1st Blog Edgware Road, London Middlesex England

Edgware Road is a major street which passes through the west of central London, England, in the City of Westminster. The route has its origins as a Roman Road and today is part of the modern A5 road.

The southern part of the road near Marble Arch, noted for its distinct Middle Eastern cuisine and many late-night bars and shisha cafes, is known to Londoners by nicknames such as Little Cairo, Little Beirut and, especially near Camden, Little Cyprus.

History:

Before the Romans, today's Edgware Road began as an ancient trackway within the Great Middlesex Forest. The Romans later incorporated the track into Watling Street.

Centuries later, the road was improved by the Edgware-Kilburn turnpike trust in 1711, and a number of the local inns functioned as a stop for coaches, some of which still exist.

During the 18th century, it was a destination for Huguenot migrants. By 1811, Thomas Telford produced a re-design for what was then known as a section of the London to Holyhead road, a redesign considered one of the most important feats of pre-Victorian engineering. Telford's redesign emerged only a year after the area saw the establishment of Great Britain's first Indian restaurant.

The area began to attract Arab migrants in the late 19th century during a period of increased trade with the Ottoman Empire. The trend continued with the arrival of Egyptians in the 1950s, and greatly expanded beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present when events including the Lebanese Civil War, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and unrest in Algeria brought more Arabs to the area. They established the present-day mix of bars and shisha cafes, which make the area known to Londoners by nicknames such as "Little Cairo" and "Little Beirut." These shisha cafés have been hard hit by the enforcement of the England-wide smoking ban in 2007.

One of the two Edgware Road tube stations was one of the sites of the 7 July bombings. A bomb was detonated on a train leaving the tube station serving the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines) and heading for Paddington tube station. Six people were killed in the blast: Colin Morley, 52, Jennifer Vanda Ann Nicholson, 22, Johnathan Downey, 34, Laura Webb, 29, Michael Brewster, 52, and David Foulkes, 22. The perpetrator was the ringleader of the 7 July bombings, Mohammed Siddique Khan. On the first anniversary of the bombings, a memorial plaque to the victims was unveiled at the station.

Transport:

Edgware Road is a major thoroughfare for a number of London bus routes, and is intersected by several London Underground lines along its length.

A number of schemes have been put forward in the past to construct an Underground railway line underneath Edgware Road, including a plan to extend the Bakerloo line north to Cricklewood and an unusual proposal to build an underground monorail system, but these schemes did not succeed. Today, London Buses provide the only public transport along the length of the road.

National Rail

Mainline rail stations:

• Marylebone station
• Paddington station
• Cricklewood
• Hendon

London Underground

• Edgware Road (Bakerloo Line)
• Edgware Road (Circle, District and Hammersmith & City Lines)
• Marble Arch (Central Line)
• Marylebone (Bakerloo Line)
• Paddington (Bakerloo, Circle, District and Hammersmith & City Lines)

Bus routes

Bus route 16 is the only route to run the full length of the Edgware Road, from Victoria station to Edgware.

• 6
• 16
• 32
• 36
• 98
• 189
• 332
• 414