November 2017

The Regents Canal was once used for industry and transport, and is now used mainly for leisure pursuits. It passes through areas of London, which are somewhat bleak at first glance, but, on closer examination, can be seen to have some endearing features. This exploration takes us mainly through Hoxton and Haggerston - parts of London between Islington and Hackney, which were mainly rural until the late 18th century.

In 1745, Hoxton was beginning to develop on the edge of London to the west of the Kingsland Road (the Roman ‘Ermine Street’). Haggerston was a tiny hamlet slightly to the east of this thoroughfare and north of Hoxton. By the 1820s, both districts contained stretches of the recently constructed Regent’s Canal. This waterway, whose construction began in 1812, facilitated local industry and the building of warehouses.

Both Hoxton and Haggerston appear in the 11th century Domesday Book, and are now part of Hackney. Although both names end in ‘ton’, this suffix has different meanings in each case (see: “Oxford Dictionary of London Place Names”, by AD Mills, publ. 2001). Hoxton is derived from the Old English name ‘Hoc’ and the word for farmstead ‘tun’’, giving the name a meaning like ‘farmstead or estate of Hoc’. Haggerston, which appears in the Domesday Book as ‘Hergotestane’, is derived from the name (early Christian in origin) of a man, ‘Haergod’ and an Old English word meaning ‘boundary stone (of someone’s land)’. Thus, Haggerston means something like ‘Haergod’s boundary stone’. Until the 16th century, when Hoxton began to be occupied by Londoners expanding into the countryside, both places were rural. Throughout the 17th century, Haggerston remained an area of countryside, where some wealthy gentlemen had out-of-town residences.

De Beauvoir Sq

De Beauvoir Sq

We start at De Beauvoir Town, a housing estate whose development coincided with the opening of the Regents Canal. Just west of the Kingsland Road, this residential area is centred on De Beauvoir Square, a lovely open space surrounded by attractive grey brick houses with elaborately curved gables. Building was begun in 1821 by brick-maker William Rhodes (1774-1843), a grandfather of the colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Construction ceased in 1823, when a court determined that Rhodes had illegally acquired the lease for the De Beauvoir’s land. After the trial had run on for twenty years, the land reverted to the De Beauvoir family, and development recommenced. Houses were built there for the up and coming ‘middle classes’.

The Victorian gothic St Peters church stands south-east of the square on De Beauvoir Road. It was designed by WC Lochner (c. 1779-1861) who was born in what is now Libya (see: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cheyne/p20418.htm), and built by 1841. It was constructed to “enhance the character and add lustre to the new estate” (see: http://www.stpeterdebeauvoir.org.uk/history-of-st-peters/).

St James Cottages 1845 De Beauvoir Rd

De Beauvoir Rd north of Downham Rd

The part of De Beauvoir Road north of Downham Road is lined with two-storey homes built in the 19th century. The row called ‘St James Cottages’ is dated 1845.

South of Downham Road, there is a council estate built in the 1960s and ‘70s. It includes one high-rise tower and several lower buildings, all of which make a stark contrast to the prettier buildings north of Downham Road. The estate stretches almost as far south as the Regents Canal.

The AEI Group (an independent music business) occupies the Bankstock Building on De Beauvoir Crescent close to the Whitmore Road bridge. Overlooking the canal, this building looks like a modern conversion of an earlier industrial or stage building. In fact, it was originally built in the 1930s, and has had a lightweight modern structure built above its original roof (see: http://www.elliottwood.co.uk/project/bankstock-building-de-beauvoir-crescent-london-n1/).

Regents Canal looking west from Whitmore Rd Bridge

Whitmore Rd Bridge over Regents Canal

From the Whitmore Bridge, there are good views along the Regents Canal. The bridge, single-arched and built of brick, is a typical example of Georgian canal bridge-building. A staircase leads down to the towpath. Descend this to enter another world – a peaceful contrast to the urban environment on either side of the canal. The canal is lined in places with moored canal barges (‘narrowboats’). The occasional narrowboat chugs past, often with its ‘skipper’ with one hand on the tiller, and the other holding either a mobile ‘phone or a glass of an alcoholic beverage. The old towpath, beautifully maintained, is a busy place. Cyclists and joggers compete with walkers for space on it.

Plant covered building Regents Canal

Entry to Kingsland Basin

Walking eastwards, we pass a greenish modern apartment block overlooking the canal. Much of its façade - its balcony rails and supporting pillars - are literally alive: a dense tangle of plants sprouts from panels of planters, looking like vertical plots of garden, attached to them. This building is a fine example of a ‘living wall’, currently fashionable in current architecture. Further east, the towpath crosses a metal bridge, which straddles an inlet of the canal: the Kingsland Basin. The basin dates from the early 1820s, when it began being used for mooring vessels next to industrial establishments. One of the earliest of these, opened in 1823, made tents (see: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol10/pp33-35). In the 19th century, the area close between De Beauvoir Crescent and the basin was occupied by very poor people. Today, things have changed. The Basin, in which pleasure craft are moored, is now surrounded by luxurious recently-built apartment buildings.

Kingsland Basin

Graffiti just west of Kingsland Rd

One of the features that I enjoyed along the canal is the abundance of often luridly coloured graffiti, much of it skilfully executed. I cannot guarantee that what I saw in September 2017 will remain unchanged, or is even there now. Such is the transient nature of this art-form. However, I am sure that there will be some for you to enjoy when you follow my path.

Passing under the brick Kingsland Road Bridge, which has an interesting contemporary iron railing on its west side and whose span is both wider and higher span than the one at Whitlock Road, it is difficult to believe that you have just been beneath one of London’s busier thoroughfares. The tow path, lined with vegetation on one side and the slow-moving, almost motionless, canal on the other, is a peaceful haven wending its way through bustling ‘inner city’ areas. The canal is a world apart from the city surrounding it. A concrete suspension bridge of recent construction carries the lines of the Overground railway across the canal.

Railway bridge south of Haggerston Station

Haggerston Rd Bridge

Cormorant near Haggerston

After passing beneath the brick built, narrow Haggerston Bridge (built about 1816-1820), which carries Haggerston Road across the canal, I spotted a cormorant perched on a moored narrow boat. Its wings were spread out widely to dry them in the sun. The north wall of the arch of the bridge is notched in several places. These grooves were caused by the friction of the horse-drawn barge tow-ropes against the abutment.

East of the Haggerston Bridge, the level of the canal drops by about eight feet in the Acton’s Lock. It was named after the Hackney land-owner, Nathaniel Lee Acton (1757-1836; of Livermere Park and Bramford in Suffolk), through whose land (agricultural fields, market gardens, and nursery grounds) the canal was built (see: http://planningdocs.hackney.gov.uk/NorthgatePublicDocs/00049992.pdf). Acton’s portrait was painted by the celebrated George Romney (1734-1802) in about 1787 (see: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2006/shrubland-park-suffolk-england-country-house-sale-l06501/lot.294.html)

A few yards east of the lock, the canal is crossed by the Cat and Mutton Bridge, which carries Pritchard Road across the canal. This bridge might have been named after the pub with the same name, which is about 250 yards north of the canal. The pub (aka ‘Cat & Shoulder of Mutton’) was in existence by 1745, long before the canal was constructed. Whatever the origin of its name, the present bridge, which is lined beneath with steel girders, is newer than the smaller brick bridges, which were built at the time of the canal’s construction.

From the bridge, there is a fine view of some gasometers east of it. The construction of the canal facilitated the transport of fuels including coal. The Imperial Gas Company, founded by 1829, owned a plot, where these gasometers now stand, and another on the west side of the bridge south of the canal. This branch of the company supplied gas to Tottenham and Edmonton as early as 1840 (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Light_and_Coke_Company#Shoreditch).

