peaceful fields to our modern pandemonium.