Cowley's name is believed to be derived from the Anglo-SaxonCofenlea: "Cofa's woodland clearing." The earliest written record of the settlement is from 959.[2]
History
Medieval period
St. Laurence Church was in recorded as in the parish of Cowley in the 1086 Domesday Book along with the parish land owned byWestminster Abbey, valued as worth to its lord two pounds per year in 1066 and at one pound ten shillings in 1086. Its independent male householders were two villagers[n 1], one cottage-owner[n 2] with one cultivated ploughland for one lord's plough team. Lord's lands (also referred to as a manorial park) took up 1.5 ploughs of land, and meadow land half a plough. The woodland was worth forty pigs (per year) and a mill was worth for five shillings per year.[3]
Cowley was surrounded by Hillingdon parish, of which the town of Uxbridge itself and Uxbridge Moor, which separated Cowley from Buckinghamshire on the west, formed part. Part of the Moor is now the M25 motorway.[4] Within the triangle formed where the River Pinn and Fray's River meet, Cowley parish was so intermixed with Hillingdon that parts of it were entirely detached from the rest, while other parts, some detached, lay farther east across the Pinn. For this reason most of the general history of the parish has to be dissected from that of Hillingdon. These complex parish borders were those of just one manor carved out before the Norman conquest from Hillingdon.[5] While Hillingdon parish administered to many areas now in Cowley, most of these were in one manor within Hillingdon whose name is preserved by few places in maps, Colham.[5]
In the west, along the main road between Uxbridge and Yiewsley, and mostly to the north of the Iver Lane turning, lay the village formerly known as Cowley Street, mostly in Cowley parish. This hamlet and the church hamlet formed the main areas of settlement within the parish, though there were a few houses elsewhere, including some at what is now called Cowley Peachey, the southern part of Cowley. In 1252 Charter Rolls show that Bartholomew Peche (or Pecche), a favourite of Henry III was granted tenancy of Westminster Abbey's estate in Cowley.[6] The Peche family held the manor for over a hundred years and by 1358 its name had become Couele Peche (Cowley Peachey).[7] This was first recorded in the Calendar of Inquisitions post mortem.[6]
Post-Reformation and boundaries
A map of Cowley in 1868
Before 1882, when the first important changes were made in its boundaries, the parish of Cowley spanned 300 acres (120 ha) extremely irregularly shaped but mostly south of Uxbridge, between Frays River (the county boundary, part of the braidedColne) on the west and the River Pinn, which runs into it on the east.[5] A small piece (2 acres (0.81 ha)) of glebe land belonged to Cowley church on the other side of Hillingdon by Long Lane.[5]
In 1796 Cowley Field was inclosed, with the statutory object of consolidating the parishes of Hillingdon and Cowley. As a result, Cowley received several blocks of land, of which the largest were connected to the part of the parish by the church and to the part at Cowley Street by roads which the Commissioners decreed were to be repaired by Cowley parish and which therefore became part of it. Four parts of the field north of the Greenway were also assigned to Cowley but remained detached (nos. 1–4 on the map), and so did two others farther south by the High Street and by Maygoods Lane (nos. 5–6). Nomansland (no. 7), across the Pinn, also remained cut off from the rest of the parish, while the little field of glebe nearly 2 miles away in Long Lane (no. 8) was unaffected by the award.[5]
In 1547 the parish contained 36 'houseling' people, in 1719 there were 109 inhabitants, and in 1801 the population was 214. The small cluster of homes at the village centre and dispersal of parishioners based on the old, medieval scope of the manor's lands meant a low sense of community and identity especially for outlying owners. Furthermore, some fields and orchards of Cowley had become additions to plots falling in Hillingdon so tithes would be the only ties left if plot holders lived in houses on Hillingdon land. The manorial court for many centuries made regulations and byelaws about fencing and grazing of the open fields, pasture meadows, and commons, particularly as to the stinting of animals.[5]
On 3 November 1794 the Grand Junction Canal was opened from the River Thames at Brentford to Uxbridge, routing on the western side of Cowley Peachey and Cowley Street. Construction began with cuttings Uxbridge Moor on 1 May 1793 and in early May at Brentford and Braunston. However toll collectors weren't appointed at Uxbridge and Brentford until May 1795. It is likely the aqueduct over the Fray's River at Cowley Lock wasn't completed until the Autumn of 1795 with measures undertaken there to allow traffic to pass through there.[8] With the opening of the canal's Paddington Arm on 10 July 1801 packet boats drawn by four horses ran from Paddington Basin on the edge of London to the 'turning point' docks at Cowley Peachey.[9] Packet Boat Lane and the former Paddington Packet Boat public house, licensed in 1804, reflect this period.[5]
Cowley Stock Bricks
The opening of the Grand Junction Canal enabled the development of the brick industry in Cowley. In December 1810 twenty-one acres of land adjoining the canal calculated to contain brick earth sufficient to make from sixty to seventy million bricks was offered for let.[10] Four hundred yards south of Cowley Lock a 350 yard arm of the Grand Union Canal called Cowley Hall Dock was opened in 1811 to service the Cowley Hall Brick-Field.[8] Between March and October 1814 four million bricks were delivered from the brick-field.[11] With this early development of Cowley's brick earth deposits the generic name of the brick in West Middlesex became known as the Cowley Stock Brick.
