Old Chiswick

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Old Chiswick
Middlesex
File:Church Street, Chiswick from the north, with old shop and Ferry House.jpg
Church Street, Chiswick
Location
Grid reference: TQ217779
Location: 51°29’14"N, 0°14’50"W
Data
Post town: London
Postcode: W4
Local Government
Council: Hounslow
Parliamentary
constituency: 		Hammersmith and Chiswick

Old Chiswick is the area of the original village beside the River Thames for which the modern town of Chiswick is named. The village grew up around St Nicholas Church, founded c. 1181 and named for the patron saint of fishermen. The name 'Chiswick' was first recorded around the year 1000 as Ceswican ('Cheese farm'). In the Middle Ages the villagers lived by fishing, boatbuilding, and handling river traffic. The surrounding area was rural until the late 19th century.

Old Chiswick occupies a roughly rectangular area between the River Thames with Chiswick Mall running beside it to the southeast, Church Street to the south-west, Chiswick Lane South to the northeast, and Mawson Lane (now beside the Great West Road) to the north-west, while Chiswick Square is off Burlington Lane, to the west of Church Street. The small island of Chiswick Eyot lies off the downstream half of Chiswick Mall,[1] a street that still floods on high spring tides.[2]

The village

File:Chiswick from the river Harrison's History of London c. 1775.jpg
Chiswick in Walter Harrison's History of London, c. 1775

The village's main street, Church Street, includes the half-timbered former Burlington Arms pub from the 15th century, and the former Lamb Tap pub. The old Post Office was once the home of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The riverside street, Chiswick Mall, grew from humble beginnings to a row of grand houses, including Walpole House, from the 17th century onwards. The street still floods on high spring tides. Behind the riverfront is the Griffin Brewery, the only survivor of the five malthouses in Chiswick in 1736. Nearby is the 18th century Chiswick Square, the houses in brown brick with red dressings, and the Arts and Crafts Gothic St Mary's Convent.

The village was once the home of the Chiswick Press, where William Morris had some of his books printed. John I. Thornycroft & Company founded their shipyard at Church Wharf at the west end of Chiswick Mall in 1864, building the first naval destroyer, HMS Daring, there in 1893.

By here, to the west, are Hogarth's House and Chiswick House and Gardens. Of the other constituent mediæval villages of modern Chiswick, Strand-on-the-Green lies to the west; Little Sutton and Turnham Green to the north.

History

File:Rooke-Chiswick.jpg
A Vanished Corner of Old Chiswick (Thomas Matthews Rooke, 1896)

The name "Chiswick" was first recorded c. 1000 as Ceswican, with the meaning from Old English of "cheese farm",[3] and in 1418 it appears as Chesewyk.[4] Between 1600 and 1900 the area of the old village was known as "Chiswick town" or locally as "the town". By 1980 the usual name for the area was "Old Chiswick".[5]

Old Chiswick was a definable place with a recorded population by 1590.[5] The community lived beside and from the river; in 1458, the church was dedicated to Saint Nicholas, who was the patron saint of fishermen.[5] The village had a ferry, and people made their living by fishing, boatbuilding, and handling river traffic.[5] The risk of flooding from the tidal river kept the fields of the Chiswick peninsula free of housing until 1900.[5]

St Nicholas Church

Main article: St Nicholas Church, Chiswick

St Nicholas Church, Chiswick was founded c. 1181. Most of the current church dates from 1882 to 1884, when it was rebuilt to a design by the Gothic Revival architect John Loughborough Pearson, except for the surviving west tower, which was built for William Bordall (vicar 1416–1435). There are some fine 18th century wall-mounted monuments in the tower, and an exceptional[6] one in the south chapel to Sir Thomas Chaloner, 1615. The alabaster sculpture portrays Chaloner, chamberlain to King James I; he and his wife are kneeling at a prayer desk under a curtained canopy, held open by men in boots.[6][7]

Church Street

The village of Chiswick grew up around the church. Church Street runs north-west from the corner with Chiswick Mall, by the slipway down to the river, past the church which is on the west of the street, up to the junction with Burlington Lane and the Hogarth Roundabout. The oldest surviving secular building is the former Burlington Arms pub, a half-timbered 15th-century building, now a private house; it closed in 1924. The former Lamb Tap pub, closed in 1909, was just to its north.[8] Leading off Church Street westwards is an "informally landscaped intimate cul-de-sac",[9] Pages Yard, with four 2-storey Grade II cottages from the 17th century.[9][10] The old Post Office was once home to the Genevese Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[11]

