Brentford was born for change. It had no choice, being slap bang on the junction between anyone or anything going in or out of London from the west and the old ford at Kew for anyone crossing the Thames. ..

West, after Brentford, the Thames takes a more southerly course, and so anyone heading to or from the capital had to pass through. Things have not changed; today, the railway and the route of the M4 reinforce this ancient lesson.

The social standing of Brentford has been suitably volatile, and the industrial tenor of its history is being subsumed under some serious redevelopment, of which the old Dock - a busy little port up to the Sixties - is surely the most famous.

The Docks and the Gasworks were appropriate industries for this location, where the Grand Union Canal meets the Thames, but the Docks have now disappeared under a development of 600 homes and they mostly labour under some classical Roman names. Nero and Romulus Courts are two of the stranger appellations. A marina has also been created here, complete with permanent moorings providing more accommodation.

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The gasworks site is going the way of some affluent apartments called Capital West and obviously not built with the locals in mind. Nowhere in London is as open to gentrification as the riverside in the west, and Brentford is a shining example. Next door is the Ferry Lane development, another sizeable amalgam of flats, shops and a hotel, currently under construction and abutting on to the Brentford Dock estate.

These are not isolated projects by firms who have appeared from nowhere. The London Borough of Hounslow obviously has big plans for Brentford, and the High Street redevelopment ties all these prestige projects together. And this is overdue. Brentford High Street was always on the tatty side, a slight shock after the gentility of Kew and Strand on the Green. But then, this was a working town.

The High Street plan concentrates itself on the south or river side of the road (which is the A315) and seeks to create not only new shops and flats but a 3,900 square metre supermarket.

Much quality of life transformation has already taken place. For once, the facilities precede the flats. The Fountains Leisure Centre is a colossal gymnasium and swimming pool (and much more besides) and the Watermans Arts Centre is justly famous beyond even our own shores for its admirably catholic approach to society and the arts. The Musical and Steam Museums add another dimension.

Traditionally, the housing in Brentford was poor, befitting an industrial area whose population was partly transient. The exception was and, for now, remains the Butts, in the centre of town and consisting of some fine late 17th and early 18th century housing. The name derives from medieval archery practice.

Close by are the new industrial estates of Brentside and Brentwood, and to the north, in the shadow of the early Seventies M4 motorway, are a growing number of large and luscious looking office developments.

On its south side, apart from the river, Brentford ends in Syon House and Park, home of the powerful Percys, Dukes of Northumberland, which made its mark in national history by staging the accession of the star-crossed Lady Jane Grey.

Brentford was not a place for a romantic approach to the nation's history; Edmund Ironside and Cnut hit seven bells out of each other in 1016 and Prince Rupert committed atrocities in the forced river drownings of Parliamentarian troops in 1642.

The position of our town lends itself to excellent communications. No tube, though - you'll have to walk a little northward to Boston Manor (Piccadilly line) or south over the bridge to Kew Gardens (District line).

The railway, with stations at Syon Lane, Brentford and Kew Bridge, is on the Hounslow loop going through Clapham Junction and on to Waterloo. It can be worth walking a little to the east to Gunnersbury station which, like Kew, is on the North London Line going in an arc round the north of London.

Writing a guide to Brentford in the summer of 2003 is a pretty hopeless task. The area is in complete flux, rebuilding is going on all over and what kind of Brentford will eventually emerge is anyone's guess. One thing above all will remain - Brentford's unique position on the Thames, acting as a vortex and dragging all manner of traffic through its lines of communication.

Steve Roberts

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