Brentham Garden Suburb in Ealing, West London, is no ordinary group of 620 houses. The first garden suburb to be built on 'Co-partnership' principles and an inspiration for the later, larger and more famous Hampstead, it has made a mark on twentieth-century domestic architecture, town planning and social housing out of all proportion to its size. The Labour, Co-operative, Arts and Crafts, and Garden City movements are all part of the Brentham story. The suburb was designed to a plan by the leading garden city architects Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, with houses, mostly in the Arts and Crafts style, by George Lister Sutcliffe and Frederic Cavendish Pearson. In 1969, Brentham Garden Suburb was designated a conservation area.
The first houses in Brentham built by Ealing Tenants were completed in 1901. May Day celebrations with street processions and dancing round the maypole were not uncommon during the early part of the twentieth century, but it is rare for the celebrations to survive into the twenty-first century as they have done in Brentham. The architecture, much of it in the Arts and Crafts style, draws visitors from all over the world.