Part 4

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.

In Leysfield Road stands St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, of which the foundation-stone was laid by the present Duke of Argyll, March 30, 1870.

In the extreme west of the Goldhawk Road is St. Mary's Church, in bright red brick, erected 1886. The Duchess of Teck laid the foundation-stone. This has brought us to the end of the houses. Behind St. Mary's lie waste land and market-gardens. Just outside the parish boundary are two old houses of brick in the style of the seventeenth century; they used to be known as Stamford Brook Manor House, but they have no authentic history. Starch Green Road branches off from the Goldhawk Road opposite Ravenscourt Park; this road, running up into the Askew Road, was formerly known by the still more extraordinary name of Gaggle Goose Green.

In Cobbold Road, to the north of the waste land is St. Saviour's. An iron church was first erected here in 1884, and the present red-brick building was consecrated March 4, 1889. The chancel was only added in 1894.

In Becklow Road are a neat row of almshouses with gabled roofs. These are the Waste Land Almshouses. In the words of the charity report, ordered to be printed by the Vestry of Hammersmith in 1890, "This foundation owes its origin to a resolution which was entered into by the copyholders of the Manor on Fulham on the 23rd April, 1810, that no grants of waste land belonging to the manor should in future be applied to the purpose of raising a fund and endowing almshouses."

Part of the money received from the Waste Lands Fund thus created has been appropriated to the Fulham side, and part to the Hammersmith side. The Hammersmith almshouses were at first built at Starch Green. In 1868 these houses were pulled down and new ones erected. The present almshouses were erected in 1886 for twelve inmates.

In the Uxbridge Road, opposite Becklow Road, is St. Luke's Church, a red-brick building with no spire or tower, erected in 1872. The iron church which it succeeded, stands still behind it, and is used for a choir-room and vestry.

A short way westward, in the Uxbridge Road, is Oaklands Congregational Church, a somewhat heavy building covered with stucco, with a large portico supported by Corinthian columns.

Behind the houses bordering the north of the Uxbridge Road is a wide expanse of waste land with one or two farms. This part of the Manor of Fulham was leased in 1549 by Bishop Bonner to Edward, Duke of Somerset, under the name of the Manor of Wormholt Barns. Through the attainder of the Duke the Crown eventually obtained possession of it. It passed through various hands, and was split up at last into two parts, Wormholt and Eynham lands; these two names are still preserved in Wormholt and Eynham Farms. In 1812 the Government took a lease of the northern part of the land for twenty-one years at an annual rent of L100, which was subsequently renewed. On part of this land was built the prison of Wormwood Scrubs in 1874. Part is used as a rifle-range, and to the north is a large public and military ground for exercising troops, etc. To the east of the prison are the Chandos and the North Kensington cricket and football ground.

The Prison walls enclose an area of sixteen acres. The building was all done by convict labour. To the south, without the walls, lie the houses of the officials, warders, etc. On the great towers by the gateway are medallions of John Howard and Elizabeth Fry. Within the courtyard are workshops, etc., and immediately opposite the gateway is a fine chapel with circular windows built of Portland stone. Four great "halls" stretch out northward, at right angles to the gates. These measure 387 feet in length, are four stories in height, and each provides accommodation for 360 prisoners. The three western ones are for men, that on the east for women. On the male side one "hall" is reserved for convicts doing their months of solitary confinement before passing on elsewhere. The men are employed as masons, carpenters, etc., the women in laundry and needle-work. The exercise-grounds are large and airy; the situation is very healthy.

The next district, traversed by the Latymer Road, is a squalid, miserable quarter of the borough, with poor houses on either side. In Clifton Street is St. Gabriel's, the mission church of St. James's, a little brick building erected in 1883 by the parishioners and others.

Further northward, beyond the railway-bridge, is Holy Trinity Church. The foundation-stone was laid on Ascension Day, 1887, by the Duchess of Albany. It is a red-brick building with a fine east window decorated with stone tracery. Beyond this there is nothing further of interest except St. Mary's Roman Catholic cemetery at Kensal Green. It comprises thirty acres, and was opened in May, 1858. There are many notable names among those buried here, namely: Cardinals Wiseman and Manning; Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.; Dr. Rock, who was Curator of Ecclesiastical Antiquities in the South Kensington Museum; Adelaide A. Proctor, Panizzi, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, and others. To the west of the cemetery lies a network of interlacing railways, to the north a few streets, in one of which there is an iron church.

We have now made practical acquaintance with this vast borough, stretching from the river to Kensal Green, and including within its limits an exceptional number of churches and chapels of all denominations. There are numerous convents, almshouses, and schools. Hammersmith has always been noted for its charities, and no bequest to its poor has ever been made without being doubled and trebled by subsequent gratuities. On a general survey, the three most interesting places within the boundaries seem to be: St. Paul's School, flourishing in Hammersmith, but not indigenous; Ravenscourt Park, with its aroma of old history, and the sternly practical institution of Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Hammersmith can boast not a few great names among its residents, by no means least that of the loyal Sir Nicholas Crispe; but with Kneller, Radcliffe, Worlidge, Morland, Thompson, Turner, and Morris, it has a goodly list.

