‘To materially improve his mission’ – Revd Dale’s benefice & Chiswick’s mid-Victorian working class Glebe Estate (1866-1893)

at St Nicholas Church, Church Street, Chiswick, doors open 6.30pm, refreshments available, talk at 7pm, admission £10, £7 concessions, free to Friends of St Nicholas

This talk by 2 of our members, Tracey Logan and Richard Szwagrzak, and has been organised by the Friends. They will share their research linking the architect of Brentford’s Italianate water tower, leading Victorian water engineers, and a founder-member of Reckitt’s starch dynasty, with a cash-strapped ritualist Vicar of Chiswick, Reverend Lawford William Torriano Dale, as he sought to fund his mission to the poor. His 21-acre market garden was transformed into terraces fit for Chiswick’s aspirational artisans. Today original architectural features – coloured and patterned brickwork, ornate porches, classical figurines and decorative plaster – provide a pattern-book of styles which helps to date the terraces.

The Society’s next meeting on 17 February will be about the Mulberry Garden Project at Hogarth’s House which is nearing completion