The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Ealing, Greater London*

Ealing, Greater London Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Not. The Central Library. Sure, good collection, staff friendly and helpful (even when contending with above-average quota of awkward customers, dickheads and loonies). But.... Until lately, narrow approach stairs that only permitted one person at a time. Notices at the top warning that floors are slippery in inclement weather (brilliant architect -nobody told him or her that it rains in England, or told the council you can put gritty surface stuff down to make places less slippy). Inside, more notices warning you not to sit in the alcoves in case the fire curtain comes down on you. And I bet the architect won a prize.
• the foam shop by west ealing station. it's just fantastic. it sells nothing but foam, foam stacked right to the ceiling, and it's really grotty-looking. 'foam cut to any shape and size'. i love it. foam's big business apparently (there's a rival foam shop across the road from this one). foam foam foam
• ealing studios
• The town hall.
• The building that looks likie a battleshipo next to the town hall.
• The towers of The broadway centre
• The Town Hall
• all the pubs!!!
• Was Rowses Department store (until it was flattened) The staff were exactly like 'Are you being served'! It was hilarious in there.
• central library

Demolish It Now Building

• Most of the plastic bucket, dime-a-go shops on West Ealing High Street
• elthorne park high school.
• 'the cozy caff' near west ealing station (near the brilliant foam shop). it's just filthy, i'd never eat there.... bleuch! and the people inside it! they look like the undead or something (i guess that's what salmonella does to you), and they always seem to face the window so they can stare you down as you walk past... like they're just itching to suck out your brains.
• After unsuccesfully trying to sell numerous monstrous commercial office high rises in The Uxbridge Road and Greenford areas for many years vacant they are beginning to be demolished! The ex Dixons building is already under several bulldozers.
• That thing above Ealing Broadway Station
• St.Benedicts School
• Jarvis Hotel
• Waterglades.
• The virgin cinema opposite the town hall in ealing - what a DUMP!! even after they've done it up it's still too small, too expensive, you can't get a good view of the film no matter WHERE you sit and the popcorn tastes like something i would rather not mention
• 'Housing Benfit Customer Centre'-can you believe it, the worst piece of PC thinking ever!
• That Indian Cinema on the corner of Northfields ave and Uxbridge Road, or a clean would do.
• That Ghastly Waterglade Centre should be flattened with the Architect and entire Ealing planning dept. underneath it.
• HMV music store in the Arcadia/Waterglade centre. In fact come to think of it this 75% occupancy centre could do with demolishing in its entirety.
• the housing benefit prefab offices
• The tower over the broadway BR station is an ugly thing, and you can see it from miles away thanks to the lack of high-rise buildings in Ealing.
• The chiming clock on the corner of the Waterglade Centre!

The Best Things

• The villagy bit with church and pubs and green at Northolt. The views from Hanger Hill, or Argyle Rd., towards Horsenden Hill.
• nice people - not rugby dullards like richmond and pretty liberal types on whole.
• The reference to Twyford School (not) is libelous. It is the best performing local authority school in the borough.
• nice kinda area until it became infested with townies. nice houses, fairly clean streets and a real atmosphere
• Its easy to get out of on a main line train from Ealing Broadway
• The New Ealing Housing benefit Customer Care Centre in The Broadway.This is long overdue bright and breezy service for the less fortunate. I like to see the huge lines outside all day of up to 300 claiments.It reminds people that there is still unemployment and that those who are are being cared for.
• Ealing has got everything you could want from a town - once you've lived here you'll never want to live anywhere else.
• The parks,the pubs and Twyford C of E High School (not)
• quiet at night in residential streets
• The quiet leafy streets and parks. The fact it hasn't changed too much since I was a boy (35 years ago)
• quiet fresh air not so central london 2 mins by thames turbo to paddington good rail and bus connections all night
• Urban foxes. Parks. Shopping. Many fine curry establishments, and Fuller's pubs.
• The nursery at Uxbridge Road and Coldershaw in West Ealing.
• Ealing is supposedly the greenest of the London Boroughs. Certainly my experience (as an Ealing resident) is that everyone is always surprised by how green and leafy they find the streets of Ealing.
• Ealing Common rules as a place to get pissed in summer (especially in that pub on the corner of it); the Redback Club - full of Aussies and quality music ( usually a live band or two).
• Wonderful transport links in to Central London with BR and three different tube lines running into Ealing that makes Central London a 15 minute ride away on the quickest route.