Chiswick Mall

Chiswick Mall is a riverside street running downstream from St Nicholas Church. It is largely occupied by a series of grand houses, built by the wealthy to take advantage of its riverside setting. The largest and one of the finest is the Grade I listed Walpole House.[12][13]

Industry

In 1809, Charles Whittingham founded the Chiswick Press at High House (now Orford House) on Chiswick Mall; in 1818 it moved to College House. This was near the drawdock where loads of old marine rope made of hemp could be unloaded, to be recycled into a strong, silky paper by Whittingham's own paper-making process. The press made small low-priced books of high quality.[14] William Morris used the press for some of his books, including his 1889 romance A Tale of the House of the Wolfings.[15]

John Isaac Thornycroft, founder of the John I. Thornycroft & Company shipbuilding company, established a yard at Church Wharf at the west end of Chiswick Mall in 1864.[16][17] The shipyard built the first naval destroyer, HMS Daring of the Daring class, in 1893.[18] To cater for the increasing size of warships, Thornycroft moved its shipyard to Southampton in 1909.[19]

In 1878, Dan and Charles Mason started the Chiswick Soap Company on Burlington Lane. One of their chemists developed Cherry Blossom boot polish in 1906; a small tin of it retailed initially for one penny, and it became a well-known product.[20] The company became the Chiswick Polish Company in 1926, and Chiswick Products Ltd in 1930. The business was sold to Reckitt and Colman in 1954; it built a new factory at the Hogarth Roundabout in 1967, on the site of the Hogarth Business Park; this was closed and demolished in 1974.[20]

Chiswick New Town

File:The White Swan, Bennett Street, Chiswick.jpg
The former White Swan, Bennett Street

Just north of Hogarth Lane, Old Chiswick was extended north-westwards from the 1820s with a grid of small streets as far as Devonshire Road to create "Chiswick New Town". Some 375 houses were built over the next century on the 11-acre plot. The houses were poorly supplied with water and drainage. Some were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, some by the widening of Hogarth Lane into the A4 dual carriageway, and the rest by the 1950s slum clearance, leaving only one building, the White Swan pub, also called "The Dirty Duck". The building started out as "Florey's Brewhouse" on Bennett Street in 1834, built for Charles Florey. In 1882 it was sold to the brewers Crowley Bros., and renamed "The White Swan". The surviving facade is most likely of that date. The arch allowed costermongers to bring donkeys and carts through to stables behind the pub. Charrington's closed the pub in 1979.[21]

References

  1. ↑ Hounslow 2018, pp. 9-14.
  2. ↑ Hounslow 2018, p. 6.
  3. ↑ Room, Adrian (1988). Dictionary of Place-Names in the British Isles. Bloomsbury. https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofplac0000room. 
  4. ↑ "Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas. CP 40/629; Year 1418". The National Archives. pp. third entry – Chesewyk is the home of John Meryman, carpenter, a defendant. http://aalt.law.uh.edu/H5/CP40no629/aCP40no629fronts/IMG_0444.htm. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 BHO 1982.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 National Heritage List 1189405: Church Of St Nicholas And Attached Walls (Grade @ listing)
  7. ↑ Clegg 1995, pp. 17, 43, 103.
  8. ↑ Clegg 1995, pp. 35, 43, 94–95.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Hounslow 2018, p. 19.
  10. ↑ Cherry & Pevsner 1991, p. 404.
  11. ↑ "Historic Church Street Post Office To Be Turned into Flat". Chiswick W4. 5 September 2021. http://www.chiswickw4.com/default.asp?section=info&page=conplan150.htm. 
  12. ↑ Hounslow 2018, p. 34.
  13. ↑ Clegg 2021.
  14. ↑ Clegg 1995, pp. 88–89.
  15. ↑ "The House of the Wolfings". William Morris Gallery. https://www.wmgallery.org.uk/collection/artists-64/chiswick-press/initial/c/page/2/object/the-house-of-the-wolfings-k521-1901. 
  16. ↑ Arthure, Humphrey (n.d.). Thornycroft Shipbuilding and Motor Works in Chiswick. pp. 24. 
  17. ↑ Arthure, Humphrey (March 1982). Life and Work in Old Chiswick. 
  18. ↑ Lyon, David (1996). The First Destroyers. pp. 40–41. ISBN 1-84067-364-8. 
  19. ↑ Clegg 1995, pp. 87–88.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Clegg 1995, pp. 91–92.
  21. ↑ Bott, Val; Wisdom, James (1981). "The White Swan, Chiswick". Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society. https://brentfordandchiswicklhs.org.uk/local-history/leisure/the-white-swan-chiswick/. 
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