Grove Park, Chiswick
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Grove Park is an area in the south of
Chiswick Chiswick ( ) is a district in West London, split between the London Borough of Hounslow, London Boroughs of Hounslow and London Borough of Ealing, Ealing. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist Wi ...
, now in the borough of
Hounslow Hounslow ( ) is a large suburban district of West London, England, west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hounslow, and is identified in the London Plan as one of the 14 metropolitan cen ...
, West
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
. It lies in the meander of the
Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...
occupied by Duke's Meadows park. Historically, the area belonged to one of the four historic villages in modern Chiswick, Little Sutton. It was long protected from building by the regular flooding of the low-lying land by the
River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, s ...
, remaining as orchards, open fields, and riverside marshland until the 1880s. Development was stimulated by the arrival of the railway in 1849; Grove Park Hotel followed in 1867, soon followed by housing. In the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the first successful
V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
attack on Britain took place in Staveley Road during September 1944. The architecture of the area includes houses in British Queen Anne Revival style, while the station building is
Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...
. The 1872 neo-Gothic St Paul's Church is built in irregular blocks of stone. It has a small fleche instead of a spire, as well as an apse at its eastern end. St Michael's Church was designed by W. D. Caröe and Herbert Passmore in 1908 in a domestic style in buttressed red brick with tiled arches and with dormer windows in its roof, while the windows use neo-Gothic stone tracery. Famous residents of Grove Park include the actor
John Thaw John Edward Thaw (3 January 1942 – 21 February 2002) was an English actor in television, stage and cinema, best known for his television roles starring as Detective Inspector Jack Regan in '' The Sweeney'' (1975—78) and as Detective Chief ...
, the soldier
Bernard Montgomery Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the ...
, and the poet
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...
. St Paul's vicarage has repeatedly been used as a film set, including in ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by the author and former spy John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of the taciturn, ageing spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Th ...
'', ''
Killing Eve ''Killing Eve'' is a British spy thriller television series produced in the United Kingdom by Sid Gentle Films for BBC America and BBC Three (streaming service), BBC Three. The series follows Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), a British intelligence age ...
'', ''
Lewis Lewis may refer to: Names * Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname Music * Lewis (musician), Canadian singer * " Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohe ...
'', ''
Grantchester Grantchester () is a village and civil parish on the River Cam or Granta (river), Granta in South Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about south of Cambridge. Name The village of Grantchester is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as ''Granteset ...
'', and '' The Theory of Everything''.


Geography

Much of Grove Park was still rural until late in the 19th century; the risk of flooding from the tidal Thames protected it from building. One of the four constituent villages of Chiswick, Little Sutton, was in the Grove Park area, about the centre of the parish of Chiswick at that time; two other villages, Strand-on-the-Green and
Old Chiswick Old Chiswick is the area of the original village beside the river Thames for which the modern district of Chiswick is named. The village grew up around St Nicholas Church, Chiswick, St Nicholas Church, founded c. 1181 and named for the patron sai ...
, lie just to the west and to the east of Grove Park, respectively, with
Turnham Green Turnham Green is a public park on Chiswick High Road, Chiswick, London, and the neighbourhood and conservation area around it; historically, it was one of the four medieval villages in the Chiswick area, the others being Old Chiswick, Littl ...
to the north.


History


Grove House to housing estate

A house stood on the site of Grove House from 1412; it was replaced by 1705 with, according to a contemporary observer, "a spacious regular modern building ... pleasantly situated by the Thames side. Behind it are gardens by some said to be the finest in England". Grove House was owned by the Barker family at that time; from 1745 it belonged to the Earl of Grantham and then to an eccentric animal-lover, Humphrey Morice. The Duke of Devonshire bought the whole estate in the 1840s, reshaping Grove House without its third storey, and letting it to tenants. The building of the railways including Chiswick railway station in 1849 spurred development. Grove Park Hotel was built in 1867, soon followed by housing. Growth was slow but steady, with residential development accompanied by small-scale industry such as soap making. Robert William Shipway bought Grove House in the 1890s; it was demolished in 1928 and replaced by the houses on the west side of Kinnaird Avenue. File:Grove House by W. Wade,1792.jpg, Engraving of Grove House by W. Wade, 1792 File:Chiswick Station front.jpg, Chiswick Station, 1849, described by Pevsner as "
Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...
" File:Station House, Grove Park, Chiswick.jpg, Grove Park Hotel, 1867,
now Station House File:Grove Park Terrace - geograph.org.uk - 1850297.jpg, Grove Park Terrace level crossing File:Large houses on Grove Park Road.jpg, Large houses on Grove Park Road File:Queen Anne style, Spencer Road, Grove Park.jpg, Queen Anne Revival style, Spencer Road, c. 1890 File:The Turrets, Grove Park.jpg, The Turrets, a castellated house. 20th century File:Castellated house on corner of Staveley Road, Chiswick.jpg, Corner house with round castellated tower, 20th century


