Gillette Corner is a crossroads in west London. It is where a straightened medieval route Syon Lane (B454) crosses the triple carriageway of the Great West Road A4 and is the western end of the West Cross business district (which has an older, more ambiguous name, the Golden Mile). A disused name for the neighbourhood is Syon Hill.

Place name

It is very locally used as a placename (toponym) interchangeably with Syon Lane and formerly, for a time, Syon Hill.'Heston and Isleworth: Introduction', in ''A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3'' ed. Susan Reynolds (London, 1962), pp. 85-94. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol3/pp85-94. As with

Osterley Osterley () is an affluent district of the historic parish of Isleworth in west London approximately from Charing Cross and is part of the London Borough of Hounslow. Most of its land use is mixed agricultural and aesthetic parkland at Oster ...

to the east and north these terms are the upper hinterland of the historic parish of Isleworth, centred to the south. A projection of Brentford begins a short distance to the south-east. Osterley is increasingly seized upon (over a wider area), due to its associations with and origins in the elaborate, very verdant traditional home of the Earls of Jersey,

Osterley Park Osterley Park and House is a Georgian country estate in west London, that straddles the London boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow. Originally dating from the 1570s, the estate contains a number of Grade I and II listed buildings, with the park ...

Syon Lane

Syon Lane was turnpiked in 1767 and straightened twelve years later. A map seeking to show the early 19th century layout of Cranford, Heston and Isleworth moments before their large central and north-western open fields were, as documented, legally privatised (enclosed), in the ''Victoria County History'' shows the various lanes and extent of settlement, which was focussed on the Roman London-westward road, kept up as a road locally today. The accompanying narrative states the lanes were all medieval linking the several hamlets. Syon Lane ran past land featuring Wyke House then after a fork, stately Osterley Park on its east side to

Southall Southall () is a large suburban county of West London, England, part of the London Borough of Ealing and is one of its seven major towns. It is situated west of Charing Cross and had a population of 69,857 as of 2011. It is generally divided ...

, the parish to the north. The fork to the north was for a winding lane west, via the depopulated hamlet of Scrattage (today residential

) towards Heston. Syon Lane here had its own hamlet of a perhaps depleted estimate of eight buildings, Syon Hill, which lay just south of Gillette Corner.

Land use and architecture

Gillette Corner marks the western end of the Great West Road's landmark manufacturing sites and office headquarters – dubbed the " Golden Mile" of the 1930s, with

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

and

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

design features. It was adapted for the dystopian ''

Brave New World ''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hiera ...

'' of that decade. Directly north east set behind the main road's characteristic sparse but long line of trees is the 'Gillette Building'. It is a grade II listed

style office with workshop floors and outbuildings, designed by Sir

Banister Fletcher Sir Banister Flight Fletcher (15 February 1866 – 17 August 1953) was an English architect and architectural historian, as was his father, also named Banister Fletcher. They wrote the standard textbook ''A History of Architecture'' ...

, incorporating a high brick tower surmounted by a four-faced neon-illuminated clock. As this tall structure sits on high ground it represents a prominent local landmark and can be seen from afar, day and night. From the early 1930s until the early 21st century it was the European headquarters of the

Gillette Company Gillette is an American brand of safety razors and other personal care products including shaving supplies, owned by the multi-national corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G). Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was owned by The Gill ...

, of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

. In 1958 the buildings employed over 1,000 people. Beyond it is a

Tesco Tesco plc () is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. In 2011 it was the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in th ...

hypermarket A hypermarket (sometimes called a hyperstore, supercentre or superstore) is a big-box store combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including ...

, several buildings east is the headquarters of media company

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...

Public transport

South is

Syon Lane railway station Syon Lane railway station in Travelcard Zone 4 is on the Hounslow Loop Line and borders the Spring Grove and New Brentford neighbourhoods of the London Borough of Hounslow in west London. The office and light industrial zone to the north-east, ...

. The nearest tube stations are

Boston Manor Boston Manor is an English Jacobean manor house built in 1622 with internal alterations, intensively restored in later centuries and Boston Manor Park is the adjoining publicly owned green space including a lake. It was the manor house o ...

and

, and it is regularly served by H91 and H28 buses.

Gillette building

The Bonnington Group was granted planning permission by the

London Borough of Hounslow The London Borough of Hounslow () is a London borough in West London, England, forming part of Outer London. It was created in 1965 when three smaller borough councils (forming part of the former Middlesex County Council area) amalgamated under ...

to develop the building into a hotel and small business park, which will add to the West Cross area, of which Gillette Corner forms the western end. Work has not yet started and the site was sold to a holding company, Gillette Corner Holdings, in 2013.

Gallery

File:Great_West_Road_at_Osterley._-_geograph.org.uk_-_667032.jpg, Image from the western approach, in 1958. Image:Gillettecorner-front.JPG, The renowned and illuminated clock tower set in the centre of the former Gillette building.

References and footnotes

{{noteslist

External links

Map from Google Maps
Areas of London Art Deco architecture in London Brentford, London Transport in the London Borough of Hounslow Road junctions in London