Chiswick

Chiswick House was designed by the Third Earl of Burlington, and built for him, in 1726–29 as an extension to an earlier Jacobean house (subsequently demolished in 1788); it is considered to be among the finest surviving examples of Palladian architecture in Britain, with superb collections of paintings and furniture. Its surrounding grounds, laid out by William Kent, are among the most important historical gardens in England and Wales, forming one of the first English landscape gardens.[47] It was used as an asylum from 1892 to 1928; up to 40 private patients were housed in wings which were demolished in 1956 when the house was restored.[48]

Christ Church, Turnham Green, by George Gilbert Scott, 1843

St Nicholas Church, near the river Thames, has a 15th-century tower, although the remainder of the church was rebuilt by J.L. Pearson in 1882–84. Monuments in the churchyard mark the burial sites of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth and William Kent, the architect and landscape designer; the churchyard also houses a mausoleum (for Philip James de Loutherbourg) designed by John Soane, and the tomb of Josiah Wedgwood's business partner, Thomas Bentley, designed by Thomas Scheemakers.[49] One of Oliver Cromwell's daughters, Mary Fauconberg, lived at Sutton Court and is buried in the churchyard.[50] Enduring legend has it that the body of Oliver Cromwell was also interred with her, though as the Fauconbergs did not move to Sutton Court until 15 years after his disinterment, it is more likely he was reburied at their home at Newburgh Priory.[50] Private Frederick Hitch VC, hero of Rorke's Drift, is also buried there.[51]

The church of St Michael, Sutton Court was designed by W. D. Caröe in 1908–1909. It is a red brick building on Elmwood road, in Tudor style.[52] St Paul's Church, Grove Park is a Gothic style stone building designed by H. Currey. It was built largely at the Duke of Devonshire's expense in 1872.[52]

St Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park was initially a temporary iron building from 1876 on Chiswick High Road facing Chiswick Lane. The current building's foundation stone was laid in 1879 and consecrated in 1880. It was designed, along with much of Bedford Park, by Norman Shaw, and was called "a very lovely church" by John Betjeman. It is an Anglo-Catholic church, and was attacked on the day it was consecrated for "Popish and Pagan mummeries" by the brewer Henry Smith, churchwarden of St Nicholas, Chiswick.[53]

Christ Church, Turnham Green is an early Victorian Gothic building of flint with stone dressings. The main part of the building, by George Gilbert Scott and W. B. Moffat, is from 1843; the chancel and northeast chapel were added in 1887 by J. Brooks.[52]

Chiswick's principal Roman Catholic church, Our Lady of Grace and St Edward (the Confessor) in the Diocese of Westminster, lies on the corner of Duke's Avenue and the High Road. It is a red brick building; the parish was founded in 1848, a school began c. 1855, and a church was opened by Cardinal Wiseman on the present site in 1864. It was replaced by the present building in 1886, opened by Cardinal Manning. The heavy debts incurred were paid off and the church consecrated in 1904. The square tower was added after the First World War by Canon Egan as a war memorial.[54]

The Cathedral of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God and the Royal Martyrs, is a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Harvard Road. Built in 1998, it has a characteristic blue onion dome with gold stars.[55]

Chiswick Mall, looking east from Church Street. The grand houses are on the left; their waterfront gardens are on the right.

Chiswick Mall is a waterfront street on the north bank of the River Thames in the oldest part of Chiswick near St Nicholas Church. It consists mainly of some thirty "grand houses"[56] from the Georgian and Victorian eras, many of them now listed buildings, overlooking the street on the north side; their gardens are on the other side of the street beside the river.[57] The largest and finest[56] house on the street is Walpole House, a Grade I listed building; part of it is Tudor, but the building now visible is late 17th to early 18th century.[58]

Engraving of Kew Bridge and Strand-on-the-Green, 1832

Strand-on-the-Green is the most westerly part of Chiswick, "particularly picturesque"[59] with a paved riverside path fronted by a row of "imposing"[59] 18th-century houses, interspersed with three riverside pubs. The low-lying path is flooded at high tides. It became fashionable in 1759 when Kew Bridge opened just upstream, with the royal family at Kew Palace nearby.[59]

The Bedford Park neighbourhood was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as the first place "where the relaxed, informal mood of a market town or village was adopted for a complete speculatively built suburb".[60] In 1877 the speculator Jonathan Carr hired Shaw as his estate architect. Shaw's house designs, in the Queen Anne Revival style with red brick, roughcast, decorative gables, and both oriel and dormer windows, gave the impression of great variety using only a few types of house.[61] These were scaled-down versions of the more expensive houses that he had designed for wealthy areas such as Chelsea, Hampstead, and Kensington. He also designed the focal buildings of the garden suburb, including the church of St Michael and All Angels and the Tabard Inn opposite it.[60][62][63]