Broadway Market (named thus in 1937) to the north of the bridge was the site of a marketplace, which was already active in the 1830s. Close to Acton’s Lock, it was a place where barge-workers could obtain provisions. Today, this widened stretch of road is beginning to go ‘upmarket’, as property values in an area so close to the City rise.

After crossing the bridge, Pritchard Road continues straight south-west for a few yards before turning southwards at its junction with Goldsmiths Row. This was formerly part of Mutton Lane that led up to, and beyond the Cat and Mutton pub (see: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol5/pp505-524). The present name is derived from the existence of some alms-houses (first constructed in 1703 for poor employees of the Goldsmiths’ Company). Marked on a detailed 1872 map, they do not appear on a similar map drawn 22 years later, nor on later editions of the same scale Ordnance Survey maps.

The fake half-timbered pub, The Albion, a haunt of West Bromwich football team fans stands on a corner plot on Goldsmiths Row. Well, at least it did when I passed it in September 2017. By then, it had been closed for several months (see: https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2017/06/12/the-albion-closed-shoreditch-west-bromwich/), and was awaiting renovation by its new owners, who plan to open a new establishment to be called ‘The Virgin Queen’. The pub had been in business as ‘The Albion’ for about twenty years. The sign that used to adorn the pub has been removed (by a former fan of the establishment) to reveal the words “West’s Brewery Co. Ltd.”, a Hackney brewery which dated back to 1822 (see: http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/124_5/Wests.pdf). Before being called ‘The Albion’, it was named ‘The Duke of Sussex’. The building housing it was constructed in the 1920s.

Sebright primary School Audrey Str

Sebright primary School Audrey Str

Sebright primary School Audrey Str

Audrey Street leads off Goldsmiths Row towards a 19th century school building, constructed with red bricks and many gables, bearing the date “1873” and a carved stone with the words “Maidstone Street Haggerston School”. It was designed in the ‘Queen Anne’ style by CH Mileham (1837-1917) and his partner, a Mr Kennedy, for the Hackney Division of the School Board for London, and later (1894) extended by TJ Bailey (see: https://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101392464-sebright-primary-school-including-former-schoolkeepers-house-and-cookery-centre-haggerston-ward#.WgwpPGi0OM8). It was one of the first schools built by the School Board of London under the provisions of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. This Act ensured that local school boards were set-up to provide compulsory education for children aged five to twelve years. Fees were paid by parents who could afford them. Fees for children whose parents were unable to afford them were paid by the boards. Today, Maidstone Street no longer exists, and the school has been renamed Sebright Primary School.

Haggerston Park BMX track

Haggerston Park

Haggerston Park

Haggerston Park is reached a few yards along Goldsmiths’ Row to the south of the school. This irregularly shaped, pleasant green open space includes a BMX cycle track, paths through wooded areas, a lovely pond, and playing fields. The northern part of the park, which reaches up to Whiston Street is built on the site of part of the gasworks that was destroyed by a V2 bomb in 1944. The rest of the park was built where once there had been an area of derelict housing. The park’s creation began in the 1950s.

The southernmost section of the park is occupied by Hackney City Farm (established 1984). Of all the so-called city farms that I have seen so far, this one has excited me least. To its credit, it does include a nice flower garden amongst its attractions. According to old detailed maps, the large brick building that stands within the farm, and to which an old cobbled lane leads, was once a brewery: ‘Three Crowns Brewery’, a part of West’s company (see above). The former Boston Street marked on old maps) has become a path through the farm.

St Peters Betnnal Green

St Peters Betnnal Green

If you are visiting the area on a Sunday morning and enjoy street markets, then the following detour is worth taking. Cross the Hackney Road, and enter Ion Square Gardens. This small open space is on the site of Ion Square, which was surrounded by small houses built around a private communal garden in about 1845. Following extensive bombing in WW2, the gardens were enlarged to form the present park in the 1960s. The church of St Peters Bethnal Green stands near the south-east corner of the gardens. Its grey colour is due to its facing with flint. Built 1840-41, it was designed by Lewis Vulliamy (1791-1871). Its spacious nave has a plain ceiling supported by an elaborate wooden structure reminiscent of hammer-beam roofs.

Mander organ factory old school entrance

Mander organ factory

The church shares a courtyard with another Victorian building. It houses Mander’s organ factory. A doorway leading into the factory has a carved stone above it, which reads “infants”, suggesting that once there was a school on this site. This is confirmed by referring to old maps. Noel Mander, who died in 2005, began his company in 1936. In 1947, the company moved into the disused school, which was built in the 1840s.

The brick and stone building on Warner Place (near the church), whose external appearance has a Tudor ‘flavour’, is St Peter’s Church Hall. It was built in 1912.

Barnet Grove

Elwin Str by Jesus Green

Jesus Green

Durant Street leads south from Ion Square Gardens, passing a series of streets with neat two storey terraced dwellings, which were built in the mid-19th century. Wimbolt Street, which is one of these, leads to the triangular Jesus Green, a grassy space with several trees. This is in the centre of an area which was developed between 1822 and ’62 on land, which had once been farmland. The land had been owned by the trustees of Jesus Hospital in Chipping Barnet since 1689 (see: https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/Documents/Planning-and-building-control/Development-control/Conservation-areas/Jesus-HospitalV1.pdf). In the 1820s, it was planned to use this to rehouse some of the eleven thousand people left homeless when their homes were demolished to create St Katharine’s Dock. After several ill-fated attempts to develop the area, the present streets were laid out in the 1860s.

Quilter Street runs west along the south side of Jesus Green to reach Ravencroft Street, which soon crosses Columbia Road. The Columbia Market Nursery School has its signage both in English and Bengali. It stands on part of the site of the reputedly magnificent Victorian gothic Columbia Market complex, which was built in 1859 and callously demolished in 1958. Geoffrey Fletcher wrote of this building in his “The London Nobody Knows” (publ. 1962):
“No verbal description could convey the strangeness and unlikelihood of it all – that great place like a mediaeval cloth hall, with a gatehouse and cloisters. The building (also by HA Darbishire) … had atall tower; its interior was a mass of tall piers, vaults, and tracery, and full of carved inscriptions”

Leopold Buildings

Banana flower Columbia Road

The school faces a row of 19th century tenements built of brick and stone with cast-iron balconies and bow windows. These are the Leopold Buildings constructed by The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company in 1872. East of the school, there are less attractive mid-20th century blocks of flats, outside one of which I spotted a flowering banana plant – a rare sight in London. The Royal Horticultural Society notes that although bananas are generally delicate plants, some species are hardy enough to survive in parts of the UK where winters are mild (see: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=311).

Columbia Road Flower Market

Columbia Road Flower Market

School mosaic in Columbia Road Flower Market

The stretch of Columbia Road east of Ravenscroft Street comes alive on Sunday mornings with a busy flower market. Lined by shops and a school, the street is crammed full of people viewing, and buying from a series of plant and flower vendors manning their temporary stalls. I found this popular market somewhat claustrophobic because of the seething mass of people attending it. Originally, this market was held on Saturdays, but it was moved to Sundays to allow Jewish traders to work without disturbing their Sabbath. The horticultural focus of the market originated in the 1960s, but the local interest in flowers can be traced back to the 17th century when the Huguenot refugees encouraged an interest in flower buying and selling to the area. The outer walls of the Columbia Primary School have been decorated with mosaics, which can just about be seen behind the stalls and crowds on Sundays.

Columbia Road runs to Hackney Road close to the Hackney City Farm. To the east of the farm, stands the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, which functioned between 1867 and 1996 (see: http://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/queenelizabethhackney.html). The building was commenced in 1870, and enlarged later. Its façade has been preserved, but the rest of the structure has been redeveloped for residential use.

Yorkton Street, a cul-de-sac, leads from Hackney Road to Haggerston Park. On its west side, there is a brick building with a stone crucifix attached to it just beneath the roof. This is the rear of St Saviour’s Priory (Church of England), which was founded by Dr John Mason Neale (1818-66) in 1855. It is an order of women dedicated to caring for the sick. The present buildings date from the 1970s, when the original late 1880’s premises were demolished.

