A previous occupant of the house was SIR FRANCIS RONALDS (1788–1873), who invented and built THE WORLD’S FIRST ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH in the back garden in 1816.
Brook Green
Girls, Girls
IN THE 18TH century Brook Green was the original home of St Mary’s Roman Catholic College, now the occupants of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill in Twickenham.
ST PAUL’S SCHOOL moved to Brook Green from St Paul’s Churchyard in 1884 and then on to Barnes in 1968. Still here is St Paul’s Girls School, founded in 1904, where Gustav Holst taught music from 1905 until 1934, during which time he wrote the The Planets suite. The school is built on the site of The Grange, home of the actor Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905). Distinguished alumnae include actresses Celia Johnson, Imogen Stubbs, Rachel Weisz, the late Natasha Richardson and Emily Mortimer, politicans Shirley Williams, Jane Bonham Carter, Harriet Harman and Susan Kramer, and the writer Monica Dickens.
Wormwood Scrubs
Taking Flight
WORMWOOD SCRUBS, A large open space north of Shepherd’s Bush, was first recorded in 1189 as Wormholt Scrubs, ‘holt’ meaning wood. In the 18th century it became much favoured as a duelling ground, and in 1789 King George III’s favourite son, the Duke of York, fought a duel on Wormwood Scrubs against Lieutenant-Colonel Lennox, who had insulted the Prince of Wales.
In 1910 aviation pioneer CLAUDE GRAHAME WHITE took off from Wormwood Scrubs in his Farman biplane, in pursuit of a £10,000 prize for the first flight from London to Manchester in a British aircraft. He was beaten by Frenchman Louis Paulhan, also flying a Farman.
Wormwood Scrubs Prison, popularly known as ‘The Scrubs’, was built with convict labour between 1875 and 1891, to replace what was then Britain’s biggest prison, the Millbank Penitentiary in Westminster. The prison was designed by Edmund Du Cane, after whom the road on which it stands is named. The gatehouse is perhaps the most photographed and recognisable prison icon in Britain. Michael Caine emerges from here at the start of the 1969 film The Italian Job.
Notable inmates of Wormwood Scrubs during the Second World War were musicians IVOR NOVELLO, jailed for petrol fraud, and SIR MICHAEL TIPPETT, a concientious objector. The KRAY TWINS spent some time here in the 1950s, playwright JOE ORTON in 1962 for stealing library books and two Rolling Stones, KEITH RICHARDS and BRIAN JONES, at the end of the 60s for drugs offences. In October 1966 the traitor and Communist double agent GEORGE BLAKE escaped over the wall and made it to Moscow after serving five years of his 42-year sentence, THE LONGEST JAIL TERM EVER IMPOSED IN BRITAIN.
Olympic 100m gold medal winner LINFORD CHRISTIE grew up in Shepherd’s Bush and was honoured by the naming of the Linford Christie Stadium, near Wormwood Scrubs.
White City
Original London Olympics
THE ORIGINAL WHITE City was a vast steel and concrete complex of palaces and halls built in 1908 for the Franco-British Exhibition. Covering 140 acres (57 ha), it was eight times the size of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and attracted some nine million visitors. The buildings were covered in white stucco, giving rise to the name White City. An Olympic stadium was added for the Olympic Games of 1908, which were transferred to London after Rome, the chosen host city, experienced financial difficulties. The marathon started at Windsor Castle so that the royal family could get a good view, and the distance from there to the finishing line at White City, 26 miles, 385 yards (42.195 km), became the standard distance for the modern marathon. In 1914 the site was used for the British Empire Exhibition, an event commemorated with road names such as South Africa Road, India Way and Australia Road. White City eventually became a venue for greyhound racing and the centre of British athletics until 1971, when the athletics moved to Crystal Palace. The stadium was demolished in 1984 and replaced by BBC offices. Much of the area is now being developed as a huge retail and leisure centre.
THE BBC TELEVISION CENTRE, on Wood Lane, was THE FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT TELEVISION CENTRE IN THE WORLD. Known affectionately as the ‘Concrete Doughnut’, it opened in 1960 on part of the site previously occupied by the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908. In 1967 studios TC6 and TC8 at Television Centre became THE FIRST COLOUR TV STUDIOS IN BRITAIN. TC1 is one of the largest television studios in Europe.
