Greener and wetter than a London suburb has any right to be. The average home has a park a couple of minutes' walk away. The river is a short stroll further. Syon Park, Gunnersbury Park and Kew Gardens are all close by. Brentford is built-up, but it is surrounded by green space.
The nearest public green space is on average about 137 metres from a Brentford home, and there are about 33 green spaces within a kilometre. That is a park, garden or green almost wherever you turn, which matters more than usual in a town where most people live in flats.
Open water is on average about 250 metres away, and there are about 110 stretches of water within a kilometre. The Thames, the Brent and the Grand Union Canal all meet here, so water is part of almost every walk in Brentford.
Cycling is less well served. The National Cycle Network is on average about 4.5 kilometres from a Brentford home, and no postcode is close to it.
The valuation list puts about 93 shops, 19 pubs and 10 restaurants in the area. Nineteen pubs against ten restaurants is a town that drinks more than it books tables.
Fine particle pollution across the London Borough of Hounslow averaged 8.6 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024. That is a borough-wide figure that takes in Brentford's roads along with everywhere else.
The landmarks are the best part. Syon Park has a public nature reserve on its marshy ground, and in the Middle Ages it held the largest abbey church in England. The church was demolished, and nobody knew where its foundations were until television archaeologists dug them up in 2003. Boston Manor House is a Jacobean house in its own park. The London Museum of Water & Steam houses the world's largest working beam engine, and its tower is the town's emblem. J. M. W. Turner lived as a boy at what is now The Weir pub. Conservation areas such as Strand on the Green, Kew Green and Grand Union Canal and Boston Manor show where the older fabric of the place has survived the flats.
Private outdoor space comes to about 28,000 square metres of garden for every 1,000 Brentford residents. In a town that is mostly flats, much of that garden belongs to the houses that have it, and everyone else uses the parks.
The rating list has 1,135 business premises in the area. Offices are the largest group at 488, followed by 93 shops, 92 warehouses and 19 pubs. These are premises on the valuation list, not a count of businesses open today. Even so, Brentford is clearly a place where people work as well as live, and the office count is more than five times the shop count.
Of 157 food premises rated for hygiene, about 82% hold the top score and about 5% are at the low end. That is a high top-score share for a town of this size.
No protected landscape overlaps Brentford. There is no area of outstanding natural beauty, no site of special scientific interest and no ancient woodland. The green space here is parks and historic estates, kept by people, not wild countryside.
The surroundings are one of Brentford's real strengths. Few places this close to central London have so many parks, so much water and so many great houses within walking distance of a flat.