Dunloe Street, which crosses Yorkton, leads to Dawson Street. On the corner of the latter and Hackney Road, there stands a derelict cinema building in the art-deco style. This was an Odeon cinema, which was designed by Andrew Mather (1891-1938), who created many cinemas for the Odeon company. It opened in 1938. In 1961, it became a bingo hall, which closed its doors finally in 2015 (see: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/13886). The building’s fate remains undecided.

201 and 203 Hackney Road are set back a little from their neighbours. The walls on both sides of the ‘inlet’ were covered in weird graffiti when I saw them in September 2017.

St Marys Secret Garden

St Marys Secret Garden

St Marys Secret Garden

West of these, Weymouth Street leads back to Dunloe Street. Appleby Street runs north from the latter to reach the entrance to St Mary’s Secret Garden. Originally created for, and by, people with experience of mental stress, this delightful small garden - a peaceful oasis - is open to the public. Its small area is divided into several different types of garden. This creates the impression that it is much larger than it is. Paths inlaid with occasional mosaics thread their way between beds of flowers and plants and a tiny ‘wild’ woodland area.

Rear of St Chads

St Chads

St Chads

St Chads

Continuing west along Dunloe Street, we reach a large red brick church with gothic windows, a grey tiled roof, and a short pyramidical steeple. This is St Chads, a cruciform building which was built 1867-69 to the designs of James Brooks (1825-1901). Its brick and stone interior is magnificent. It nave is supported by brick walls punctuated by sweeping gothic arches lined with stone frames. The roof of the nave has a hemi-circular, almost barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling. The interior of this Anglo-Catholic church has a great feeling of space and lightness. When it was built, the church stood amongst the picturesque mock Tudor villas of Nichols Square, all of which were demolished in the early 1960s (see: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2013/02/16/the-haggerston-nobody-knows/).

Passing under the railway arches just west of St Chads, we reach Hoxton station. Outside it, there is a WW1 memorial in white stone. It is dedicated to the memory of the North London railwaymen who fell in the Great War. Geffrye Street runs south to Cremer Street, which runs west to meet Kingsland Road. Many of the buildings in this precinct are covered with attention-grabbing graffiti in vivid colours.

Graffiti near Hoxton Station

Graffiti near Hoxton Station

Graffiti near Hoxton Station

The last point on this exploration is the Geffrye Museum. This is housed in the central section of the alms-houses that surround three sides of a large rectangular green open space. The alms-houses, which are in an immaculate state of preservation, were built in 1714, funded by money bequeathed by Sir Robert Geffrye (1613-1703). His statue stands above the doorway to the centrally positioned chapel.

Geffrye statue

Geffrye alms-houses chapel

Geffrye Museum courtyard

A pathway leads through a small cemetery to the north east of the grounds, around to the back of the long central portion of the building. There, behind the alms-houses, and close to the elevated railway tracks, is a series of gardens, each one planted to illustrate a phase in the history of English gardening. There is also a herb garden.

Geffrye Museum one of the garden layouts

Inside Geffrye Museum

Inside Geffrye Museum

The museum is designed to illustrate the history of domestic life between 1600 and the present. This is done beautifully by a series of rooms, each one decorated and furnished appropriately for the period being demonstrated. Each room is convincing, which should not be surprising because all the furniture is original as are some of the walls and ceilings, which have been removed from actual homes that were to be demolished.

Geoffrye Museum

Geoffrey Museum art deco

Geoffrye Museum extension

Geoffrye Museum room overlooking garden

At the south end of the museum, there is a modern extension with a circular section around which there are several re-creations of rooms from the 20th century. The new section also contains a café and a shop. At the rear of the central section of the alms-houses, there is a reading room with large windows that overlook the gardens.

High above the south-west corner of the Geffrye Museum grounds, I noticed a fading painted wall advertisement. It bears a telephone number “Bishopsgate 9087 “. This system of telephone numbers was introduced in the early 1920s and abandoned in the 1960s, which means the sign must have been made in that period. It was painted on the bricks to promote Blooms Pianos, which used to be available at 134 Kingsland Road, where this walk ends.

This exploration passes through parts of London, which were hardly developed before the early 19th century. Part of this development was due to the construction of the Regents Canal, and the rest to natural urban expansion in line with population increase. Once a poor area of London, much of what is discussed above is rapidly becoming both more fashionable and more expensive to live in. The southern part of Hoxton around Hoxton Square, which I have not described, is currently very ‘trendy’ and a vibrant area at night.

LIFE AND DEATH IN HOOP LANE

Hoop Lane runs in a north-easterly direction from Golders Green Road to Meadway. This by-way is of personal interest as it ran through the first few decades of my life, and the last few decades of my mother’s.

Hoop Lane is amongst Golders Green’s older thoroughfares. It joins Golders Green Road (formerly ‘North End Road’) with Finchley Road, and then continues towards the western edge of the Hampstead Garden Suburb. The latter did not exist prior to about 1905. Before that date, Hoop Lane continued from Finchley Road towards where it ends today, but as a ‘dead-end’ in open country. An 1870’s detailed Ordnance Survey map shows that Hoop Lane was lined by trees (as it is today) and ended at its eastern end at a T-junction. In one direction (north west) ran Temple Fortune Lane, and in the other (south east) ran Wild Hatch, which ended abruptly in farmland. These byways were devoid of buildings in the 1870s. However, an 1807 map shows that there was one building on Wild Hatch at that date. These appear on a 1900 map, labelled as ‘Wild Hatch Cottages’.

Finchley Road was laid out and built in the 1820s and 1830s as a turnpike road (toll-road), bypassing the difficult hilly road that ran from Camden Town through Hampstead village (to Finchley and further north). Before the new road was built, traffic had to climb the steep road to Hampstead, and then wind its way down the North End Road, which still exists. North End Road passed through Golders Green. In the first two decades of the19th century, Golders Green was a string of well-spaced properties, a small hamlet, close to common land (the ‘green’), which was located where Golders Green Station stands today. What is now named ‘Golders Green Road’ was then known as ‘North End Road’. This road continued from Hampstead towards the settlement called ‘Brent Street’.

In those early days, before the existence of Finchley Road, to reach Finchley from Hampstead it was necessary to proceed as follows. After passing the commonage of Golders Green, the traveller would have taken a right turn into Hoop Lane, and gone along it in a north-easterly direction to its end where it met Temple Fortune Lane. Next, the traveller would have had to go northwest along this lane until he or she reached a triangular open space, which is now the position of modern Temple Fortune. This place’s name derives from the fact that it stands on land once owned by the Knights Templars. This spot was the southern end of Ducksetters Lane, which wound its way north-eastwards to Finchley. From this description of the route, it is evident that Hoop Lane was an important thoroughfare between London and the North prior to the building of Finchley Road. It was a country lane with few, if any, buildings before the late 19th century.

South west of Finchley Road, Hoop Lane was devoid of buildings as late as 1897. Near where the road met North End Road (now ‘Golders Green Road’), there was a building set in the middle of a large plot called ‘The Oaks’. The Oaks were still marked on a detailed 1912 map. This large stately home disappeared in 1920. By 1912, there were plant nursery buildings on Hoop Lane and, also, one building, now the Central Hotel, where Hoop Lane met Finchley Road on its west side. This must be the one of oldest surviving buildings on Hoop Lane.

There was another early building (now Glentrees estate agent) opposite it on the other side of Finchley Road close to where the Roman Catholic Church of Edward The Confessor stands today. This church’s construction began in March 1914, and it was completed by October 1915, despite wartime difficulties such as a zeppelin raid on Golders Green in September 1915.