Queen’s Club
Best on Grass
QUEENS PARK RANGERS Football Club was founded in 1882 and today plays at Loftus Road in Shepherd’s Bush. The club became THE FIRST THIRD DIVISION CLUB TO WIN THE LEAGUE CUP in 1967, in THE FIRST LEAGUE CUP FINAL TO BE HELD AT WEMBLEY STADIUM. In 1981 QPR became THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL CLUB IN ENGLAND TO INSTALL AN ARTIFICIAL PITCH.
THE QUEEN’S CLUB in Barons Court, named for Queen Victoria, was THE WORLD’S FIRST MULTI-PURPOSE SPORTS COMPLEX and claims to have the finest grass tennis courts in the world. From 1953 until 2007 it was the headquarters of the Lawn Tennis Association, now located at the new National Tennis Centre at Roehampton.
Music in Hammersmith
Palais, Apollo and Empire
HAMMERSMITH ONCE BOASTED three of London’s top music venues, the Hammersmith Palais, Hammersmith Apollo and the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
The HAMMERSMITH PALAIS opened in 1919, and became an important venue for the new jazz scene. In October that year, BRITAIN’S FIRST JAZZ MUSICIAN pianist Billy Jones, made his debut at the Palais with the touring Original Dixieland Jazz Band. The Palais was immortalised by Joe Strummer and the Clash in the 1970s song ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais’. The venue, noted in recent times for its notorious ‘School Disco’, was closed in 2007 and converted into offices.
The HAMMERSMITH APOLLO, perhaps better known as the Hammersmith Odeon, has hosted numerous major artists such as the Beatles, Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, the Who, Queen and David Bowie, many of whom have recorded live albums there. Musicals are also put on at the Apollo. In 2006 a McFly concert was filmed there for the movie Just My Luck.
The SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE on Shepherd’s Bush Green was designed by theatre architect Frank Matcham and opened in 1903, serving as a music-hall. In 1953 it was taken over by the BBC and several top entertainment shows were broadcast from there, including Cracker-jack, Juke Box Jury, That’s Life and the hugely popular thrice-weekly live chat show Wogan. The BBC left in 1992 and the Empire is now a music venue. In 2003, during a concert at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Dixie Chick Natalie Maine made controversial remarks about President George W. Bush that sparked a world-wide furore.
Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Well, I never knew this
ABOUT
HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM
Just north of the Great West Road in West Hammersmith is ST PETER’S SQUARE, a pleasant mix of Georgian and Regency houses. The actor SIR ALEC GUINNESS (1914–2000) lived at No. 7 in the 1950s, and this splendid Regency house later became Peter Finch and Anne Bancroft’s film home in the 1964 movie of Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater. In 2006 scenes for Miss Potter, starring Rene Zellweger, about the life of Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter, were filmed in the square.
SIR SAMUEL MORLAND (1625–95), inventor of THE MEGAPHONE and an early pioneer of steam power, lived in a house on HAMMERSMITH TERRACE and is buried in the parish church of St Paul’s.
THE OLD OAK COMMON DEPOT was once THE LARGEST RAILWAY DEPOT IN BRITAIN. Today it is linked to the new North Pole depot for Eurostar trains.
In Hammersmith’s Rainville Road, at Thames Wharf, are the futuristic headquarters of Sir Richard Rogers’s architectural practice with, on the ground floor, the RIVER CAFÉ, set up by Rogers’s wife Ruth and the late Rose Gray, authors of the River Café Cook Book. Naked Chef JAMIE OLIVER was ‘discovered’ while working at the River Café.
Some of Alfred Hitchcock’s early films were made at LIME GROVE STUDIOS in Shepherd’s Bush, as well as THE FIRST BRITISH TV SOAP OPERA, THE GROVE FAMILY, in 1953. The family was named after Lime Grove. The studios closed in 1992 and were demolished to make way for a residential block.
The mi
lk depot at White City was at one time THE BIGGEST MILK DEPOT IN THE WORLD.
OLYMPIA was originally the National Agricultural Hall, and was opened in 1884 on the site of a famous vineyard. BRITAIN’S FIRST MOTOR SHOW was held here in 1905. THE FIRST MULTI-STOREY CAR PARK IN LONDON was built to serve the exhibition hall at Olympia in 1937.
