Hayes is a town in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It is a suburban development situated 13 miles (20.9 km) west of Charing Cross.

Hayes was developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries as an industrial locality to which residential districts were later added to house those who worked in the nearby factories. Its development is typical of that of what is sometimes called the second industrial revolution - the creation of new light engineering industries on the edge of existing cities.

Hayes is where Heathrow Airport is situated.

Its name came from Anglo-Saxon Hǣs or Hǣse = "(land overgrown with) brushwood"

History
Until the end of the 19th century, Hayes was primarily an agricultural and brickmaking area. However, because of its location on the Grand Junction Canal (later called the Grand Union) and the Great Western Railway it had a number of advantages as an industrial location in the late 19th century. It was because of this proximity that the Hayes Development Company offered sites on the north side of the railway, adjacent to the canal.

Technology
An early occupier was the Gramophone Company, later His Master's Voice and latterly EMI. Only the EMI archives and some early reinforced concrete factory buildings, notably one (1912) by Evan Owen Williams, later knighted, the engineer, remain.
It was here in the Central Research Laboratories (generally known as just "CRL") that Isaac Shoenberg developed (1934) the all-electronic 405-line television used by the BBC (full service 1936), and Alan Blumlein carried out his research into binaural sound and stereo gramophone recording. "Trains at Hayes Station" (1935) and "Walking & Talking" are two notable films Blumlein shot to demonstrate stereo sound on film.

In 1939 a 60MHz radar was developed, and from 1941 to 1943 the H2S radar system. Later Godfrey Hounsfield was to create his computed tomography (CT) scanner, utilising the EMIDEC 1100 computer of which he was the project leader, receiving the MacRobert Award in 1972 and the Nobel Prize in 1979.

During the 1990s, CRL spawned another world-beating technology: Sensaura 3D positional audio. This technology was widely licensed to audio chip manufacturers and for use in game consoles and computer games. In an echo of Blumlein's early stereo recordings, the Sensaura engineers made some of their first 3D audio recordings at Hayes Station. The Sensaura team also won the MacRobert Award, in 2001.

Aircraft manufacture
In World War I the EMI factories produced aircraft. Richard Fairey was seconded there for a short time, before setting up his own company, Fairey Aviation, which relocated across the railway. Needing an airfield to test his aircraft he secured a site at the south east of what is now Heathrow Airport, which was acquired by the Ministry of Aviation towards the end of World War II, which renamed it. Until its takeover by Morrisons the head office of Safeway plc was located in Hayes, on the old Fairey Aviation site. In early 2006 Morrisons have sold this site to an unknown developer.
The Nestlé company located its major chocolate and instant coffee works on the canal, adjacent to the railway east of the station, and it was for many years, the UK headquarters of the company.

Opposite Nestlé on the other side of the canal, the Aeolian company and its associates manufactured player pianos and rolls from just before the World War I until the depression. That, and the increasing sophistication of the gramophone record market lead to its collapse, and its facilities were then exploited by Walls, a meat processor and ice cream manufacturer.

Development as a suburb
Since development, industry has been pre-eminent in Hayes, and the provision of adequate housing did not begin until after World War I with the creation of modest dwellings of the garden suburb type.

George Orwell, who adopted this pseudonym while living here, worked as a schoolmaster at The Hawthorns High School for Boys, situated in Church Road. The school has since closed and is now known as The Fountain House Hotel. He hated his time in Hayes, camouflaging it lightly as West Bletchley in Coming Up for Air, as Southbridge in A Clergyman's Daughter and saying of it:

"Hayes ... is one of the most godforsaken places I have ever struck. The population seems to be entirely made up of clerks who frequent tin-roofed chapels on Sundays and for the rest bolt themselves within doors."

Since Orwell's time other famous names have spent time in Hayes. Former England footballer Glenn Hoddle was born here in 1957, former BBC director-general Greg Dyke attended Hayes Grammar School and Brian Connolly, late singer of Seventies glam rock outfit Sweet, at one time lived in Hayes. More recently the actor Anne Marie Duff grew up in Hayes.

Hayes's most famous resident pre-dates them all. The man known as "the father of English music", William Byrd lived in Harlington in the 1540s and a primary school in the area bears his name.

Today
Whilst there are some pleasant locations in the area such as Barra Hall Park, Hayes in the early 21st century is largely a residential suburb, with industrial sites still situated in hayes Town. As a shopping centre Hayes is eclipsed by Uxbridge and Hounslow which offer a far wider variety of shops.

Hayes has few cultural assets, there is no cinema, one theatre, and no galleries or museums. The town's Catholic church houses a huge Madonna with Child by the 20th century Italian painter Pietro Annigoni. Nightlife is confined to a handful of public houses. Hayes also has a football club called Hayes F.C. that compete in the Conference South.

Nearest places:
• Uxbridge
• Yeading
• Harlington
• Northolt

Nearest railway station:
• Hayes and Harlington railway station