Place Name
This was once the main route out of the City to Oxford and it was here that travellers would cross the River Westbourne, In 1380 this was documented as Bayards Watering Place. The bayard either referred to a bay (brown) horse (which seems oddly specific) or, as some suggest the name of a resident called Baynard, which may have been a nickname either for an early landowner (possibly Baynardus or Bainiardus an associate of William the Conquer) or “some manorial officer who had charge of the watering place”. In any case he must have been quite a character for in 1652 the area was still being referred to as Bayer’s Watering. The hamlet was intermediately known as Bayswatering, while Bayswater was first recorded in 1659, when just a handful of houses stood here.
