A fast-growing residential district situated north-east of Hayes, of which it was formerly a sub-manor. Yeading Brook, which separates the district from Hayes, rises in Harrow and joins the Grand Union Canal just to the south-west of Yeading. In 757 Aethelbald, King of Mercia, made a grant of land that mentioned Geddinges, as Yeading was then known. A survey of Hayes conducted in the late 16th century did not mention Yeading and a century later it was the smallest hamlet in the manor, with just 13 householders. Brickfields and brickmakers’ cottages and the Union inn were in existence by the late 1820s. In his Handbook to the Environs of London, published in 1876, James Thorne commented that Yeading’s few inhabitants were ‘always found civil’. A temporary smallpox hospital was built at this isolated spot in 1903 and the village had only 20 dwellings in 1938. After World War II housing estates, first municipal and then private, spread across to the canal. Roman Catholic and Anglican churches were built in 1961. Housebuilding has continued into the 21st century wherever space permits and Yeading has also been earmarked by the borough council as a location for future commercial development. The residents come from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds. Sixty per cent are white and the main ethnic minority is of Indian origin. Sikhs constitute the largest religious minority and Springfield Road has the country’s first state-funded Sikh primary and secondary schools, the Guru Nanak. At Yeading Junior School over 70 per cent of pupils speak English as an additional language.