My earliest memories of Hoop Lane date back to when I was three or four years old, and therefore are rather vague. At that age, I attended a kindergarten in Hoop Lane. This was in the hall attached to Golders Green’s Unitarian Church, which was designed in the ‘Byzantine revival’ style by the architect Reginald Farrow (opened in 1925). It contains interesting artworks including a mural by Ivon Hitchens (1893-1979), which I have not yet seen.

The kindergarten was under the direction of Miss Schreuer, who lived a few doors away in Hoop Lane. My only lasting memory from my time there was when my father appeared at the school with a white beard and a red outfit, dressed as Father Christmas. A few years later, my sister and my cousins attended Miss Schreuer’s. One day while my sister was attending, I was allowed to return to the school to act as an older helper. One of my fellow pupils was the late Micaela Comberti (1952-2003), who was later to become an accomplished violinist. Her German mother and Italian father were friends of my parents.

I am not sure what became of Miss Schreuer, but I heard rumours that the end of her life was unhappy. Today, the hall, where her school flourished, is now a Montessori kindergarten. When I lived in the area (I left finally when I was aged thirty), I often walked past the school and the Unitarian Church. The latter had a panel facing the road, upon which posters with pious messages were posted. One that I will always remember said:
“If you think you have seen the light, think again”.
Coincidentally, I now live very close to a Unitarian Church in Kensington, even closer than my parents’ home was to Miss Schreuer’s school, and it also offers pre-school facilities to local children.

At the north-western corner of the point where Hoop Lane meets Finchley Road, there stands the Central Hotel (illustrated above). This building is the one that was marked on the 1912 map, one of the oldest buildings in Hoop Lane. Undistinguished in appearance, it has been a hotel for over forty years. I have never met anyone who has stayed there.

Directly across the Finchley Road on the north-eastern corner of its intersection with Hoop Lane, there stands a corner shop. For at least forty years, it has been the premises of Glentree International, an estate agent. Before that, this corner shop was a dairy shop run by Express Dairies. Next to it, accessible from Hoop Lane, the company had a depot for re-charging and stocking its electric milk floats. These floats moved almost silently, apart from the clinking of the glass milk, cream, and yoghurt bottles, which they delivered from house to house every morning. Deliveries, such as these and those made by a mobile vegetable seller in a lorry and a Frenchman with strings of onions draped over his bicycle, made life a little easier for those living in the nearby Hampstead Garden Suburb, which has never had any shops.

Most of the rest of Hoop Lane to the east of Finchley Road is effectively a ‘necropolis’. On the northern side of the road, there is a huge Jewish cemetery. On the southern side, there is the sprawling Golders Green Crematorium. For almost thirty years, I used to walk between these two final destinations for the dead on my way to and from schools and university, in daylight and at night. The possible presence of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena associated with the after-life never bothered me in the slightest. These final resting places were part and parcel of my childhood.

Meadway Gate

Meadway Gate from Hoop Lane

Beyond the cemetery and the crematorium, Hoop Lane ends. Vehicles have to drive around a tiny triangular area containing gardens, and then can continue along Meadway into Hampstead Garden Suburb. Pedestrians can access the small gardens by means of a short staircase, and then walk through them under a wooden pergola to reach Meadway. This little garden is now called ‘Meadway Gate Open Space’. I am certain that it had no name when I lived in the area (i.e. until about 1990). Wild Hatch that is shown on early maps still exists. The northern part of it is accessible to vehicles, but the last hundred or so yards of it is a narrow, rustic footpath that leads to Hampstead Way and across from that, the Hampstead Heath Extension. Opposite Wild Hatch, and beyond the Meadway Gate Open Space, is the beginning of Temple Fortune Lane, that also appears on early maps.

WILD HATCH

WILD HATCH Garage with dovecote

WILD HATCH house with shutters

Wild Hatch skirts the eastern boundary of the crematorium. Temple Fortune Lane, which has houses on its eastern side, skirts the eastern boundary of the Jewish cemetery. This picturesque cul-de-sac narrows at its eastern end to become a footpath, which threads it way between the garden gates of houses on one side (north) and the edge of the crematorium gardens on the other.

WILD HATCH footpath section

WILD HATCH old garden door

The path emerges on Hampstead Way. Crossing this, one enters the Hampstead Heath Extension. To the north of a gravel path, there is a clump of wild vegetation. Within this, there are mounds that were used during WW2 to position anti-aircraft guns. In my childhood, these mounds were accessible. Now, they are fenced-off and hidden by the plants growing around them.

WILD HATCH Hampstead Heath end

Hampstead Heath Extension: anti aircraft gun platforms site

The Jewish Cemetery in Hoop Lane appears to be divided into two sections. One, the western half, contains upright gravestones, and the other, the eastern, mainly horizontal gravestones. The vertical headstones are characteristic of the Ashkenazi tradition, and the horizontal of the Sephardic tradition. It is probably by chance that the Sephardis, who are mainly Jews from the south and east, rest in the eastern part of the cemetery.

JEWISH CEMETERY Ashkenazi graves

JEWISH CEMETERY Sephardic stones

A book, “A History in our Time - Rabbis and Teachers Buried at Hoop Lane Cemetery” (published by the Leo Baeck College in 2006), provides an interesting history of the cemetery. The cemetery opened for ‘business’ in about 1896. The juxtaposition of the graves of two types of Jew in the same cemetery is unusual. The Jewish Yearbook for the year 5658 (Jewish calendar; 1897 AD) noted of the cemetery:
“… a new cemetery at Golders’-green was also made ready for its melancholy purpose this last year. This cemetery has the curious distinction of being used by both the Orthodox Sephardim and the Reform Congregation of the West London Synagogue of British Jews.”
The reason for this juxtaposition was that the two separate Jewish communities had bought neighbouring plots of land. Many years after the purchases, some of the land was sold for house building on Temple Fortune Lane (this happened in 1973, and includes the estate on Sheridan Walk), and another part to build a synagogue, the North Western Reform Synagogue (built in 1936; entered from Alyth Gardens). I remember the housing construction around Sheridan Walk because it was opposite the home of one of my first ever school friends.

The cemetery, which I have seen by peering through its boundary fence but never visited, contains graves of many notable people including that of Dr Leo Baeck (1873-1956), who was born in Germany and became a leader in both Liberal and Progressive Judaism. During WW2, he represented all German Jews and narrowly avoided being murdered at Theresienstadt. More recently, another well-known Ashkenazi Jew, Rabbi Hugo Gryn (1930 – 1996), a cleric and a broadcaster, was buried here. Amongst those who are buried in the Sephardi section, one is of particular interest to me. This is the barrister and historian Philip Guedalla (1889-1944), who published many books on historical subjects. He was related to my late mother’s family, albeit quite distantly.

CREMATORIUM general view from Hoop Lane

CREMATORIUM Garden cloisters

CREMATORIUM View of gardens

The Golders Green Crematorium faces the two Jewish cemeteries across Hoop Lane. This was opened in 1902 by Sir Henry Thompson, president of the Cremation Society of England. Before its existence, Londoners wanting to cremate had to use the Woking Crematorium that opened in 1885. The buildings of the crematorium are all close to the brick boundary wall that runs along Hoop Lane. Behind them spread attractive and extensive memorial gardens. According to www.historicengland.org.uk website, the main buildings were designed in the ‘Romanesque Lombardic style’. That may well be the case, but they present a fairly forbidding appearance. Many of the original buildings were designed by teams that included Alfred Yeates (1867-1944) and Ernest George (1839-1922), who formed a business partnership in 1892. George’s speciality was garden architecture. The gardens and some of the buildings at the crematorium are fine examples of his work. Although the various buildings exhibit a certain architectural homogeneity, they were built over several decades as, gradually, money became available to pay for their construction.

