New Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal Published
Articles on local businesses and house histories plus the funeral of Sir John Maynard
The cover of the new journal and a York Stone Bottle. Picture: BCLHS
The new edition of the Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society's (BCLHS) annual Journal has been published recently.
The 31st addition of the journal has 28 A4 pages, richly illustrated, and a full colour cover. It costs £7 a copy plus postage and packing and can be bought online.
All the articles have been researched and written by BCLHS members.
Two authors have studied Brentford businesses. Neil Chippendale, an inveterate collector of all things Brentford, has written about the York Mineral Water Company, which started in the 1890s. David Shailes covers the Underwoods, whose Brentford hay, straw and coal merchants firm was established in the 1870s, and their business difficulties.
There are three articles on houses in Chiswick and the people who lived in them. Martin Daly has used the deeds of his early Victorian house in Paxton Road to research both the landowner and the developers, discovering a fascinating Italian connection. Simon Francis has used three Censuses to discover who lived in Whitehall Gardens between 1901 (soon after the road was built) and 1921. Wesley Henderson-Roe’s family lived in many different houses in Chiswick between 1914 and 2017. Is this long connection a record?
Henry Bott (no relation to the journal’s editor Val Bott) was the Medical Officer of Health in Edwardian Brentford. Alison Appleby writes about this man who made a major contribution to improving the health of the community.
James Wisdom examines the complex details of the magnificent, expensive, high status 1690 funeral of Sir John Maynard of Gunnersbury House. The source is the steward's note book, an exceptionally rare survival, which lists everything spent, from considerable quantities of black fabric to drape the mansion and the church to gifts of gloves to official mourners.
The Journal has been edited by Val Bott, laid out attractively by Mike Paterson and printed by the society’s long-standing printer, Carfax Cards Ltd. Illustrations have been provided by Chiswick’s Local Studies Library, Gunnersbury Park Museum, the National Archives, and the Brentford High Street Project, while the National Library of Scotland has provided digitised extracts from old Ordnance Survey maps.
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August 26, 2022