PRINCE LUCIEN BONAPARTE (1813–91), nephew to Napoleon Bonaparte, is buried in ST MARY’S ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY at Kensal Green.
Fulham installed BRITAIN’S FIRST SPEED BUMPS on Linver Road and Alderville Road in 1984.
At 320 ft (98 m) high, the EMPRESS STATE BUILDING on Lillie Road ranks among Britain’s 20 tallest buildings. It was constructed in 1962 for the Admiralty and today, after major refurbishment, houses the Metropolitan Police. There is a revolving floor at the 30th level.
On the railway bridge near PUTNEY BRIDGE STATION there is a plaque to a pioneer of the British motor industry, FREDERICK SIMMS (1863–1944), whose first workshop was sited here. He invented THE FIRST PRACTICAL MAGNETO, established one of Britain’s first motor car companies, the DAIMLER MOTOR SYNDICATE in 1893, and founded the ROYAL AUTOMOBILE CLUB (RAC) in 1897.
CHELSEA HARBOUR which, like Chelsea Football Club, is not in Chelsea, or even a harbour, was built for P&O in the 1980s and has become a favourite haunt of pop stars and footballers. It includes a design centre, luxury apartments, a marina, the Conrad Hotel and the 21-storey Belvedere Tower, 250 ft (76 m) high and crowned by a golden ‘tide ball’ which moves up and down with the tide.
South
WANDSWORTH
PUTNEY – WANDSWORTH – BATTERSEA – CLAPHAM SOUTH
St Mary’s Church, Putney – cradle of modern politics
Putney
Boating Weather
PUTNEY COMES FROM the Saxon, meaning ‘Putta’s quay’, and has remained an important landing-place through the ages, with ferries operating between Putney and Fulham, as well as Westminster and the City. Today Putney is still a popular centre for rowing. THE WORLD’S OLDEST ROWING CLUB, the LEANDER CLUB, was founded in 1818 and run from here until it moved to Henley at the end of the 19th century, and since 1845 the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race has started from Putney Bridge.
The first PUTNEY BRIDGE, constructed in 1729 to connect Putney with Fulham, was made of wood, had 26 arches and was THE FIRST BRIDGE BUILT OVER THE THAMES IN LONDON AFTER LONDON BRIDGE. In 1795 the feminist MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT threw herself off the bridge in despair after her lover ran off with an actress. She was pulled unconscious from the water by a boatman and went on to marry Willam Godwin, with whom she produced two daughters, the younger one being Mary, who grew up to marry the poet Shelley and write the novel Frankenstein. The present bridge was designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette and opened in 1886.
Putney Debates
First Stirrings of Democracy
STANDING CLOSE TO Putney Bridge is the church of ST MARY, heavily restored but possessing a delightful 16th-century Chantry Chapel with exquisite fan vaulting. It is a modest church, set back from the road and dwarfed by a tower block, but here, in October 1647, one of the most seminal events in the history of English democracy took place, the PUTNEY DEBATES. Discussions held here between Oliver Cromwell and the Levellers, who were THE FIRST ORGANISED POLITICAL MOVEMENT TO EMERGE IN BRITAIN, would serve to shape Parliament and initiate many of the English freedoms we enjoy today.
Cromwell was winning the Civil War, but many of the soldiers and middle classes who were fighting with him were worried that he was simply going to replace the tyranny of the Monarchy with the tyranny of Parliament. And so they drew up a list of demands which they put before the Army Council, sitting around the altar table at St Mary’s and chaired by Cromwell and Henry Ireton. Among the suggestions put forward were ‘one man one vote’, a reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies according to population size rather than wealth, authority to be vested in the Commons rather than the Crown or the Lords, and certain freedoms to be guaranteed, particularly freedom of conscience and equality before the law.
‘… for really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under …’
Extract from the appeal of COLONEL RAINSBOROUGH, leader of the Levellers, at the Putney Debates in 1647. (Although they were known as the Levellers, this was not a name the group used for themselves.)
Although Cromwell failed to heed their demands and the Levellers were eventually suppressed during the Commonwealth, the ideas discussed at Putney were now in the political arena and would go on to inspire the Chartists, Socialists, Libertarians and many other movements for liberal democracy. Indeed, the Putney Debates articulated many of the ideals enshrined in the American Constitution over 100 years later. Putney’s historic legacy is immense, but if you go to Putney looking for some monument or world heritage site you will be disappointed. The only memorial to those momentous events is a small plaque placed in the church by the Cromwell Association.