V-2 rocket strike

On Friday 8 September 1944, a
V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
launched from
Wassenaar Wassenaar (; population: in ) is a municipality and town located in the province of South Holland, on the western coast of the Netherlands. An affluent suburb of The Hague, Wassenaar lies north of that city on the N44/A44 highway near the Nort ...
in Holland, by ''485 Artillerie Abteilung'' at 6.37pm, landed in Staveley Road near the junction with Burlington Lane, killing three people (including a three-year-old girl), and injuring nineteen. The crater was thirty feet across. It was the first successful V-2 rocket strike in Britain. The explosion was shown in
ZDF ZDF (), short for (; ), is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. Launched on 1 April 1963, it is run as an independent nonprofit institution, and was founded by all federal states of Germany ( ...
's 2015 production ''Hitler's Space Rocket'', and in the 1965 film ''
Operation Crossbow ''Crossbow'' was the code name in World War II for Anglo-American operations against the German V-weapons, long range reprisal weapons (V-weapons) programme. The primary V-weapons were the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, which were launched agai ...
''. A granite memorial stone was placed near the site on Staveley Road in 2004. File:Aggregat4-Schnitt-engl.jpg,
V-2 rocket The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
File:V2 rocket site Chiswick 6130.JPG, Memorial to the September 1944 V-2 explosion in Staveley Road, built in September 2004


Churches


St Paul's Church

The
neo-Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century ...
St Paul's Church, Grove Park Road, was designed in 1872 by
Henry Currey Henry Currey may refer to: *Henry Currey (architect) (1820–1900), English architect and surveyor *Henry Latham Currey (1863–1945), Member of the Cape House of Assembly and then of the House of Assembly of South Africa {{human name disambiguati ...
and built at the expense of
William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire (27 April 1808 – 21 December 1891), styled Lord Cavendish of Keighley between 1831 and 1834 and Earl of Burlington between 1834 and 1858, was an English Aristocracy, aristocrat, Land tenure, landowner ...
to provide a church for the newly built Grove Park estate. It is made of irregular blocks of stone and has an apse at its eastern end; there is no tower or tall spire. It has instead a fleche (a small spire) atop a mock belfry at the western end. Inside, the church has a high altar from St Margaret's,
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
, to a design by Lord Norton, and a large 16th-century Florentine painting of the
transfiguration of Christ The Transfiguration of Jesus is an event described in the New Testament where Jesus is transfigured and becomes radiant in glory upon a mountain. The Synoptic Gospels (, , ) recount the occasion, and the Second Epistle of Peter also refers t ...
. The stained glass in the apse is modern, by
M. E. Aldrich Rope Margaret Edith Rope, known as M. E. Aldrich Rope (29 July 1891 – 9 March 1988) was an English stained-glass artist in the Arts and Crafts movement tradition active between 1910 and 1964. She was a cousin of Margaret Agnes Rope of Shrewsbury, ...
(1891-1988). The Stations of the Cross were painted by Enid Chadwick (1902–1987) of Walsingham, a British artist known for religious art. File:St Paul's Church, Grove Park.jpg, St Paul's Church, Grove Park File:St Paul's Grove Park doorway corner.jpg, Main entrance File:St Paul's Grove Park doorway 'Domus Dei Porta Coeli'.jpg, Doorway ''Domus Dei Porta Coeli'' ("House of God, Gate of Heaven") File:St Paul's Grove Park Altar and Stained Glass.jpg, Altar and stained glass File:St Paul's Grove Park nave.jpg, Nave File:St Paul's Grove Park banner.jpg, Banner File:The Transfiguration, school of Raphael, late 16th century, St Paul's Grove Park.jpg, ''The Transfiguration'', after
Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...
, late 16th century


