Ealing calls itself the "Queen of the Suburbs", and the tag still fits: broad, tree-lined streets of Victorian and Edwardian houses wrap around a busy, workaday town centre at Ealing Broadway. It has quietly hosted an outsized amount of British cultural history — a jazz club where the Rolling Stones' key line-up first came together, a run of well-known sportspeople and broadcasters born here — while staying, at heart, a comfortable outer-London suburb built for commuting into town and coming home again.
What stands out
- Garden-suburb estates such as Brentham Garden Suburb and Hanger Hill Garden Village, both conservation areas of Arts-and-Crafts and mock-Tudor housing, are the streets that earned Ealing its "Queen of the Suburbs" reputation.
- Walpole Park and Pitzhanger Manor, John Soane's own country retreat before it became a public gallery, anchor a packed festival calendar of jazz, blues, comedy and beer.
- A music pedigree runs from the Ealing Jazz and Blues Clubs, where the Rolling Stones effectively formed, through to residents such as Kirsty MacColl and John McVie.
Trade-offs
- The night-time economy is concentrated along The Mall, The Broadway and New Broadway, so the liveliest streets and the quietest residential roads sit close together rather than well apart.
- Housing swings between well-preserved Victorian and Edwardian suburbia, 1930s mansion-block estates and a modern shopping centre, so a newcomer expecting one consistent style will find several.
- It is a genuine suburb rather than an inner-London neighbourhood: Ealing Broadway is a strong shopping and transport hub, but daily life still runs at a suburban pace.
Things to know about Ealing
- Bukayo Saka, the footballer, was born in Ealing.
- Chloe Kelly, the footballer, was born in Ealing.
- Christiane Amanpour, the journalist and broadcaster, was born in Ealing.
- Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first met Brian Jones in 1962 at the Ealing Jazz Club — now a nightclub called the Red Room.
- Victorian development around Mount Park Road earned Ealing the nickname "Queen of the Suburbs".
Life here
- Ealing has a developed night-time economy with numerous pubs and restaurants along The Mall, The Broadway and New Broadway.
- Walpole Park hosts an annual Jazz Festival, Beer Festival, Blues Festival, Comedy Festival and Opera in the Park.
- Ealing Cricket Club, founded in 1870, is based at Corfton Road and fields six senior teams in the Middlesex County Cricket League.
- Ealing Trailfinders Rugby Club and Ealing Town Football Club give the area its senior sport, alongside a Gaelic Games tradition in the Irish community.
- EALING.NEWS, an independent community news website covering Ealing's seven towns, launched in July 2022.
- Westside 89.6FM broadcasts to the borough from studios in neighbouring Hanwell, and Blast Radio serves University of West London students from Ealing Studios.
History and what it is known for
- Ealing's name derives from the Gillingas, a Saxon tribe named after a chief called Gilla, recorded in a charter of Æthelred of Mercia around the year 700.
- The earliest surviving English census was taken in Ealing village in January 1599, listing 85 households.
- The architect John Soane bought and renamed Pitzhanger Manor in 1800 as his own country retreat.
- Victorian development around Mount Park Road, overseen by borough surveyor Charles Jones, earned Ealing the nickname "Queen of the Suburbs".
- The London Borough of Ealing was formed in 1965 when surrounding municipal boroughs merged, with Ealing Town Hall as its administrative centre.
- The Ealing Broadway Centre, including a shopping centre and town square, was completed in 1984.
Notable connections
- Bukayo Saka — footballer, born in Ealing
- Chloe Kelly — footballer, born in Ealing
- Christiane Amanpour — journalist and broadcaster, born in Ealing
- Thomas Henry Huxley — biologist and philosopher, born in Ealing
- Kirsty MacColl — singer-songwriter who lived and recorded in Ealing for 15 years, until her death in 2000
- John McVie — Fleetwood Mac bassist, born in Ealing in 1945
Background from Ealing on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikidata (CC0), summarised for this guide. Details change — check anything that matters to you.
Everyday life
Ealing Broadway is the everyday hub: a shopping centre and high street with a cluster of pubs and restaurants along The Mall, The Broadway and New Broadway that keep the area busy into the evening.
Community life runs through clubs as much as shops: Ealing Cricket Club, Ealing Trailfinders Rugby, a long-standing running club, and Gaelic Games clubs serving the area's Irish community.
A community radio station and an independent local news site keep residents connected to what is happening street by street, rather than only at borough level.
Housing character
The area's reputation rests on its garden suburbs: Brentham Garden Suburb and Hanger Hill Garden Village, both conservation areas of Arts-and-Crafts and mock-Tudor housing from the early twentieth century.
