It is with some difficulty that you can stand in the bustling chaos that is Shepherds Bush Common and see its historical function as a last rounding up and resting point for livestock coming into Smithfield market....

Shepherd's Bush
This function helped the Bush keep a rural air well into the 19th century, but since then it has seen plenty of development and is now part of a corridor stretching northwards from the river that includes Hammersmith, Harlesden and White City.

Despite many attempts to talk up the area and create a natural link to the likes of Holland Park, the Bush goes its own resolute way and will not be pitchforked into anyone else's idea of gentility. Separated from Holland Park to the east by the West Cross Route, or M41, it is far too busy to accommodate such niceties, even if it does plays host to the BBC .

Shepherds Bush goes its own sweet way in full defiance of the many personalities that people have tried to stamp on it. Oildrum Lane may no longer exist, but the ghosts of Albert and Harold Steptoe are still very much at home in what is now a lively, cosmopolitan area.

The BBC, probably the first thing people think about when you mention the Bush, started moving in round here in the late Fifties, and their presence now dominates the south side of the Westway almost as far as the Common itself.

Based around the three leviathans of TV Centre, White City (on the site of the old dog track) and Woodlands, the area is a settlement in itself and has led to a slight upturn in house prices and an improvement in the quality of eateries around the 8-acre Common.

What keeps Auntie Beeb from running her domain all the way to the Uxbridge Road is the old Central Line tube depot, now the subject of a huge shopping development that will include a new tube station, an accompanying £100m outlay on public transport and doubtless more traffic headaches for the overworked Shepherds Bush Common.

Property
Housing in these parts tends to be two or three storey late Victorian terraces, many converted into flats, and these have made W12 a relatively affordable oasis compared with its western and eastern neighbours. But in the late eighties the council, who foresaw immense parking problems, put a stop to the conversions.

There are few big enough family houses to go round here as it is and most of them can be found at the western edge of W12, around Wendell Park and on the border with Bedford Park and Chiswick.

Here you'll find wide and tree-lined houses with impressive front steps, and you can be sure it will not be called Shepherds Bush, but in the great London tradition a much nicer name culled from a local tube or train station - Stamford Brook or Ravenscourt Park.

The two main roads which run west from the Common are Goldhawk Road and Uxbridge Road, and Wendell Park lies between. Linking these two is Askew Road, around which is some fine family housing and in the triangle formed by these three roads is Cathnor Park, with housing slightly below the quality of Wendell, but popular nevertheless with its successful flat-conversions reflected best in the four-storey Victorian terraces of Boscombe Road.

Many of the roads here are blocked to avoid rat runs and thus keep both quiet streets and retain the focus on Askew Road. These flats are in top demand, almost as much as Caxton Village, the small Victorian terraces on the north side of the Common. To the west of the Common is Lime Grove, once a busy set of studios for the BBC until retired in 1991 and now rebuilt as flats and a hotel. The Goldhawk Road (A402) links Shepherds Bush to Chiswick and goes through every permutation of housing class.

North of the Uxbridge Road (A4020) and west of the BBC is the 7-acre Hammersmith Park, a remnant of the popular 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, set up over 140 acres in white stucco, hence the name White City; hard to believe that the fourth Olympic Games took place right here.

The vast redbrick White City Estate is here, and next to it is the impressive complex of Queens Park Rangers Football Club. The rugby team Wasps also play here. In this square between Uxbridge Road and the Westway the flavour is that of purpose built Edwardian maisonettes mixed with Victorian terraces.

Bloemfontein Road acts as the rat run between the two thoroughfares and the whole area bases itself around the 8-acre Wormholt Park with the Janet Adegoke Leisure Centre here owning a fine reputation in swimming. On the western edge of this square is the Flower Estate, a popular ex-council development dotted with a few semi-detached Thirties properties.

The northern third of W12 is dominated by a building deep in the capital's folklore and reputation: Wormwood Scrubs. This is no slack little open prison. Built by convicts' labour in the 1880s, it is suitably forbidding and forms the life-sentence centre for the south of England.

Slated for terrible conditions in 1999, its watchtowers and searchlights watch over the fine Old Oak Estate on its western side, an area isolated by a railway and notable for some nice terraced brick housing. To the east of the prison is an equally popular set of maisonettes and terraces based around Eynham Road on the border with North Kensington. To the north of the Scrubs is the Linford Christie Athletic Ground and 190 acres of open and rather desolate ground also called Wormwood Scrubs.

Facilities
Although Shepherds Bush is not known for its open spaces it has many public amenities in the form of venues, pubs and clubs. The old BBC theatre, the Shepherds Bush Empire, is on the Common and one of London's most respected concert halls. Behind this is the Shepherds Bush Market, as lively a shopping experience as can be found in London and a major indicator to show that you are in one of the capital's most diverse and mixed areas.Transport
The transport also concentrates around here, with a thousand buses seemingly snaking their way around the Common and up and down the Goldhawk and Uxbridge roads. Tubes are very common, with the anomaly always to be borne in mind that Shepherds Bush is the only place in London that gives its name to two entirely separate tube stations.

One is on the Central Line, with White City and East Acton stations also in W12. The other is on the Hammersmith & City Line, with another station just to the south called Goldhawk Road. The District Line is not far to the south and Willesden Junction not far to the north.

Steve Roberts.

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