New Year's Chiswick History Quiz

Test your knowledge of past events in the local area

Another year, another end-of-year quiz. Have a go at these teaser questions about Chiswick's illustrious history: there are a handful of warm-up questions to start with, but be warned; some of the later ones are fiendishly difficult.

Send your answers to editor@chiswickw4.com and the first person to submit all the correct answer will receive the admiration of the rest of us.

Thanks go to Carolyn Hammond from the Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society, who provided most of the questions.

Questions

Starters

1) Which location was the closest Charles I came to reaching the City of London during the English Civil War?

2) Chiswick has three buildings which are Grade I listed - can you name them?

3) What is probably the oldest structure in Chiswick?

Chiswick People

1) Name the actor who lived in Chiswick for over 20 years and was well-known for playing a TV detective
2) Who, in the year 1876, preached at Congregational Church in Chiswick High Road, now the site of Bond House?
3) The following are three men who lived and worked in Chiswick, but who made their mark elsewhere in the world. Given their names and their Chiswick connections, can you name their most famous achievement?

  1. Chiswick cabbie Frederick Hitch, buried at St. Nicholas after his death in 1913
  2. Sir Charles Tilston Bright, lived with his family in Bolton Road, died and also buried in Chiswick in 1888
  3. Joseph Paxton, began his career working in the (later Royal) Horticultural Society’s Chiswick gardens in 1832, a 33-acre site placed between what is now the A4 and the south side of Chiswick High Road

4) Which French Impressionist painted a picture of a cricket match on Stamford Brook Common, as well as of Bath Road?

5) Which of these famous figures did NOT live in Chiswick at some point in their lives:

  1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  2. WB Yeats
  3. Hugh Grant
  4. Voltaire

6) Which of these figures is NOT recorded as a visitor to Chiswick House:

  1. Benjamin Franklin
  2. Garibaldi
  3. Winston Churchill
  4. Voltaire

7) William Hogarth is undoubtedly Chiswick’s most famous resident, but which friend engraved the lines below upon his tombstone in 1764?

If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay,

If Nature touch thee, drop a Tear:

If neither move thee, turn away,

For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here

8) What links both late 18th century Whig Opposition leader Charles James Fox AND George Canning, Liberal Tory Prime Minister during the 1820s, to Chiswick House?

9) Which British monarch did conspirators plan to assassinate as he made his way down the lane from Brentford to Turnham Green, after he had finished hunting in Kew?

Addresses and Places, Then and Now

1) What was the name of Chiswick's first purpose-built cinema, and where was it?

2) Name the figures who lived at the following addresses in W4:

  1. 9 Arlington Park Mansions (English novelist)
  2. Rose Cottage, Strand-on-the-Green (20 th century socialite and novelist)
  3. Mawson Arms, Mawson Lane (18 th century satirist)
  4. 19 Bolton Road (British general and viscount)

3) Where was the largest employer in Chiswick at the end of the 19th century?

4) Where was Chiswick's first purpose-built police station - what is the building now?

5) What is the longest established business in Chiswick which is still trading?

6) London’s first experience of the V2 bomb came in Chiswick on the 8th of September 1944, but which street did it land on?

(A picture of the street in question, in the aftermath of the bomb)

January 15, 2014