Duke's Meadows stands on land formerly owned by the Duke of Devonshire. In the 1920s, it was purchased by the local council, who developed it as a recreational centre. A promenade and bandstand were built, and the meadows are still used for sport with a rugby club, football pitches, hockey club, several rowing clubs and a golf club. In recent years a local conservation charity, the Dukes Meadows Trust, has undertaken extensive restoration work, which saw a long-term project of a children's water play area opened in August 2006.[64]

Pond dipping in Gunnersbury Triangle, a local nature reserve

The Gunnersbury Triangle local nature reserve, opposite Chiswick Park Underground station, is managed by London Wildlife Trust. The area, a railway triangle, was saved from development by a public inquiry, and became a reserve in 1985. Its 2.5 hectares are covered mainly in secondary birch woodland, with willow carr (wet woodland) in the low-lying centre, and acid grassland on the former Acton Curve railway track. The reserve runs a varied programme of activities including wildlife walks, fungus forays, open days and talks.[65][66][67]

The Mawson Arms, briefly the home of the poet Alexander Pope

There are several historic public houses in Chiswick, some of them listed buildings, including the Mawson Arms,[68] the George and Devonshire,[69] the Old Packhorse[70] and The Tabard in Bath Road near Turnham Green station. The Tabard is known for its William Morris interior and its Norman Shaw exterior; it was built in 1880.[71] Three more pubs are in Strand-on-the-Green, fronting on to the Thames river path.[72]

Chiswick had two well-known theatres in the 20th century.[73] The Chiswick Empire (1912 to 1959) was at 414 Chiswick High Road. It had 2,140 seats,[74] and staged music hall entertainment, plays, reviews, opera, ballet and an annual Christmas pantomime. The Q Theatre (1924 to 1959) was a small theatre opposite Kew Bridge station. It staged the first works of Terence Rattigan and William Douglas-Home, and many of its plays went on to the West End.[75]

The 96-seat Tabard Theatre (1985) in Bath Road, upstairs from the Tabard pub but a separate business, is known for new writing and experimental work.[76]

Sanderson wallpaper factory design by Charles Voysey, 1902

The Sanderson Factory in Barley Mow Passage, now known as Voysey House, was designed by the architect Charles Voysey in 1902. It is built in white glazed brick, with Staffordshire blue bricks (now painted black) forming horizontal bands, the plinth, and surrounds for door and window openings, and dressings in Portland stone. It was originally a wallpaper printing works, now used as office space. It is a Grade II* listed building. It faces the main factory building and was once joined to it by a bridge across the road. It was Voysey's only industrial building, and is considered an "important Arts and Crafts factory building".[77]

In 1971 Erin Pizzey established the world's first domestic violence refuge at 2 Belmont Terrace, naming her organisation "Chiswick Women's Aid". The local council attempted to evict Pizzey's residents, but were unsuccessful and she soon established more such premises elsewhere, inspiring the creation of refuges worldwide.[78][79]

Chiswick is home to the Arts Educational Schools in Bath Road.[80]

The house used for filming the comedy show Taskmaster, a former groundskeeper's cottage, is just off Great Chertsey Road, near Chiswick Bridge.[81]

In the 18th century, the poet Alexander Pope, author of The Rape of the Lock, lived in Chiswick between 1716 and 1719, in the building which is now the Mawson Arms at the corner of Mawson Lane.[100][101] The actor Charles Holland was born in Chiswick in 1733.[102] The artist William Hogarth bought the house now known as Hogarth's House in 1749,[103][104] lived there until his death in 1764, and is buried in St Nicholas's churchyard.[105][106] The house later belonged to the poet and translator of Dante, Henry Francis Cary, who lived there from 1814 to 1833.[107] In February 1766 Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived a few weeks with a local grocer, before moving to Wootton, Staffordshire.[108] The painter Johann Zoffany lived on Strand-on-the-Green.[109]

Impressionist painting of Bath Road, Bedford Park by Camille Pissarro, 1897

In the 19th century, the Italian writer, revolutionary and poet Ugo Foscolo died in exile at Turnham Green in 1827,[110] and was buried at St Nicholas Churchyard, Chiswick, where his monument incorrectly states he was 50, not 49. In 1871 his remains were taken to Italy and given a national hero's burial in Santa Croce, Florence alongside Michelangelo and Galileo, while his monument in Chiswick was lavishly refurbished.[111][112]

The inventor of the electric telegraph, Francis Ronalds, lived on Chiswick Lane from 1833 to 1852.[113] Another engineer, John Edward Thornycroft was born in Chiswick in 1872;[114] his father, John Isaac Thornycroft, had founded the Chiswick-based John I. Thornycroft & Company shipbuilding company in 1864, which Thornycroft later joined and developed.[115] The artist Montague Dawson, regarded as one of the best 20th-century painters of the sea, was born in Chiswick in 1895.[116]