CREMATORIUM View of entrance to a columbarium

CREMATORIUM Columbarium apse

CREMATORIUM Anna Pavlova's ashes in the columbarium

CREMATORIUM Columbarium arches

It is well worth asking to visit the inside of the Ernest George Columbarium. This building, which is usually locked, contains urns of ashes and memorials placed in beautiful stone settings and shelves. Amongst those ‘stored’ in this columbarium are Sigmund Freud and his wife, as well as Anna Pavlova, the ballet dancer. Many other famous people have been cremated at this crematorium (a good list is available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green_Crematorium). These include, to name a few, Ivor Novello, Bram Stoker, Peter Sellers, Ronnie Scott, Ernő Goldfinger, Kingsley Amis, Enid Blyton, Rudyard Kipling, and Ernest Bevin.

CREMATORIUM Sigmund Freud urn

CREMATORIUM Dispersal area

Not all of the ashes of the cremated are stored or scattered at the Crematorium. Many are taken away to be disposed of elsewhere, as were, for example, the ashes of Soviet politician and a proponent of the idea of Lenin’s tomb in Moscow Leonid Krasin (1870-1926), which were buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. According to S Kotkin in his “Stalin. Paradoxes of Power” (published 2014), it was Krasin, who had: “… proposed inclusion of a terrace from which the masses could be addressed…”. This was added to the design of Lenin’s Mausoleum.

Sadly, the crematorium is a place that I have had to visit too often. Friends of my parents and colleagues of my father have been cremated here. These included Professor William Baxter, who was responsible for encouraging my father to come from South Africa to study in the UK in 1938. My father’s colleague at the London School of Economics, the philosopher Professor John Watkins, was another person whose funeral I attended in one of the larger of the crematoriums multi-denominational chapels. We attended the final farewell of Dr ‘Sushi’ Patel, who studied medicine in Bombay with my mother-in-law. She was a Hindu. I remember that the whole congregation filed past her open coffin before she was cremated.

Closer to home, my heart was filled with great sadness when I attended the memorial services for two of my uncles. At one of these services, the ceremonies were conducted by a Humanist celebrant. At the other, the Jewish Kaddish was recited, this being the final wish of an uncle who in life showed little outward interest in his Jewish background. Later, when his belongings were being sorted, we discovered to our surprise that his interest in Judaism and its practices was greater than anyone had realised.

The saddest funeral that I attended at Golders Green’s Crematorium was my mother’s. She died young after suffering painfully for months in hospital. Very few of us sat in one of the smaller chapels. There was no ceremony, nothing was said. When my mother’s coffin was carried past me along the aisle, I was overwhelmed with emotion as I realised that this was the very last time that I would ever be physically close to her. As soon as I was able, and that was moments after her coffin slid out of sight, I fled from the small gathering, and walked briskly down Hoop Lane towards Finchley Road. Later that day late in December 1980, I bought a boxed set of LPs containing recordings of Bach’s Cello Sonatas. To this day, I have felt unable and unwilling to open them, let alone to play them.

My mother was one of many thousands to have been cremated in Golders Green. She was a sculptress. Other artists cremated here included Boris Anrep, Walter Crane, and Percy Wyndham Lewis. Our family lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb, a stone’s throw from St Judes Church, whose architect was Edwin Lutyens, famous for his work in New Delhi. Many of my parents’ friends were psychoanalysts. The greatest of them all, Sigmund Freud, was rendered to ashes in this crematorium. The list of celebrities in all fields who ended up at this place is enormous. I knew nothing of this during the many journeys that I made by foot along Hoop Lane during my younger years. In those days, my mind was on the future rather than the past.

When I was being shown around the Columbarium by one of the Crematorium’s officials, I told him that my mother and uncles had been cremated there. To which he smiled, shook my hand, and then said:
“Well, in that case, I suppose that you will end up here one day.”

I was taking a photograph outside a house on the riverbank at Chiswick, when a man sitting in a van nearby called me over to tell me about the building. During our conversation, he said that the River Thames was used to carry freight, just like the M4 motorway does today. He was right. Before the early 19th century when the railways were built, the river, equipped with locks where necessary, was used to transport goods by boat or barge. After the advent of the railways, except for the tidal stretches of the river (particularly to the east of the city), the waterway almost ceased to be used for transport. This exploration follows the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge to the old village of Chiswick. On our way along this delightful stretch of the river, we will see many examples of buildings built in the 18th century and earlier and discover several lovely places to stop for a drink...

King Street, Hammersmith’s high street, was part of the Great West Road (the ‘Bath Road’, and more recently the ‘A4’). This road, which originated before the Roman conquest, connects the City of London with Bath and Bristol. As late as the mid-19th century, this road through Hammersmith was lined with orchards and market gardens. In his “View of the Agriculture of Middlesex” (publ. 1807), J Middleton wrote:
“From Kensington, through Hammersmith, Chiswick, Brentford, … the land on both sides of the road for seven miles in length … may be denominated the great fruit-garden, north of the Thames, for the supply of London…”
Gradually at the 20th century approached, these disappeared, and were replaced by residential (and other) buildings as London grew westwards.

In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, industrial buildings existed close to Hammersmith’s river front. On a 1936 map, the following are marked: a lead mill; a large water pumping building; an industrial bakery; breweries; a folding-box maker; and a motor works. Interspersed with these, there were many wharves, boat-houses, clubs, pubs, and private residences. Today, the industry has disappeared, but the homes, pubs, clubs, and boat houses remain, making a riverside walk between Hammersmith and Chiswick a pleasure.

Beginning at the Broadway centre, which incorporates one of Hammersmith’s two Underground stations, a shopping mall, and a busy split-level bus station, the first sight of interest is Bradmore House. This was originally an 18th century extension of a 16th century building, Butterwick House (see: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1192636). The extension was built by Henry Ferne, Receiver General of Her Majesty’s [i.e. Queen Anne’s] Customs, to house his mistress, the leading actress Mrs Anne Oldfield (1683-1730). Butterwick House was demolished in 1836, followed later by its extension. The 18th century baroque façade, which used to face the original house’s garden, was dismantled and stored. It was reassembled and put onto a 20th century bus garage, facing west instead of its original east. The garage was demolished, and then replaced by a newer Bradmore House, completed in 1994 with the original 18th century façade still facing west.

Directly across Queen Caroline Street in a large green space, stands the large neo-gothic church of St Pauls (consecrated 1883), which was designed by JP Seddon (1827-1906) and HR Gough (1843-1904). There have been churches on this spot since the early 17th century. In the late 1990s, I attended a couple of theatrical performances staged in the then rather neglected-looking church. Our daughter’s school also used the building for its annual Christmas carol service. More recently, the church has been restored and a modern extension, the St Pauls Centre (opened 2011), added to its west end.

Immediately to the south of the church, traffic races over the Hammersmith Flyover. Designed by G Maunsell and Partners, this viaduct, which is over 2000 feet long, was completed in 1961. Built using a design that was very new at the time, this road bridge allows traffic to avoid the very busy Hammersmith roundabout beneath it. Once, it took us an hour to drive less than halfway around it.

Immediately south of the flyover, there is a contemporary building with an original design, whose bold sculptural ‘façade’ consists of overlapping curved concrete slabs. This contains the Hammersmith Surgery, a medical practice. Completed in 2001, it was designed by Guy Greenfield Architects. It stands at the beginning of the road leading to Hammersmith Bridge.

Detail of Hammersmith Bridge

Hammersmith Bridge

The suspension bridge, completed in 1887, was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-91). It replaced an earlier one built in 1827, but uses its predecessor’s original pier foundations. Slightly chunky in appearance, it is covered with decorative features. It crosses Lower Mall, which runs along the Hammersmith bank of the Thames. This riverside thoroughfare and its continuation upstream, Upper Mall, is lined with buildings of historic interest.

Lower Mall: east end by bridge

Lower Mall rowing club

Kent House Lwr Mall

The rowing club at number 6 Lower Mall with its prominent bow first floor window overlooking the river and supported on slender pillars is one of a row of several recognizably Georgian houses, all of which have been modernised. The elegant Kent House, built in about 1782 (maybe 1762), stands west of these. Over the years it has had many owners including Mr and Mrs Thomas Hunt who used it as a seminary for young people.

