Warwick Avenue was originally a small track called Green Lane and was named Warwick Road - later changed to Avenue - on the street plan, which was produced by a gentleman, the surveyor to the Bishop of London, George Gutch in 1827.
Mr Gutch named the road after Jane Warwick, of Warwick Hall near Carlisle, who had married into a landowning family in England in 1778.
The first mansions were erected in the 1840s close to the Warwick Avenue Bridge over the Paddington arm of the Grand Junction Canal, now called Grand Union Canal. The neighbourhood was mostly built up within two decades and the majority of the original grand properties survive today. The most beautiful ones are part of a communal park.
St Saviour’s church on Warwick Avenue was consecrated in 1856 and its section of the road was widened to create a grand approach, making this perhaps one of the broadest avenues in London. St Saviour’s – which is now the parish church of Little Venice – was rebuilt in 1976; sadly the original church building was destroyed in the war.
Warwick Avenue has one of London’s rare surviving and charming cabmen’s shelters that was built on the avenue around 1882. Warwick Avenue station was opened in 1915.
Today, Warwick Avenue is a beautiful broad, stuccoed avenue in Little Venice. There are some unique little shops and delightful restaurants around the area which serve all sorts of international cuisine.