St Michael's Church

St Michael's Church on Elmwood Road was designed by the architects W. D. Caröe & Herbert Passmore; it was founded in 1908 and completed in 1909. It is described by
Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...
in ''
The Buildings of England ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...
'' as "one of Caröe's most interesting churches in outer London". The building was funded by the sale of St Michael, Burleigh Street, on the Strand (in central London). Pevsner calls the exterior "picturesque"; it is in red brick, its
buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient (typically Gothic) buildings, as a means of providing support to act ...
es joined by tiled arches, and with
dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...
s in the roof. The crossing point of the roof is marked by a turret with shingles and tiles; on the north of the crossing is "a curiously domestic excrescence" for ventilation and the church's
belfry The belfry /ˈbɛlfri/ is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached ...
. The windows have decorative curving stone tracery in "free flamboyant Gothic" style; they are recessed under tiled arches. Inside, the font, lectern, and pulpit were brought from St Michael on the Strand, while the 1911 choir stalls were designed by Caröe. The south chapel's roof has a decoration made by Antony Lloyd in 1932. The
stained glass Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensio ...
windows in the south chapel and the sanctuary were made by Horace Wilkinson between 1914 and 1925.


Parks and nature reserves

Just to the east of the Grove Park area is
Chiswick House Chiswick House is a Neo-Palladian style villa in the Chiswick district of London, England. A "glorious" example of Neo-Palladian architecture in west London, the house was designed and built by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694–1753 ...
, its gardens a public park. In the south of the peninsula is the open space of Duke's Meadows, though much of its area is now taken up with private sports grounds and allotments. Just beside the railway bridge is the small Duke's Hollow nature reserve, which is allowed to flood at high spring tides. In the First World War, a pleasure lake that had belonged to Grove House, at the southern end of Hartington Road, was turned into Cubitt's Yacht Basin; during the war it made cast concrete barges to carry ammunition. When the war ended it was used to moor houseboats.


Residents

The actor
John Thaw John Edward Thaw (3 January 1942 – 21 February 2002) was an English actor in television, stage and cinema, best known for his television roles starring as Detective Inspector Jack Regan in '' The Sweeney'' (1975—78) and as Detective Chief ...
lived on Grove Park Road for many years, while the British Army Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein Field marshal (United Kingdom), Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the I ...
, lived on Bolton Road as a teenager. The poet
Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...
lived in the vicarage of St Paul's Church in the 1940s.


In culture

St Paul's vicarage was used in the 2011 film ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by the author and former spy John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of the taciturn, ageing spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Th ...
'' of John Le Carre's novel, as was the BBC drama series ''
Killing Eve ''Killing Eve'' is a British spy thriller television series produced in the United Kingdom by Sid Gentle Films for BBC America and BBC Three (streaming service), BBC Three. The series follows Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), a British intelligence age ...
'', and the television detective series ''
Lewis Lewis may refer to: Names * Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname Music * Lewis (musician), Canadian singer * " Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohe ...
'' and ''
Grantchester Grantchester () is a village and civil parish on the River Cam or Granta (river), Granta in South Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about south of Cambridge. Name The village of Grantchester is listed in the 1086 Domesday Book as ''Granteset ...
''. The vicarage's garden was used "extensively" in the 2014 film about the physicist
Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...
, '' The Theory of Everything''.
The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
filmed two short promotional films on 20 May 1966, ‘
Paperback Writer "Paperback Writer" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles. Written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership, the song was released as the A-side of their eleventh single in May 1966. It topped sing ...
’ and ‘
Rain Rain is a form of precipitation where water drop (liquid), droplets that have condensation, condensed from Water vapor#In Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric water vapor fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is res ...
’, in the gardens of
Chiswick House Chiswick House is a Neo-Palladian style villa in the Chiswick district of London, England. A "glorious" example of Neo-Palladian architecture in west London, the house was designed and built by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694–1753 ...
.


References


Sources

* * * {{LB Hounslow Areas of London Districts of the London Borough of Hounslow Places formerly in Middlesex