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Edgware Road
Edgware Road is one of the oldest thoroughfares in London, its southern stretch forming the western boundary of Marylebone between Marble Arch and the Marylebone Flyover. The road follows the line of Watling Street, the Roman military route that extended roughly 300 miles from the Kentish coast through Londinium to the northwest. That near-perfectly straight alignment, running for some ten miles, is the clearest evidence of its Roman origins, and the junction of Watling Street with the Silchester road is thought to have stood close to what is now Marble Arch.
The road falls across postcode boundaries W1, W2, and NW1, and it physically separates Marylebone to the east from Bayswater to the west. In the early eighteenth century the route was administered by the Edgware-Kilburn turnpike trust, which improved the road surface in 1711. The inns along its length served as staging posts for coaches heading out of London to the northwest.
Today the street is closely associated with a long-established Arab and Middle Eastern community, whose presence grew substantially from the mid-twentieth century. Restaurants, grocers, and shisha cafes line the pavements, giving the road a distinct character unlike most of central London. The two Underground stations bearing the name sit on different lines, reflecting the road's unusual status as both a boundary and a destination in its own right. For the wider neighbourhood context, Portman Square lies a short distance to the east, at the heart of the Portman Estate's Marylebone holdings.
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