The Worst Things

• Pubs that mostly cater for the lowest local moronic slappers and scum who drink, fight, fuck and grunt alot - loudly. Exceptions: The Wheatsheaf and The New Inn. But given the average crime rise and young tosser quota, Ealing is definitely on the way down and don't let equally moronic local estate agents tell you otherwise.
• Crime in Ealing is soaring.West Ealing and Hanwell appear to be the major concentrations.Be careful if you decide to venture into these areas particulalry after dark.Im not kidding.Gang rape and assault is becoming a weekly occurrence round there. The problem?About 5000 unemployed teenagers and declining commercial environment. Punches,attacks,thefts,aggressions of all sorts are proliferating and are being carried out by both white and blacks.
• The boarded up houses on Hanger Lane and Western Avenue, result of planners and authorities not able to make minds up. Ugly to look at, and makes us angry when we think of people looking for somewhere decent and affordable to live.
• What theyll put up in place of The monstrous high Rises, if anything like Brentford its all some secret yuppie plan..
• ealing broadway town centre - totally unimaginative.....strip joints and rat and parrot is that the best we can do??
• The litter strewn entrance to The Ealing Green Delivery Office (prior to tidy up). Increasingly large gangs of teenagers spray painting trees on Ealing Green by the war memorial,and congregating on skateboards there and by the underground entrance to The Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre where there is a concrete ramp they use noisily. The traffic congestion caused by people carriers on school runs. THis is reaching gridlock proportions.
• Ealing is full of nutters and people with no manners.
• The nearby suburb of Greenford in The Borough of Ealing,is right on the outer fringes of London.The air here is fresh.Green fields are in view.Sadly the small town is in decline the local Sainsburys closing this summer along with the Marks and Spencers in nearby West Ealing.Greenford is like a town from the 1950s.There is considerable tension here between the semi detached little Englanders and the marauding refugees and inner city residents who explore.But sadly the Inner London City Culture stops very firmly here.There are only open fields and farms with little or no Social housing past here.
• Ealing Broadway Train Station...especially late at night! several times, people who i know have been mugged there (not to mention myself!) and they were only passing by! people hang around there a lot and it's definately one of the worst things about ealing...the crime!
• Noisy. Crowded. Violent. Traffic Jammed. It smells. The house prices are absurd. Everyone always says its so convenient for other places...like Shepherds Bush & Acton....like the cultural desert that is Brentford?
• Pavements ruined by cable companies. I live in one of the most populated streets in ealing and the pavement has been constantly ripped up by cable companies and other services and replaced with cheap ugly tarmac. The trees and streetlights seem to have come out in sympathy and died/fallen over.
• The Pubs, Overpriced,Overcrowded,Understaffed
• The spiralling rents eg. over £100 for a tiny "room" (smaller than geneva Convention cell size literally) with no cooking facilities or bath and a view of a brick wall. Such things ought to be banned in Britain!PS I told the landlord I was not interested.He has 5 such rooms unlet for 6 months and no wonder!
• Grays garage on the Uxbridge Road, near Ealing Hospital. Don't go there. They took a welding torch to the underneath of my mates car to weld the exhaust and blew the car up!
• The intense,ugly and very stupid "alcohol"and "violence""culture" on weekend nights.Large groups of noisy swearing moroic thugs rove around the town centre. There have been regular fights and even some murders this past year. Its very unpleasant for older people and children.They have no sensitivity or idea of romance at all.Its horrible!They aggress anyone no like them. Some of the talk is very stupid.You cant legislate against stupidity. The "pubs"play loud thumping music. If you fear assault steer clear of this place at night.The thugs come from up to 20 miles around from pits like Slough,Wembley and Southall.Be warned! Morning after the alleys are urine smelling and the streets absolutely littered with greasy junk food wrappers and broken beer bottles.
• The EXORBITANT house prices.
• Traffic and West Ealing
• the clinging to the idea that Ealing is a "successful"Borough when its going down the pits with numerous large office buildings that have been unrented for up to 3 years. No one wants to set up here...........
• The litter and deteriorating condition of the shop frontages in Ealing generally. I live abroad now but visit regularly , and am saddened by the decline. Finally the numbers of 'refugees'that are swamping the local population and adding to the social strain. (shades of Colonel Blimp!)Ealing is/was really a very nice place to live (if you have to live in London) but it is being allowed to sink I hope the council wakes up before it is too late.
• Service and miserable staff in The HMV store opposite Marks and Spencers
• high rates of unemployment,refugees(20,000 since 1995) poor rented accommodation, school run congestion, crime and gangs roaming big councuil estates no posh places or good dance hall
• Like most councils, the borough doesn't do too much for those of us who live in the corners of the Borough. Few services, poor branch libraries, too few recycling banks... and outside central Ealing there is almost nowhere decent to eat.
• The ultra-conservative Polish community, who really aren't very nice or whole people (and I speak from a Polish viewpoint- my name is A.Wonsowski.)

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Last updated: 2008-02-15