When was the Lawn at Paddington last actually a lawn (if ever)?

[alistairlees]

I was sitting outside the Costa Coffee (next to The Mad Bishop and Bear pub) at Paddington earlier today with a group of people and the question cane up whether people still called the area ‘the Lawn’ (which is what it is advertised on signs next to the sliding glass doors).

Two people had no idea it had ever been called The Lawn; and two knew that it was and used the name.

That brought up the questions: what was it before? And when was it ever actually a lawn (if ever).

Does anyone know?

 

[coppercapped]

From Steven Brindle's book Paddington Station Its History and Architecture published by English Heritage, 2004.

This part of Paddington is said to derive its name from having been the stationmaster's garden in the period of the temporary station at the Bishop's Road Bridge between 1837 and 1850. The area was lost when Brunel built the present terminus between the great train shed and the back of the Great Western Royal Hotel. Brunel excavated it out and laid tracks up to the back of the hotel. A simple ridge-and-furrow Paxton roof was built above and iron galleries led from the back of the hotel to the departure and arrival platforms to the north and south.

The temporary passenger station was west of Bishop's Bridge Road, the only building to the east was the goods depot built along the banks of the Paddington Basin of the Regents Canal.
Brindle gives more details of later changes of the area known as 'The Lawn', but it first became a passenger circulating area in in the 1930s when P A Culverhouse rebuilt much of that end of the station including the arrival side office block beside the ramp up to Praed Street which still has GWR PADDINGTON in enormous letters at the top.

 

[alistairlees]

Thank you coppercapped - very interesting to read that. So it hasn't been a lawn for 169 years, and yet is still called "The Lawn" is pretty impressive. I wonder when the first use of "The Lawn", when it wasn't actually a lawn, was?

 

[coppercapped]

Heaven knows!