12 and 11 Lwr Mall

Blue Anchor pub Lwr Mall

The Rutland Arms pub Lwr Mall

The lower, modest building neighbouring Kent House, numbered 11 and 12, was built in the 17th century, but although modernised it retains original features. The Blue Anchor pub close-by bears the date 1722, but its present home is a more recent building, if not a highly modified version of the original. The composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934), who was Director of Music at Hammersmith’s St Pauls School for Girls, composed his “Hammersmith Suite” (1931) in the pub (see: “Gustav Holst: A Research and Information Guide”, by MC Huismann, publ. 2011). The nearby Rutland Arms pub opened in the late 1840s, and was rebuilt in the 1870s. Before WW2, this building had a third floor and a pitched roof, but now it has only two beneath a flat roof.

Westcott Lodge Lwr Mall

Furnivall Park and storm outlet (maybe the former Creek)

Westcott Lodge, a modernised Georgian structure (built about 1746), has a porch supported by two pillars and two pilasters, all with Ionic capitals. Formerly St Paul’s vicarage, it stands on the eastern edge of Furnivall Gardens, a pleasant open space created in 1951. Before WW2, the area was covered with industrial buildings including the Phoenix Lead Mills, which stood east of The Creek, an inlet of the Thames that was filled-in in 1936. In earlier times, The Creek, which extended as far inland as today’s King Street, was centre of Hammersmith’s flourishing fishing industry. Writing in 1876, James Thorne described The Creek as follows:
“… a dirty little inlet of the Thames, which is crossed by a wooden foot-bridge, built originally by Bishop Sherlock in 1751 … the region of squalid tenements bordering the Creek having acquired the cognomen of Little Wapping, probably from its confined and dirty character.”
The Creek is long gone, but there is a storm outlet in the bank of the Thames close to where The Creek must have emptied into the river. This can be seen from Dove Pier at the western end of the Gardens.
The little bridge described by Thorne led west to the beginning of Upper Mall. Before looking at that, follow the path to the busy A4, across which can be seen the façade of Hammersmith Town Hall. Built 1938-39 beside the former Creek, it was designed by E Berry Webber (1896-1963), an architect best-known for his civic buildings.

Detail of Hammersmith Town Hall

Hammersmith Town Hall

The Seasons and the Dove and Sunderland Hse (topped with a balustrade) seen from Dove Pier

A narrow passage forms the eastern part of Upper Mall. Sussex House, brick-built and well-hidden behind its garden’s fencing, was built in the early 18th century (about 1726) on the site of an earlier 17th century house. Despite its name, it is unlikely that the Duke of Sussex (1773–1843), who laid the foundation stone of the first Hammersmith Bridge, lived here.

Sussex House Lwr Mall

The east part of 15 Upper Mall

Across the passage from this house, there is another whose shuttered ground-floor windows resemble a shop front. This building is part of, or attached to, number 15 Upper Mall. The latter bears a plaque recording that Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922), the printer and bookbinder, founded his Doves Bindery and Doves Press in this building, where he also lived. Involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a friend of its great proponent William Morris, who lived and worked close by. Thomas was married to Anne, daughter of the radical Richard Cobden (1804-1865). Along with his sometime business partner, the engraver and printer Emery Walker (see below), Thomas developed a new type-face. When they fell out, Thomas dumped all the font’s casting punches and matrices for their new font into the Thames, and they were lost until some of it was recovered in was discovered below the water in 2015.

The Dove Upp Mall

Dove Pier from Upp Mall

A quaint riverside pub, The Dove, is a few steps west. Beginning life as ‘Doves Coffee House’ in the late 18th century, it became a pub by the early 19th century. To its east, its neighbour is The Seasons, a narrower building with wide, tall windows overlooking the river. The Seasons might have been built as a ‘smoking box’ (a place to enjoy tobacco) for the Duke of Sussex (see above).

The Dove pub is joined to a larger building with a rooftop balustrade (best viewed from the river or from Dove Pier). This 18th century building is number 21, Sunderland Cottage, where William Morris housed the hand-operated Albion press used for printing an edition of Chaucer (see: “The Kelmscott Press: A History of William Morris’s Typographical Adventure”, by WS Peterson, publ. 1991). Prior to that (in 1867), the house was used by T Day, a coal merchant. The author George Borrow (1803-1881) was one of his customers in 1864 (see: http://georgeborrow.org/timeline/brompton1864.html).

River House, number 24, was built in the mid-17th century. When Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705) lived in Hammersmith (in 1685 after her husband King Charles II died), some of her servants lived in this house. It western neighbour, a much larger brick building, built in the 1780s, is now called Kelmscott House. Built on the site of an old warehouse, this became the home of Sir Francis Ronalds (1788-1873) in the early 19th century. Sir Francis, an inventor, laid eight miles of insulated electrical cable in the house’s extensive garden, which in his time stretched as far inland as King Street, and with that he demonstrated the use of telegraphy for the first time in history in 1816. When he reported his discovery to Lord Melville, the First Lord of The Admiralty, he was told (by Melville) that telegraphs were totally unnecessary, because the semaphore did the job of communication just as well!

In 1878, the house, known then as ‘The Retreat’, was bought by the writer and artist William Morris (1834-1896), a leading exponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement and a social reformer. It was renamed Kelmscott House (the name of Morris’s dwelling in Oxfordshire). Morris and his family lived in this large house, which also served as a meeting place for his many artistic and socialist friends and acquaintances. Its interior was decorated with wallpapers designed by Morris and his company, as well as with oriental carpets. There were also textiles woven to his designs. Today, the house, which is owned by the William Morris Society, is leased to private tenants.

The long narrow coach house attached to the west side of Kelmscott House was used as a lecture hall in William Morris’s time. It hosted many meetings of groups sympathetic to socialism, including that which Morris joined in 1883: the ‘Democratic Federation’, later known as the ‘Social Democratic Federation’. Like some of today’s leading British socialists, Morris was also far wealthier than the people whom he hoped to help with his left-wing political sympathies.

Today, the coach house, which bears a plaque in memory of Sir Francis Ronalds, houses the offices of the William Morris Society and a small museum. On the ground floor, there are a few chairs set in front of a screen where a short, informative film about Morris is shown. In the basement, there is a shop and two rooms full of exhibits. Most of them relate to Morris, but there is also a bust of Sir Francis. What particularly interested me was a temporary exhibit describing Morris’s interest in oriental carpets. It was he who persuaded the Victoria and Albert Museum to purchase (in 1893 for £2000) the now priceless 16th century Persian Ardabil carpet (Morris described it being of “singular perfection … logically and consistently beautiful”; see: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-ardabil-carpet), and other fine woven carpets from Persia.

Printing press in William Morris Soc Museum Upper Mall

Sir Francis Ronalds at William Morris Soc Museum Upper Mall

In another room, there stands a well-preserved example of a hand-operated printing press used by Morris’s printers. Next to it, there are racks of movable type ready to be set in the press. Seeing this, reminded me of my days at Highgate School in north London, where I helped print the school calendars using very similar equipment. The staff at the museum were friendly and knowledgeable.

Further west, Rivercourt House (number 36 Upper Mall), a large brick building topped with a balustrade facing the river, was built in 1808. In its grounds stood a house where the Queen Dowager, Catherine of Braganza, lived whilst she was in Hammersmith. The ruins of this were pulled down at the time the present house was built. Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999), the novelist, socialist, and feminist, lived here with her family between 1923 and ’39. One of her children is the famous immunologist Avrion Mitchison, who worked and taught at my university, University College London. Today, the house and its newer neighbour to the west of it contain The Latymer Prep School.

