Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney

by G. E. Mitton; John Cunningham Geikie

In the Blythe Road, No. 79, is a fine old house with an imposing portico, which now overlooks a dingy yard. This is Blythe House, "reported to have been haunted, and many strange stories were reported of ghosts and apparitions having been seen here; but it turned out at last that a gang of smugglers had taken up their residence in it." It was once used as a school, and later on as a reformatory. It is now in the possession of the Swan Laundry Company.

In Blythe Road there is a small mission church called Christ Church. In Shepherd's Bush Road, at the corner of Netherwood Road, is West Kensington Park Chapel of the Wesleyan Methodists. Shepherd's Bush and many of the adjoining roads are thickly lined with bushy young plane-trees. St. Simon's Church, in Minford Gardens, is an ugly red-brick building with ornamental facings of red brick, and a high steeple of the same materials. It was built in 1879. St. Matthew's, in Sinclair Road, is very similar, but has a bell-gable instead of a steeple. The foundation-stone was laid 1870. In Ceylon Road there is a Board school. Facing Addison Road Station is the well-known place of entertainment called Olympia, with walls of red brick and stone and a semicircular glass roof. It contains the largest covered arena in London.

Returning once more to the Broadway, we traverse King Street, which is the High Street of Hammersmith. It is very narrow, and, further, blocked by costers' barrows, so that on Saturday nights it is hard work to get through it at all. The pressure is increased by the electric trams, which run on a single set of rails to the Broadway. In King Street is the Hammersmith Theatre of Varieties, the West End Lecture-Hall, and the West End Chapel, held by the Baptists. It stands on the site of an older chapel, which was first used for services of the Church of England, and was acquired by the Baptists in 1793. The old tombstones standing round the present building are memorials of the former burial-ground. At the west end of King Street is an entrance to Ravenscourt Park, acquired by the L.C.C. in 1888-90. The grounds cover between thirty and forty acres, and are well laid out in flower-beds, etc., at the southern end. The Ravenscourt Park Railway-station is on the east side, and the arched railway-bridge crosses the southern end of the park. A beautiful avenue of fine old elms leads to the Public Library, which is at the north end in what was once the old manor-house.

All this part of Hammersmith was formerly included in the Manor of Pallenswick or Paddingswick. Faulkner says this manor is situated "at Pallengswick or Turnham Green, and extends to the western road." The first record of it is at the end of Edward III.'s reign, when it was granted to Alice Perrers or Pierce, who was one of the King's favourites. She afterwards married Lord Windsor, a Baron, and Lieutenant of Ireland. Report has also declared that King Edward used the manor-house as a hunting-seat, and his arms, richly carved in wood, stood in a large upper room until a few years before 1813. But the house itself cannot have been very ancient then, for Lysons says it had only recently been rebuilt at the date he wrote—namely, 1795. The influence of Alice Perrers over the King was resented by his courtiers, who procured her banishment when he died in 1378. After her marriage, however, King Richard II. granted the manor to her husband.

There is a gap in the records of the manor subsequently until John Payne died, leaving it to his son William in 1572. This was the "William Payne of Pallenswick, Esq.," who placed a monument in Fulham Church to the memory of himself and his wife before his own death, and who left an island called Makenshawe "to the use of the poor of this parish on the Hammersmith side." This bequest is otherwise described as being part of an island or twig-ait called Mattingshawe, situated in the parish of Richmond in the county of Surrey. At the time the bequest was left the rent-charge on the island amounted to £3 yearly, which was to be distributed among twelve poor men and women the first year, and to be used for apprenticing a poor boy the second year, alternately. Sir Richard Gurney, Lord Mayor of London, bought the manor in 1631. It was several times sold and resold, and in Faulkner's time belonged to one George Scott. It had only then recently begun to be known as Ravenscourt. The house was granted to the commissioners of the public library by the London County Council at a nominal rent, and the library was opened by Sir John Lubbock, March 19, 1890. In a case at the head of the stairs are a series of the Kelmscott Press books, presented by Sir William Morris. Round the walls of the rooms hang many interesting old prints, illustrative of ancient houses in Hammersmith and Fulham. There is also a valuable collection of cuttings, prints, and bills relating to the local history of the parish. In the entrance hall are hung prints of Rocque's and other maps of Hammersmith, and the original document signed by the enrolled band of volunteers in 1803. Among the treasures of the library may be mentioned the minute-book of the volunteers, a copy of Bowack's "Middlesex," and an original edition of Rocque's maps of London and environs.

Just outside the park, on the east side, is the Church of Holy Innocents, opposite St. Peter's Schools. It is a high brick building, opened September 25, 1890. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel with school attached in Dalling Road near by. In Glenthorne Road is the Church of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1858, and designed by Mr. Butterfield. A magnificent organ was built in it by one of the parishioners in memory of her late husband.

Behind the church are the Godolphin Schools, founded in the sixteenth century by the will of W. Godolphin, and rebuilt in 1861. In Southerton Road there is a small Welsh chapel. The Goldhawk Road is an old Roman road, a fact which was conclusively proved by the discovery of the old Roman causeway accidentally dug up by workmen in 1834.

Shepherd's Bush Green is a triangular piece of grass an acre or two in extent. There seems to be no recognised derivation of the curious name. At Shepherd's Bush, in 1657, one Miles Syndercomb hired a house for the purpose of assassinating Oliver Cromwell as he passed along the highroad to the town. The plot failed, and Syndercomb was hanged, drawn, and quartered in consequence. The precise spot on which the attempt took place is impossible to identify. It was somewhere near "the corner of Golders Lane," says Faulkner, but the lane has long since been obliterated.

St. Stephen's Church, in the Uxbridge Road, was the earliest church in this part of Hammersmith. It was built and endowed by Bishop Blomfield in 1850. Its tower and spire, rising to the height of 150 feet, can be seen for some distance.

St. Thomas's, in the Godolphin Road, is rather a pretty church of brick with red-tiled roof, and some ornamental stonework on the south face. It was built in 1882, designed by Sir A. Blomfield, and the foundation-stone was laid by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The chancel was added in 1887.