The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Fulham

Although unfortunately much of the romantic beauty that for centuries distinguished riverside Middlesex has gone for ever, there still remain here and there picturesque survivals of the long-ago, recalling the days when it rivalled its opposite neighbour, Surrey, in rural charm. Some fifty years ago indeed, even Fulham, now indissolubly linked with London, was a country place, with market gardens sloping down to the Thames, and fishermen's cottages dotted here and there upon its banks. The manor of Fulham was given in the seventh century by the Bishop of Hereford, to whom it then belonged, to the holy St. Erkenwald, Bishop of London, and its history has ever since been intimately bound up with that of the Church in southern England. The ancient manor-house, that was long the favourite residence of St. Erkenwald's successors, is now represented by the palace, the older portion of which dates from the fifteenth century, it having been built by Bishop Fitzjames, whose arms surmount the gateway. In it lived for some time Bishop Ridley, who, with the equally famous Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, suffered death at the stake at Oxford in 1554, for their heretical opinions, and the no less steadfast Bishop Bonner, who was deprived of his see for refusing to take the oath of supremacy that meant the recognition of Queen Elizabeth as the head of the Church. To Fitzjames's building Bishop Fletcher, father of the famous dramatist, made considerable additions, including the present library, at one time used as a chapel, that contains with many valuable manuscripts and books a number of interesting portraits, such as those of Archbishop Sandys and Bishops Ridley and Juxon.

Early in the eighteenth century the greater part of the palace at Fulham was pulled down, and it was not until 1764 that the river front was rebuilt. The present chapel was added in 1869 by Bishop Tait, later Archbishop of Canterbury, and from time to time minor alterations have been made, the new and the old having, however, been so skilfully dovetailed together that the group of buildings with their encircling moat present a very harmonious general appearance. The ancient parish church, the date of the foundation of which is unknown, to which the charming Bishop's Walk leads from the palace, has also been reverently treated, the necessary restorations having been made with considerable care. In the well-kept churchyard rest many bishops and other celebrities, including Theodore Hook, the talented but dissipated novelist, who died in poverty and debt in 1841; and here and there amongst the sea of modern villas and rows of shops that make up the Fulham of to-day are a few old homesteads that still serve to keep the past in some slight degree in touch with the present. This is especially the case in the district of North End, where in a mansion now divided into two houses Samuel Richardson wrote Clarissa Harlowe and part of Sir Charles's Grandson, and where in residences that cannot now be identified lived at different times W. Wynne Ryland, the famous line-engraver who was hanged for forgery in 1783, Dr. Crotch, the musical composer, Edmund Kean, Mrs. Delaney, Jonathan Swift, and Jacob Tonson.

Hammersmith

Even more Londonised than Fulham is its neighbour Hammersmith, the situation of which, however, on a picturesque reach of the Thames, that is here spanned by a suspension bridge, still preserves to it a certain charm. The seventeenth-century church, if not architecturally beautiful, is in harmony with its surroundings, and though the famous Brandenburg House, in which Queen Caroline passed away, and the ancient manor-house of Pullenswick, later known as Ravenscroft, at one time the home of Alice Ferrers, the heartless mistress of Edward III., have both been pulled down, the Dove Coffee-house, in which, in a room overlooking the river, Thomson wrote his beautiful poem of Winter, remains much what it was when it was one of the favourite haunts of the poet and his kindred spirits, Leigh Hunt, who lived in a little cottage hard by, and Pope, who often came down from his villa at Twickenham for a friendly chat. On what is known as the Lower Mall lived many celebrities when it was the fashionable quarter of Hammersmith, including the clever engineer Sir Samuel Morland, the trusted friend of Charles II.; Arthur Murphy the dramatist, Philip de Loutherbourg the artist, Charles Burney the Greek scholar, and greater than them all, the poet Coleridge; whilst in the adjoining Upper Mall, now destroyed, Queen Catherine, the neglected wife of Charles II., resided for some years after the death of her fickle husband. Later the celebrated Dr. Ratcliffe, who attended Queen Anne, had a house near by, next door to which lived the scarcely less noted non-juring Bishop Lloyd of Norwich. Long a centre of Roman Catholicism, Hammersmith at one time owned an important Benedictine convent, in which during the French Revolution many fugitive nuns from France took refuge, and part of the ancient buildings are now used as a college for priests; whilst the nunnery itself may be said to be represented by the modern Nazareth House, the headquarters of the devoted Little Sisters of the Poor.

Strange to say, though Hammersmith has all but lost in the rush and hurry of the present the impress of the past, its neighbour Chiswick has to a great extent retained its old-fashioned character. True, it has lost many of its ancient mansions, such as Chiswick Hall, long a favourite summer residence of the masters of Westminster School, and the quaint Red Lion Inn with the whetstone chained to the lintel of the door, beloved of artists and poets, has been improved away; but fortunately the house in which Hogarth lived for some years and died has been preserved, and Chiswick House, long the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, now a private lunatic asylum, is still much what it was more than a century ago. The venerable cedar-trees and antique statues in its grounds, with the noble entrance gateway designed in 1625 by Inigo Jones for Beaufort House, and given by Sir Hans Sloane to the owner of the estate in 1738, preserve to it even at this late day something of a classic and aristocratic character. Built between 1730 and 1736, on the site of an earlier Jacobean mansion, by the last Earl of Burlington, who enjoyed some little reputation as an architect during his lifetime, Chiswick House was greatly enlarged by his successor, who was fond of holding open-air fêtes in its gardens, which were almost as celebrated as those at Kew, and were for some years under the care of the distinguished botanist, Sir Joseph Paxton; but the mansion itself is now chiefly celebrated for the fact that in it the two great statesmen, Charles James Fox and George Canning, passed away, strange to say, in the same room, the former in 1806 the latter in 1827.

The Chiswick Mall, practically a continuation of that of Hammersmith though divided from it by coal wharves, etc., with its charming views up and down stream, a picturesque eyot rising from the middle of the river opposite to it, and the tower of the venerable parish church looking down upon it, is still one of the most delightful promenades on the Middlesex side of the Thames. The church, fitly dedicated to St. Nicolas, the patron-saint of fishermen, who still form a notable portion of the congregation, is a somewhat uninteresting modern successor of a very ancient foundation, but it fortunately retains, in addition to the tower, a few relics of the original nave and chancel, with several noteworthy monuments, including one to Charles Holland, the actor, erected by his friend David Garrick, and many inscriptions to the memory of celebrities who once lived in Chiswick, such as Mary, Countess of Falconbridge, and her sister Frances, daughters of Oliver Cromwell, and the famous beauties, Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, and Margaret Cecil, Countess of Ranelagh; whilst in the churchyard rest the artists Hogarth, Philip Loutherbourg, and James M'Neill Whistler, whose mother is buried beside him; the engravers William Sharp and James Fittler, the diplomatist Lord Macartney, and the Italian patriot Ugo Foscolo.

Strand-on-the-Green