Between 1931 and ’35, the artist (and print-maker) Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) lived in the house on the east corner of Upper Mall and Weltje Road. ‘Weltje’ might refer to a place with a WW1 cemetery near Ypres in Belgium. Or, more likely, it refers to the actor Lewis Weltje (see: “Records of My Life: In Two Volumes, Volume 1”, by J Taylor, publ. 1832), who lived in Hammersmith, and died in the late 18th century. In 1781, he founded a club in Mayfair, which was noted for gambling and extravagant entertainments. Weltje Road crosses part of the garden of the now demolished Seagreens House, which was owned by Weltje. West of this, Linden House is set back from the River. This grand building with a central pediment was constructed about 1733. Today, it houses the London Corinthian Sailing Club and the Sons Of The Thames Rowing Club.

Linden House Upp Mall

The Old Ship Upp Mall

Next, we pass two pubs. The Old Ship is truly old. There has been a hostelry on its site since the early 18th century. West of that, and set back from the riverfront, is the Black Lion. It is housed in a much modified late 18th century building, and has pleasant gardens where I have enjoyed drinks on warm summer’s evenings. This pub was one of many Thames-side inns, where the once popular game of skittles was played seriously as late as after WW2. The pub’s skittle alley exists no longer.

The Black Lion and St Peters Church from Hammersmith Terrace

Hammersmith Terrace

Hammersmith Terrace is separated from the river by a row of terraced houses, which were built in the third quarter of the 18th century. They vary in design, but all have attractive front porches. Edward Johnston (1872-1944) lived at number 3 between 1905 and ’12. Born in Uruguay of Scottish parentage, he was an important modern calligrapher. In 1916, he designed the type font, which, with small modifications made recently, is still used for of the lettering on London’s Underground. In addition, he was responsible for modifying the system’s logo to look as it does today: a circle with a horizontal bar crossing it.

From 1903 to ’33, number 8 was home to the typographer and antiquary Sir Emery Walker (1851-1933). An exponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a friend of William Morris. Walker’s collection of antique typefaces inspired Morris to set up his Kelmscott Press, which attempted to revive the aesthetics of the early era of European printing and illuminated manuscripts. After Morris died, Walker formed the Dove Press with Cobden Sanderson (see above). As already described, they fell out. Walker’s house now houses a museum, which I have not yet visited. Like Morris, Emery was a member, and one-time branch secretary, of the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League. After meetings held in the coach house at Kelmscott House, Morris used to invite the speaker and the audience to have dinner in his home. Emery was usually present at these meals (see: “William Morris”, by F MacCarthy, publ. 1994).

Sir Alan Patrick Herbert (1890-1971), writer, Member of Parliament, and law reformer, lived at number 12, whose porch is supported by Doric columns. A member of the Thames Conservancy and author of books about the river, he lived and died there. The Terrace leads west into Chiswick Mall, a small stretch of which is in the Borough of Hammersmith. Before the boundary of the borough is reached, we pass some 20th century houses. Soon after entering the Borough of Hounslow, there is a quaint house, Mall Cottage, with a neo gothic front door and windows framed by gothic arches.

Mall Cottages Chiswick Mall

Chiswick Eyot eastern end

Continuing along Chiswick Mall, we pass the eastern end of Chiswick Eyot. It is the easternmost island in the Thames except for the Isle of Sheppey, which is 44 miles east in the Thames estuary. In the past, this spindle-shaped islet was used for the cultivation of osiers (willows with long flexible shoots used in basket and furniture making). One of the houses facing the island is the over ornate heavily stuccoed Island House with Ionic pillars and Corinthian pilasters. It was built in the early 19th century. Nearby, is the appropriately named Osiers, whose stuccoed exterior hides an old structure built in the 1780s. Once a haunt of intellectual homosexuals, it was later the home of the pathologist Leonard Colebrook (1883-1967).

Island House, Chiswick Mall

Osiers, Chiswick Mall

Osiers is the most eastern of a terrace of 18th century (and earlier) buildings. Its immediate neighbour, Morton House, which was built around 1726, has had many owners and uses, including housing a school for young children in the 1920s. Before that, the artist Francis Ernest Jackson (1872–1945) lived here between 1912 and ’19 (see: “F. Ernest Jackson and His School”, publ. by The Ashmolean Museum, 2000) prior to moving into Mall Cottage (see above).

Morton House Chiswick Mall

Riverside Hse Chiswick Mall

Riverside House and its adjoining Cygnet House, both with pretty latticework porches, were built in the Regency period at the beginning of the 19th century. The Russian Vladimir Polunin (1880-1957), who lived in Cygnet House, not only taught at the Slade School of Art but also painted scenery for Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet. The Mall runs in front of the houses already described, but is separated from the Thames by a strip of private gardens belonging to the houses. Beyond the gardens, the Eyot provides a verdant backdrop.

A riverside garden with Chiswick Eyot behind

Greenash Chiswick Mall

The tall Greenash house makes an architectural contrast with its 18th century neighbours. It was designed by John Belcher (1841-1913), and completed in 1882 for the shipbuilder Sir John Thornycroft (1843–1928), who owned a wharf just west of the nearby St Nicholas Church. It was converted into flats in 1934 by its then owner the architect Ernest Brander Musman (1888-1972), a designer of many 20th century pubs in a wide variety of architectural styles.

Staithe Hse Chiswick Mall 19th cent

Western end of Chiswick Eyot

Fullers Griffin brewery from Chiswick Mall

Staithe House, part of a Victorian terrace which would not look out of place in Belsize Park, faces the western sharp tip of Chiswick Eyot. The house is separated from Fuller’s Griffin Brewery (building commenced 1845) by Chiswick Lane South. The brewery stands on a site where beer has been brewed since the 17th century or earlier. The Lane runs along the east side of the brewery, passing a brewery retail outlet, to a row of 18th century buildings, named Mawson Row in memory of Thomas Mawson (c. 1660-1714) of Chiswick, who took over the brewery in 1685.

Near the Mawson Arms pub at the north end of the row, there is a plaque commemorating the oft-quoted poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope and his parents lived here in this row between 1716 and ’19. According to James Thorne, writing in 1876, Pope wrote portions of his translation of the “Iliad”, which appeared between 1715 and ’20, on the backs of letters addressed to him in the (then named) ‘New Buildings’ in Chiswick. Pope’s father died in this row of buildings in 1717, and is buried in the nearby churchyard.

Back on the Mall, immediately west of the brewery buildings, there is a building named Red Lion House. It was formerly a pub, the ‘Red Lion’, built in the 18th century. This, I was told by a passer-by, went out of business because of the reduced demand for alcohol following the legislation of pub opening hours that was introduced in WW1 (i.e. The Defence of The Realm Act of 1914). In its heyday, the pub was used by bargemen and, also, osier cutters, who sharpened their knives on a whetstone that used to hang by its entrance.

Thames View Hse Chiswick Mall

Said and Lingard Houses on Chiswick Mall

Thamesview and its neighbour Lingard House are both 18th century, and were originally parts of a single building. The illustrator and engraver Robert Sargent Austin (1895-1973), who advised on the design of British banknotes in the late 1950s, lived in Lingard. Frederick William Tuke (1858 - 1935), who helped his brothers run a mental asylum in Chiswick, lived in Thamesview in the late 19th century. Next door to Lingard House is Said House, whose façade is dominated by an overly large bay window. The building’s earliest structures date back to the 18th century, but much has been done since to distort its appearance. The actor and theatre manage Sir Nigel Playfair (1874-1935) was one of its inhabitants.

Eynham House Chiswick Mall

Bedford Hse Chiswick Mall

Bedford Hse detail Chiswick Mall

Eynham House and its adjoining Bedford House provide pleasant visual compensation for their ugly neighbour Said House. Originally, the two houses were parts of a single house, whose construction dates to the 17th century. The façade of the house(s) with its harmonious bow windows is 18th century and surmounted by a graceful pediment. One of the owners of Bedford House was John Sich, who owned the nearby Lamb Brewery (see below). There are sculpted heads above the ground floor windows.

