Cowley Through Time

Throughout most of its history, Cowley has been a small country village just two miles south of the market town of Uxbridge. Its origins are in the Saxon period, and St Laurence church is mentioned in the Domesday Book. However, in 1901 the population was only 214. The opening of a railway station in 1905 heralded expansion, initially, between the two wars, and this has continued since then. Recent years have been dominated by the arrival and growth of Brunel University in the north of the district. Ken Pearce shows, through old and new photographs, just how the area has changed.