A canalside annex of Park Royal, now undergoing regeneration. The name is little used except by a business centre on Steele Road. Lower Place was originally
a farm near present-day Waxlow Road. The Paddington Canal, now part of the Grand Union Canal, was cut to the south of the
farm in 1801. The Central Middlesex hospital began in 1903 as a workhouse infirmary, but has since been much extended. The
site is currently undergoing a major programme of redevelopment, with an entirely new acute care hospital, an office building
and more than a hundred bed spaces for key workers. Some allotments remain from Lower Place’s agricultural days, along
with a mixture of factories, playing fields and institutional buildings. McVitie’s began making biscuits at Waxlow Road
in 1906. The site is now the third largest biscuit factory in the world and is still expanding. The Park Royal Partnership
has targeted Waxlow Road for further commercial development in the near future. South of the canal, the industry is mainly
small-scale and the premises unremarkable, except for the distinctively clad Luxcrete head office on Disraeli Road. Steele
Road provides access to the Grand Union Canal walk.
|