The first two storeys of the nearby austere brick building, Woodroffe House, were built in the early 18th century, and the third added later. The sculptor Wilfred Dudeny (1911-1996) lived there from about 1963 onwards. Chiswick Mall ends just West of this building, and the roadway continues northwards as Church Street. At the corner, stands a house (pre-18th century, but much modified), The Old Vicarage. Opposite it, a slipway runs down into the river. It has been there a long time, and is marked on a detailed map surveyed in 1867. Near it, opposite the Red Lion Pub, this same map marks a ferry that ran from the pub, around the western tip of the Eyot, to the southern bank of the Thames.

The Old Vicarage Chiswick Mall

Slipway at western end of Chiswick Mall

"Couplet" by Charles Hadcock Chiswick Mall

Close to the landward end of the slipway (near the vicarage), there is what looks like a pair of oversized interlocking, rusting chain links with nuts and bolts. This is a cast-iron sculpture, “Couplet”, made by Charles Hadcock (born 1965) in 1999. The work of art, which reminded me of the works that my late mother, a sculptress, might have made. It stands beside the gateway into the churchyard of St Nicholas. Nicholas, whose church is beside the Thames and near at least two breweries, is patron saint for fishermen, sailors, and coopers (barrel-makers).

St Nicholas churchyard

St Nicholas churchyard William Hogarth

The idyllic, romantic, leafy churchyard by the river is chock full of graves. Two of them caught my attention. One is that for the artist William Hogarth, who lived close-by (see below). His monument, protected by a cast-iron fence, an urn on a plinth decorated with an artist’s palette and brushes, was erected after the death of his sister in 1781 (who is also commemorated on this monument), and was restored by a William Hogarth of Aberdeen in 1856.

The other grave that I found interesting was a monument to the Italian poet and patriot Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827). He spent the last eleven years of his life in England. He died at Turnham Green, and was buried in the graveyard at St Nicholas. In 1871, the poet’s remains were removed to Italy, which had recently achieved Unification and Independence. They were interred in the church of S Croce in Florence.

St Nicholas Chiswick

St Nicholas churchyard gargoyle on tower

There has been a church on the site of St Nicholas since before the 12th century. The tower of the present building was begun in the 15th century. Its south face has a small picturesque gargoyle with prominent eye-brows and bulging eyes. The rest of the church was rebuilt in the late 19th century in Victorian gothic style.

The large Ferry House on Church Street and some of its neighbours were built in the 18th century. Even older is the half-timbered Old Burlington, an old coaching inn, whose construction began in the 16th century. Close to this, there is a building on a corner plot with timber-cladding and a ground-floor bow window. This was once The Lamb pub.

Former Old Burligton pub and behind it the Lamb Brewery Church Str

The former Lamb pub Church Str Chiswick

Established by about 1732, it became the brewery pub for Sich & Co brewery. It closed in 1909. It achieved fame in 1889 because it was here that an inquest was held into the death by drowning of a Jack the Ripper suspect, Montague John Druitt (see: http://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/w4_chiswick_lamb.html). The buildings that housed Sich’s brewery, the Lamb Brewery, can be seen behind the former pub. The brewery was leased to the brewers John Sich and William Thrale in 1790. Brewing ceased in the early 20th century. The premises were then used until 1952 by the Standard Yeast Company, and now they have been converted into offices, studios, and flats.

Chiswick has been a centre for brewing since early times, since at least the 13th century when many of the local inhabitants owed taxes for making malt (see: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol7/pp78-86#h3-0007). Earlier than that, by the 11th century, Chiswick was known for cheese making. Its earlier name, the Old English ‘Ceswican’, meant ‘cheese farm’ (see: “A Dictionary of London Place-Names”, by D Mills, publ. 2010). By the late 16th century, there was at least one brewery in the area. Fuller’s brewery is the last of these to survive.

Old shop 6 Church Str

Pages Yard off Church Str Chiswick

Number 6 Church Street has a large disused shopfront with central double doors and decorative masonry brackets ate each end of the former fascia. This building was marked as a ‘Post Office’ on old (pre-WW2) maps. It is almost opposite Pages Yard, a cul-de-sac lined with 18th century brick houses with luxuriant gardens. The north end of historic Church Street opens abruptly into to modern day life in the form of the busy Great West Road dual carriageway.

The George and Devonshire pub

Boston House Chiswick Sq

Chiswick Sq

Many people whizzing along this road or stuck in a traffic jam probably do not notice the historic George and Devonshire pub, which has been in business since the 1650s, although its present home dates from the 18th century. Its neighbour Chiswick Square is dominated by the elegant Boston House. Pevsner compares the design of this building, erected in the 1740s, to London’s Albany (in Piccadilly). Its name probably derives from Viscount Boston, Earl of Grantham (died 1754), who lived there. The buildings on the other two sides of the square, whose north side has no buildings, are late 17th century.

Flyover at Hogarth Roundabout

St Mary's Convent and Nursing Home

St Mary's Convent and Nursing Home

Putting Boston House behind you, one cannot avoid seeing a stream of vehicles ascending the slope of the western end of the slender flyover that carries traffic eastward above the Hogarth Roundabout. St Marys Convent, a short distance west of Chiswick Square, was designed by Charles Ford Whitcombe and constructed in 1896. It bears some architectural details typical of the Arts and Craft Movement. Over the years, it has been considerably enlarged to encompass a hospital.

Paxton Road, which leads northwest from the Convent runs alongside the grounds of Chiswick House. It is lined by 19th century ‘villas’, which in this context mean mundane terraced houses. On the corner of Paxton and Short Roads, there is a house with extensive ground floor windows separated by orange tiling and surmounted by what might once have been a shop or pub fascia boarding above. It is more likely to have been a shop than a pub because no pub is marked on old maps of Paxton Road. Now, it is residential.

Paxton Road becomes Sutherland Road at its northern end, and the latter leads to the busy Great West Road (A4), known at this point as Hogarth Lane. This is no country lane, but a six-lane highway! When the artist William Hogarth (1697-1764) moved to Chiswick in 1749, the house he bought, which still stands today, was surrounded by quiet countryside. This building constructed between 1713 and ’17 is now bordered by the busy A4 and is only a few yards from the Hogarth Roundabout. The house, which cost all of £7, was run-down when Hogarth bought it. Like so many people who by run-down properties abroad today in picturesque places like Andalucía and Tuscany, Hogarth restored and extended it. For example, he added the first floor oriel window that projects over the front door.

Hogarth House

Hogarth House staicase with panelled walls

During WW2, Hogarth’s home, which had become a museum, suffered bomb damage. This was repaired, and by 1951 the museum, having been extended, was re-opened to the public. When I visited it in October 2017, the upper floor was closed because work was being done to repair damage that had occurred in the ceilings. There is not too much to be seen in the two ground floor rooms. One of them is wood-panelled and feels and looks like the living room of a friend’s house in Kensington, which was built shortly after Hogarth’s home. The exhibits include a sculpture depicting the artist and several Hogarth’s prints. This place is worth visiting not because it is a wonderful museum, but because it is fun to stand where once the great artist stood, and, also, because it is interesting to see inside a house of this vintage, which is neither a palace nor a stately home. The house has a pleasant garden with a large lawn and trees.

This exploration ends here. If you feel stranded and surrounded by an unending stream of traffic, it is worth knowing that an escape route exists in the guise of a pedestrian subway beneath the Hogarth Roundabout.

The riverside between Hammersmith and Chiswick was once alive with industry and barge traffic. Interspersed among this were many houses of considerable vintage, some of which were the homes and workshops of artists, calligraphers, engravers, bookbinders, and printers. The industry and working river traffic has disappeared, but much of the early architecture remains alongside a series of pubs and boathouses, making this stretch of the Thames a delight for leisure-seekers.