Things you didn't know about... Bayswater

Packed with bars and restaurants, Bayswater's always been a good watering hole
At the time of the Domesday Book, the land now known as Bayswater belonged to Westminster Abbey. One tenant, called Baynard, may have had something to do with the name—certainly, by the 16th century the Abbey referred to "the common field at Paddington" as being "near a place commonly called Baynard's Watering". Locals soon turned this into "Bayswater".

Bayswater townhouses are not all they're made out to be
Leinster Gardens in Bayswater is lined with stucco-fronted five-storey Georgian townhouses, typical of the area. But take a closer look at 23/24—they're actually only a façade, the properties behind having been removed in 1868 for a tunnel on the Paddington-Bayswater branch of the then very new London Underground.

The Sting in the tale of Bayswater
And it's not just façades for which Bayswater's Leinster Gardens is famous—Sting lived in a basement flat at 28A in the late Seventies as The Police were becoming world famous. (His wife Trudi Styler lived in another basement flat two doors down).

Little Beirut, Bayswater
Bayswater's large Middle Eastern community means that Bayswater is home to a huge number of Middle Eastern restaurants and hookah cafés—so much so that the Edgware Road on the east side of Bayswater is known as Little Beirut.

Literature loves Bayswater
Literature is peppered with references to Bayswater. In George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Eliza Dolittle is "sent to Whiteleys to be attired" (Whiteleys is a famous Bayswater department store).

In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell reveals that the pram holding Jack as a baby was found "standing by itself in a remote corner of Bayswater".

And in John Le Carré's Cold War masterpiece The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Liz's father is described as a member of the Bayswater South Branch of the Communist Party.

Bayswater is famous for street art
Every Sunday artists gather on Bayswater Road to display and sell their work. With hundreds of pieces hanging on the rails of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, it has become a London institution.