Published by A. & C. Black, London.]

FULHAM

The earliest authority for the derivation of the name of Fulham is Camden, in his "Britannia," who is quoted by all succeeding writers. Norden says: "Fulham, of the Saxons called Fullon-ham, which (as Master Camden taketh it) signifieth Volucrum Domus, the Habitacle of Birds or the Place of Fowls. Fullon and Furglas in the Saxon toong signifieth Fowles, and Ham or Hame as much as Home in our Toong. So that Fullonham or Fuglahame is as much as to say the Home House or Habitacle of Fowle. Ham also in many places signifieth Amnis a River. But it is most probable it should be of Land Fowle which usually haunt Groves and Clusters of Trees whereof in this Place it seemeth to have been plenty."

Bowack also quotes Camden, adding: "In all Probability a Place where all sorts of Water Fowls were bred and preserved for the Diversion of our Saxon Monarchs."

Lysons, commenting on this derivation, adds in a note: "The Saxon word ful is translated foul: fuhl, a fowl: full and fullan are full, as full mona, the full moon." This latter meaning has been chosen by the authors of the Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, notably Somner, Lye, and Bosworth.

Fulham is bounded by Chelsea and Kensington on the east, by the river on the west and south, and by Hammersmith on the north. The eastern boundary follows generally the railway-line between Addison Road Station and the river, and the northern one is identical with the southern one of Hammersmith already given. The earliest record we have of Fulham is in 691, when a grant of the manor was made by Tyrtilus, Bishop of Hereford, to Erkenwald, Bishop of London, and his successors. In 879 a body of Danes made Fulham their winter quarters, and amused themselves by constructing the moat around the palace. Norden tells us that Henry III. often "lay" at the palace, and on two occasions Bishop Bancroft received visits here from Queen Elizabeth. James I. also came here before his coronation. In 1627 Charles I. dined with Bishop Montaigne. In 1642 the Parliamentary army encamped at Fulham, 24,000 strong, under Essex.

If we enter the borough of Fulham at the Hammersmith end, we come upon one of the most interesting associations of the whole district, just before the North End Road makes a decided bend. Here are two houses, formerly one, called the Grange, in which the novelist Samuel Richardson passed the greater part of his life. This pompous, vain little man, who never to the end of his life abated one whit of his savage envy of his successful contemporaries, was endowed with the genius of originality which prompted him to write as no one had ever thought of writing before. He remained here until 1755, when he moved to Parsons Green. He had begun life as one of the nine children of a man of small means, and was apprenticed to a printer. This work he carried on long after the necessity for it had ceased, for he was above all things punctual, methodical, neat, and entirely the opposite in character to that usually ascribed to genius. To a man of his type it seems almost sinful to give up routine work in order to depend on the work of imagination. He had a house at Salisbury Court near his business premises, and the Grange at North End was his country residence. Here he composed "Sir Charles Grandison" and "Clarissa," writing for the most part in a grotto in the garden, where the admiring circle of women who adored him, and whose effusive flattery he ever received with pleasure, paid court to him. He was twice married, and while at North End was living with his second wife and their four daughters. Thus he was surrounded by womenkind, who forgave him all faults on account of his appreciation of sentimentality.

The house is distinctly picturesque. The southern half is of red brick, and is surrounded by a high wall, in which is a gateway with tall red-brick piers surmounted by stone balls. Over the wall hangs an acacia-tree, and on the front of the house is an old sundial--altogether a house one could well associate with an imaginative novelist. It was the residence of the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart. The other part of the house has been painted a light stone colour. Even as early as 1813 the Grange had been divided into two houses.

St. Mary's Church, facing the Hammersmith Road, is in Fulham. It was built by a Mr. Richard Hunt, to whose memory there is a tablet on the wall, and was opened as a chapel of ease in 1814. Some fine carving on the north side of the chancel and the oak panelling of the gallery were brought from Lady Mary Coke's old mansion at Chiswick.

In 1860 the site of Edith Road was, according to Crofton Croker, to be let on building lease. In it, Croker says, "once stood the house of Cipriani." But there is some doubt as to the exact site of Cipriani's house, which is also claimed for Great Church Lane, Hammersmith (see p. 7). Cipriani lived in England from 1755 to 1785, and his works were largely engraved by Bartolozzi, who also had a house at North End.

Further south, to the east of Queen's Club grounds, are a maze of new streets, in one of which, Castletown Road, is a large and fine Congregational chapel and hall. The chapel has a square tower rising to a considerable height, and the roof is supported by flying buttresses. This is an offshoot of the Allen Street Congregational Chapel, whose trustees still have the control and help to support it financially. The foundation-stone was the last laid by the late Earl of Shaftesbury, November 22, 1882.