| Map: | Staines Rural District within Middlesex in 1911 (boundaries apply approximately 1904-1930) |
| Staines Rural District | |
| Start: | 1894 |
| End: | 1930 |
| Status: | Rural district |
| Government: | Staines Rural District Council |
Staines Rural District was a rural district of Middlesex in England from 1894 to 1930.
It was created in 1894 replacing the 1875-created Staines rural sanitary district. It co-governed with varying degrees of input from the civil parish councils and functions increasingly came to be carried out by the newly created Middlesex County Council from 1888:
It was named after Staines, the urban district of which bordered it to the west, and bordered that of Sunbury to the south-east. Feltham became an independent urban district in 1904 so for the following 26 years the parish of Hanworth was an exclave of the district surrounded by five Urban Districts. The rural district was divided up among existing urban districts in 1930.[2] [3] It covered over half of medieval Spelthorne Hundred one of six divisions of the historic county Middlesex.
Sunbury-on-Thames and Staines civil parishes in the former Sanitary District saw the Staines Rural Sanitary District's very slow progress in installing drainage as backward. Indeed, the ineffective taxation and implementation of many such bodies was one of the main prompts for members of Parliament supporting the Local Government Act 1894, which introduced a second tier of local government six years after the deemed success of the administrative county introduction in 1888. Rate-raising and well-managed foul sewer and surface water drain construction was swift in the two Urban Districts and in the Rural District from 1894.[4] [3]
Until 1930 the separation of church and state was gradual in this District as this extract from an account of Stanwell's local government history shows:
The district was abolished in 1930 when its civil parishes were re-allocated as follows:
| Parishes | Successor as parent District | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashford, Laleham and Stanwell | Staines U.D. | Large reservoirs in Stanwell in construction/built. | |
| Littleton and Shepperton | Sunbury U.D. | Large reservoir in Littleton in construction/built. | |
| East Bedfont and Hanworth | Feltham U.D. | Opposite sides of town itself. | |
| Harlington | Hayes and Harlington U.D. | Until transfer known as Hayes U.D. | |
| Cranford | Hayes and Harlington U.D. | Half remaining there 1934 on its abolition, half given to Heston and Isleworth U.D. | |
| Harmondsworth | Yiewsley and West Drayton U.D. | Large airport soon in construction. |