BORN IN PUTNEY
THOMAS CROMWELL (1485–1540), born the son of a blacksmith, became Earl of Essex, Chancellor of England and Henry VIII’s agent for the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
EDWARD GIBBON (1737–94), historian, born in a house at the foot of Putney Hill. Noted for his work The History of the Decline and Fall of Rome, from which comes the quote: ‘All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.’
CAPTAIN LAWRENCE OATES (1880–1912), Antarctic explorer, born at 3 Acacia Villas, Upper Richmond Road and spent his boyhood at 309 Upper Richmond Road. He was a member of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition that reached the South Pole on 18 January 1912, 34 days after the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. On the return trek Oates became crippled with frostbite, and realising that he was holding the others up, he left the tent and walked out into the blizzard with the immortal words: ‘I am just going outside. I may be some time.’ He was never seen again.
Putney Heath
Squabbling Politicians
PUTNEY HEATH WAS the scene of many duels, including two notable political duels brought about by arguments over the Napoleonic Wars. In 1798 William Pitt the Younger, Britain’s youngest ever Prime Minister, was challenged to a duel with pistols by George Tierney, an opposition MP whom Pitt had accused, during a Parliamentary debate, of ‘impeding national defence’. Neither was injured. Pitt chose Putney Heath for the contest as he lived nearby at Bowling Green House.
In 1809 two Cabinet Ministers squared up to each other, also with pistols on Putney Heath. Lord Castlereagh, Secretary of State for War, who had argued with Foreign Secretary George Canning over the deployment of troops against Napoleon, accused Canning of plotting with the Prime Minister to oust him and challenged the Foreign Secretary to a duel. Castlereagh shot Canning in the thigh while Canning, never having used a pistol before, missed Castlereagh completely.
Putney Vale
SEPARATING WIMBLEDON COMMON and Richmond Park is PUTNEY VALE, site in the 17th century of a pub called the Bald Faced Stag, a notorious hang-out for highwaymen on the London to Portsmouth road. In 1912 the basement of the pub, by now disused, was taken over as a workshop by racing driver KENELM LEE GUINNESS, who developed a spark-plug there that could withstand very high temperatures. KLG spark-plugs became the standard for all high-performance machinery, aircraft and motor bikes as well as cars, and Lee Guinness created a production-line factory from the outbuildings of the Bald Faced Stag, which became known as the ROBIN HOOD WORKS. Two world speed record-breaking cars were built there, Sir Malcolm Campbell’s BLUEBIRD, which reached 175 mph (281 kph) on Pendine Sands in 1927, and the GOLDEN ARROW of Major Henry Segrave, Britain’s first Grand Prix winner, which achieved 231 mph (372 kph) at Daytona, Florida,
in 1929.
KLG was bought by Smith’s Industries in 1927, and they built a new factory featuring a large Smith’s clock on the exterior which became a famous landmark. The factory was dismantled in 1989 and replaced by an ASDA supermarket, but the clock was saved.
Maintaining the motor racing theme, the Robin Hood factory backed on to the Putney Vale Cemetery, where the brilliant racing driver DICK SEAMEN (1913–39) is buried and also where 1976 world champion JAMES HUNT was cremated in 1993, aged just 45. Others who were cremated at Putney include England’s first professional cricket captain SIR LEN HUTTON (1916–90), England’s 1966 World Cup winning captain BOBBY MOORE (1941–93), actor KENNETH MORE (1914–82), film director SIR DAVID LEAN (1908–91), children’s writer ENID BLYTON (1897–1968), Soviet spy ANTHONY BLUNT (1907–83), and the convivial newscaster REGINALD BOSANQUET (1932–84).
BURIED AT PUTNEY VALE
Portrait painter SIR JOHN LAVERY (1856–1941) and his wife HAZEL (1886–1935). Lady Lavery came from Chicago, where she was known as ‘the most beautiful girl in the Midwest’, and her portrait, painted by her husband, graced Irish banknotes until the 1970s.
SIR RONALD ROSS (1857–1932), who discovered that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1902.
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