Thames Valley Villages, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Charles G. Harper

A.D. 1909

To commemorate these historical events this stone was erected by the Brentford Council.

This memorial has certainly been placed in a most prominent position, and challenges the attention of the passer-by along the footpath past Kew Gardens, on the opposite shore. As you approach by the ferry-boat, the crazy old stone and brick stairs leading steeply up, beside the broad and easy incline of the shingly ferry-slip, look most imposing, and group well with their surroundings.

Where the old original ford across the Brent was situated no man knows, but perhaps near to its junction with the Thames, at a spot where the waters from the greater tidal river rendered the ford impassable except at the ebb. That was the awkward situation of Old Brentford, and one not for very long to be endured by travellers along the great West of England road that runs through this place. Thus it gave way at a very early period to a new ford, somewhat higher up the Brent; and around it in the course of time rose the town of New Brentford, whose being and name in this manner derived directly from the needs of travellers for a ford passable at all hours. The ford was replaced by a bridge in 1280, and that by later stone bridges, or patchings and enlargements of the original. The present representative of them is a quite recent and commodious iron affair, built over the stone arch: very much more convenient for the traffic, but not at all romantic. New Brentford church stands near by; that of Old Brentford is a good quarter of a mile along the road, back towards London, but there is nothing old or interesting about it, seeing that it was entirely rebuilt a few years ago.

The Brent, as it flows through the town, is not easily to be distinguished amid the several canal cuts, where the close-packed barges lie, but it may with some patience be traced at the western end of the broad and retired road called “The Butts,” an ancient name significant of a bygone Brentford, very different from the present aspect of the place. “The Butts” is a broad open space, rather than a road, and the houses, old and new, in it are of a superior residential character that would astonish those—and they are far the greater number—who know Brentford only by passing through its narrow and squalid and tramway-infested main street. “The Butts” would appear to have been an ancient practice-ground in archery.

The Brent appears at the extremity, down below a very steep bank, and barges lie in it, on the hither side of a sluice. It goes thenceforward in a pronounced curve, to fall into the docks, and passes by the backs of old houses and some still surviving gardens, with the church-tower of St. Leonard’s, New Brentford, peering over old red roofs and clustered gables.

In an old-world town such as this there are many charming village-like corners and strange survivals, when once you have left the main arteries of traffic. Brentford is, of course, a byword for its narrow, congested, squalid High Street, down which the gasworks send a quarter-of-a-mile of stink to greet the inquiring stranger; but it is a very long High Street, and the gasmaking is in Old Brentford; and at the westward end, New Brentford, you are far removed from those noisome activities and among the barges instead. It is largely a bargee population at this end; and the bargee himself, the cut of his beard (when he has one it is generally of the chin-tuft fashion affected by the Pharaohs, as seen by the ancient statues in the British Museum), the style of his clothes, and his manner of living his semi-amphibious life are all interesting. It would need a volume to do justice to the history, the quaintnesses, and the anomalies of Brentford, which, although the “county town” of Middlesex, and thus invested with a greater if more nebulous dignity than London—merely the capital of the Empire—is not even a corporate town. If I wanted to justify myself for including it in a book on villages, I should feel inclined to advance this fact, and to add that, although the traditional “two Kings of Brentford,” with only one throne between them, are famous in legend, no one ever heard of a Mayor of Brentford, either in legend or in fact. When it is added that Old Brentford owns all the new things, such as the gasworks, the brewery, and the waterworks, and that the old houses are mostly in New Brentford, the thing is resolved into an engaging and piquant absurdity. It is to be explained, of course, in the fact of Old Brentford being so old that it has had to be renewed.

FERRY LANE, BRENTFORD.