Sketch of Turnham Green Congregational Church (right) by Vincent van Gogh, c. 1875. He taught Sunday school in the iron structure.[117]

The painter Vincent van Gogh spent three years in Chiswick in the 1870s, teaching Sunday school pupils in the newly-constructed Chiswick Congregational Church, which was on Turnham Green on the site of the Arlington Park Mansions, and writing of it as a "verdant" district of London.[118][119][117]

The poet W. B. Yeats lived in Woodstock Road as a boy from 1879, and came back in 1887 to live in Blenheim Road, where, inspired by Chiswick Eyot, he wrote The Lake Isle of Innisfree.[120][121]

The Pissarro family of painters, the impressionist Camille Pissarro, his eldest son Lucien, as well as Felix and Ludovic-Rodo lived in 62 Bath Road, Chiswick around 1897; with Camille Pissarro painting a series of notable landscapes of the area.[122][123] The landscape artist Lewis Pinhorn Wood lived at Homefield Road[124] from 1897 to 1908.

Arlington Park Mansions, facing Turnham Green, with E. M. Forster blue plaque

In the twentieth century, the novelist E. M. Forster (1879–1970) lived at 9 Arlington Park Mansions in Chiswick[125] from 1939 until at least 1961.[126] John Osborne (1929–1994) wrote his play Look Back in Anger on his houseboat at Cubitts Yacht Basin.[127]

Notable people born before the Second World War include the cricketers Patsy Hendren (1899–1962)[128] and Jack Robertson (1917–1996),[129] the novelist Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) who lived on Eastbourne Road,[130] the theatre and film director Peter Brook (1925–2022),[131][132] zoologist and broadcaster Aubrey Manning (1930–2018),[133] and marine geologist Frederick Vine (1939– ).[134] The comic song performer Michael Flanders (1922–1975) spent the last years of his life in Bedford Park.[135] The actress Sylvia Syms (1934–2023), star of films such as Ice Cold in Alex, lived on Dukes Avenue.[136] The Who rock musicians John Entwistle (1944–2002) and Pete Townshend (1945– ) were both born in Chiswick during the Second World War.[137] Deep Purple lead singer Ian Gillan was born in Chiswick on 19 August 1945.[138]

Those born in Chiswick during the post-war period include the rock musician Dave Cousins,[139] the cricketer Mike Selvey (1948– ),[140] the musician Phil Collins (1951– ),[141] the singer Kim Wilde (1960– ),[142] illustrator Clifford Harper (1949– ), the photographer Derek Ridgers (1952– ),[143] actress Kate Beckinsale (1973– ),[144] the comedian Mel Smith (1952–2013),[145] and the cricketer Dimitri Mascarenhas (1977– ).[146]

Among those who have lived in Chiswick are the novelist Anthony Burgess (1917–1993), at 24 Glebe Street in the mid-1960s;[147] the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008) who lived at 373 Chiswick High Road;[130] the pianist and broadcaster Sidney Harrison (1903–1986) who in the 1960s lived at 57 Hartington Road[148] and later at 37 The Avenue;[149] the musical double act Bob and Alf Pearson, Bob (1907–1985) on Netheravon Road in the 1940s,[150] and Alf (1910–2012) on Linden Gardens in the 1950s;[151] the pop artist Peter Blake (1932–), in Chiswick since 1967,[152] with a "vast" studio in a former ironmonger's warehouse;[153] the actor Hugh Grant (1960– ), who grew up in Chiswick, living next to Arlington Park Mansions on Sutton Lane; the singer Bruce Dickinson (1958– ) of the band Iron Maiden;[154] the TV presenter Kate Humble (1968– );[155] the actress Elizabeth McGovern (1961– ) and her husband, film director Simon Curtis (1960– );[156] the American lawyer John Lowenthal (1925–2003),[157][158] the singer Lonnie Donegan,[139] the musician and songwriter Noel Gallagher (1967–),[159]and the model Cara Delevingne (1992– ).[160]

The playwright Michael Frayn (1933– ) and his daughter the film maker and novelist Rebecca Frayn live in Chiswick.[161] Chiswick residents have included the singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor,[162] the TV journalists Jeremy Vine,[162] Rageh Omaar[162] and Fergal Keane,[162] the actors Phyllis Logan,[162] Colin Firth,[162] David Tennant, Georgia Tennant,[163] and Vanessa Redgrave,[164] the TV presenters Clare Balding,[160] Sarah Greene,[162] Gavin Campbell,[162] and Mary Nightingale,[162] the journalist Alice Arnold,[162] and the celebrity duo Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly.[165]