Around Mount Park Road sit the ornate, tree-lined Victorian streets that gave Ealing its "Queen of the Suburbs" name, streets that have largely resisted conversion into bed-sits.
Elsewhere, 1930s mansion-block developments such as Ealing Village sit alongside a more recently redeveloped shopping centre, so the housing stock spans several eras rather than one.
Getting around
Ealing Broadway is the area's transport anchor, an interchange serving rail and underground lines at the western edge of the corridor into central London.
The old Uxbridge Road, once a coaching route lined with inns for travellers heading into London, still forms the area's main east-west spine through The Mall, The Broadway and New Broadway.
Buses fan out from Ealing Broadway in most directions, making it the natural starting point for getting around locally.
Things to investigate
We hold no neighbourhood-level house price or rent data for Ealing, only a local-authority average for the whole London Borough of Ealing, so check actual asking and sold prices for the streets you are considering.
No journey-time data is connected here, so verify commute times into central London for yourself rather than assuming them from the postcode.
Licensed venues and pub or restaurant listings are not in our evidence base, so treat any specific venue as something to check directly rather than take as read.
Schools
Measured by distance from the area centre, straight line. Primary is a walk and secondary is a journey, so they are counted on different radii. Ofsted's published judgements, not a Greathome rating.
Primarystate-funded, within 2 km
11 schools
- Judged by Ofsted
- 11
- At least Good
- 10
- Outstanding or equivalent
- 2
- Below Good
- 1
Secondarystate-funded, within 5 km
20 schools
- Judged by Ofsted
- 18
- At least Good
- 18
- Outstanding or equivalent
- 9
- Below Good
- 0
24 open schools of every phase sit within 2 km, 8 of them independent. Independent schools carry no Ofsted judgement in this release, so they appear in the total and never in the judged figures. Nothing here establishes catchment, admissions eligibility or available places.
The nearest 6 schools, with their published judgement
| School | Phase | Distance | Published judgement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christ the Saviour Church of England Primary School | Primary | 0.2 km | Good · Overall effectiveness, pre-September 2024 |
| Ealing Independent College | Not applicable | 0.4 km | No published judgement |
| Clifton Lodge School | Not applicable | 0.4 km | No published judgement |
| Durston House School | Not applicable | 0.5 km | No published judgement |
| University of West London | Not applicable | 0.8 km | No published judgement |
| Grange Primary School | Primary | 1.1 km | School remains Good · Ungraded inspection |
Housing market context
£575,814average house price across Ealing, June 2026
A year earlier the same measure was £591,601, a change of -2.7%.
Average price across the whole local authority for one month, from the ONS series built on HM Land Registry UK House Price Index data. It is not a neighbourhood median and not a valuation of any property. Two guides in the same borough share this figure while their streets differ. House-price data is revised, and recent months are the most likely to move.
Source: Average house price by local authority, Office for National Statistics, from HM Land Registry UK House Price Index.
Boundary
Ealing, taken as the W5 postcode district. A postcode-district proxy, not an approved polygon. These are postcode districts standing in for an approved polygon. Present every count as "in these postcode districts", never as a neighbourhood or town-centre figure.
Sources
- Average house price by local authority — Office for National Statistics, from HM Land Registry UK House Price Index
- Get Information About Schools — Department for Education
- Ofsted inspection management information — Ofsted
- Street-level crime data — Police.uk
- Postcode and administrative geography — Postcodes.io / ONS
Evidence checked 2026-09-13. Last content change 2026-09-13. Next review 2026-09-20.
Geography and local records
Local records load separately while you read the guide.
What this report does not cover
- neighbourhood median sale price (not_available): Only a local-authority average is connected, from ONS. A neighbourhood median needs enough geocoded transactions inside the guide boundary, which the per-postcode HMLR queries cannot supply.
- rents (not_available): No rent series is connected. Advertised rents and official all-tenancy measures are different things and neither is available here yet.
- journey times (not_available): No journey planner is connected. Transport is measured as nearby stops, not as time to anywhere. TfL PTAL and journey-time APIs would replace it for London.
- school admissions history (not_available): Admission arrangements are held by each admission authority and are not in the GIAS or Ofsted snapshots.
- licensed premises and venues (not_available): No licensing register or venue dataset is connected. Food-hygiene categories are not a pub register.
- image rights (not_yet_verified): No licensed image library is connected. Return an image brief rather than an asset.
- approved boundary polygon (not_yet_verified): Boundaries are postcode-district proxies. Counts describe the districts named, not a town-centre polygon.