Despite the spread of building from Uxbridge in the north, the beginnings of industry at Cowley Peachey and the three large mills just outside the western boundary of the parish, Cowley remained an almost entirely rural village until after World War I. In 1891, just before the parish was enlarged, the population was 322. In 1901, after the enlargement, it was 869, and this had only risen to 1,170 by 1931. During the 1930s there was a good deal of building, partly by Uxbridge council, and the population of the same area was 3,687 in 1951. Until 1965 a great many more houses were built, bringing the total provided by the council to nearly 1,000 in 1959, so that much of the area east of the main road and south of Station Road has been covered, though allotments remain between Hillingdon and Cowley.[4] The diversion of Peachey Lane in 1938 and the blocking of Maygoods Lane about 1953 changed the old road plan of this part of the parish.[5]
Cowley became part of the urban district of Uxbridge in 1929 and part of Uxbridge civil parish in 1937.[5]
Geology
Between the boundaries marked by the Pinn and Colne the soil is traditionally called (fertile) brick-earth which has medium permeability whereas east of the Pinn covering most of London is London clay and gravel, a mixture of good and poor drainage. On more descriptive modern analysis the soil is "slowly permeable seasonally wet acid loamy and clayey soil", with non-permeable loamy soil marking the lowest part.[14]
Two conservation areas are in the village: Cowley Lock and Cowley Church (St Laurence). Cowley Lock, designated in 1975, includes all of Old Mill Lane, Cowley Lake, wet woodland, Little Britain[n 4], Cowley bridges, Packet Boat Lane and the Packet Boat turning area. Cowley Church (St. Laurence) Conservation area was designated in 1988 and includes the Church and nearby buildings and to the south, Manor Farm.[15]
A number of older buildings survive, forming in Cowley all but one of the 15 architecturally listed buildings, the other being the main lecture building of Brunel University.
Cowley House, and the Manor Farm are the most architecturally and historically significant.[5] In the High Street, Old Vine Cottage, The Crown, and Maygood's Farm date from before 1700, and there are several detached 18th-century houses there, some of which may incorporate earlier work. At Cowley Peachey are two timber-framed houses: the Old Cottage probably dates from the 15th or early 16th century and is a three-bay house of which the central bay was originally an open hall. At some later date the hall was divided into two storeys and a brick chimney was inserted. The Malt Shovel in Iver Lane is also Grade II listed.
St Laurence Church
St Laurence Church
St Laurence Church is listed higher than all of the other buildings in Cowley architecturally, at Grade II*, this building was in existence by the 12th century and was the smallest Parish Church in Middlesex.[12] It stands near the River Pinn and was on the eastern side of the Cowley Manor. There is no evidence historically of there being a settlement of any size here, though there were probably always one or two buildings beside the Church.[5][17]
^ abcdefghijklSusan Reynolds, ed. (1962). "Cowley: Introduction". A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3: Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell, Sunbury, Teddington, Heston and Isleworth, Twickenham, Cowley, Cranford, West Drayton, Greenford, Hanwell, Harefield and Harlington. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 27 November 2012.
^ ab"Cowley Peachey". epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Middlesex/Cowley/53282a51b47fc407a0000025-Cowley+Peachey. Retrieved 19 December 2020.
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