Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough of the County of London, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1847. It is also the site of St Mary's Hospital and the former Paddington Green Police Station.

Paddington Waterside aims to regenerate former railway and canal land. Districts within Paddington are Maida Vale, Westbourne and Bayswater including Lancaster Gate.

The earliest extant references to Padington (or "Padintun", as in the Saxon Chartularies, 959), historically a part of Middlesex, appear in the documentation of purported tenth-century land grants to the monks of Westminster by Edgar the Peaceful as confirmed by Archbishop Dunstan. However, the documents' provenance is much later and likely to have been forged after the 1066 Norman Conquest. There is no mention of the place (or Westbourne or Knightsbridge) in the Domesday Book of 1086.

It has been reasonably speculated that a Saxon settlement led by the followers of Padda, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, was located around the intersection of the northern and western Roman roads, corresponding with the Edgware Road (Watling Street) and the Harrow and Uxbridge Roads. From the tenth century, Paddington was owned by Westminster Abbey which was later confirmed by the Plantagenet kings in a charter from 1222. This charter mentions a chapel and a farm situated in the area. A 12th-century document cited by the cleric Isaac Maddox (1697–1759) establishes that part of the land was held by brothers "Richard and William de Padinton". They and their descendants carried out activities in Paddington; these were known by records dating from 1168 to 1485. They were the earliest known tenant farmers of the land.

During King Henry VIII's dissolution, the property of Paddington was seized by the crown. However, King Edward VI granted the land to the Bishop of London in 1550. Successive bishops would later lease farmlands to tenants and city merchants. One such, in the 1540s, was Thomas North, who translated Plutarch's Parallel Lives into English in 1579. Shakespeare would later use this work and was said to have performed in taverns along Edgware Road.

In the later Elizabethan and early Stuart era, the rectory, manor and associated estate houses were occupied by the Small (or Smale) family. Nicholas Small was a clothworker who was sufficiently well connected to have Holbein paint a portrait of his wife, Jane Small. Nicholas died in 1565 and his wife married again, to Nicholas Parkinson of Paddington who became master of the Clothworkers' Company. Jane Small continued to live in Paddington after her second husband's death, and her manor house was big enough to have been let to Sir John Popham, the attorney general, in the 1580s. They left the building that became in this time Blowers Inn.

As the regional population grew in the 17th century, Paddington's ancient Hundred of Ossulstone was split into divisions; Holborn Division replaced the hundred for most administrative purposes. A church, the predecessor of St Mary was built in Paddington in 1679.

In 1740, John Frederick leased the estate in Paddington and it is from his granddaughters and their families that many of Paddington's street names are derived. The New Road was built in 1756–7 to link the villages of Paddington and Islington. By 1773, a contemporary historian felt and wrote that "London may now be said to include two cities (London and Westminster), one borough (Southwark) and forty six antient [ancient] villages [among which]... Paddington and [adjoining] Marybone (Marylebone)." During the 18th century, several French Huguenots called Paddington village home. These included jewellers, nobility and skilled craftsmen; and men such as Claudius Amyand (surgeon to King George II). The French nobility built magnificent gardens that lasted up until the 19th century.