B&CLHS programme 2014

20 January
St Michael’s Church, Elmwood Road and Heroes of Chiswick
A short history of St Michael’s by Ian Peacock and a report on the current research project studying the parishioners who died in the First World War from Steve Rolling, Heroes Project Manager.

17 February
Sir Stephen Fox’s garden in Chiswick
an illustrated talk by Sally Jeffery, the garden historian, who has researched the late 17th-century garden which occupied what are now the walled gardens of Chiswick House.

17 March
Women’s suffrage in West London before 1914
an illustrated talk by John Grigg on the story of women’s campaign for the vote in our area, as reported in local newspapers.

14 April
Richmond Park as a Royal Hunting Landscape
an illustrated talk by Chris Sumner, former Chairman of the London Parks & Gardens Trust, looking at a landscape associated with royalty since the middle ages, and which Charles I enclosed as a deer park in 1637

19 May 2014
Annual General Meeting
In addition to the business meeting Journal 23 will be issued this evening; copies will then be posted to members unable to collect their copy in person.

15 September 2014
Syon Park, the Duke of Northumberland & the Civil War in Brentford & Chiswick
An illustrated talk by Howard Simmons, a Hounslow Heritage Guide, Syon House Guide and board member of the Battlefield Trust. Howard will look at loyalty and betrayal, warfare, looting and damage and consider one of history’s great “what ifs?” that might have seen a different outcome to the Civil War.

20 October
Mother Magdalen Taylor and Catholic Brentford
an illustrated talk by Paul Shaw, central archivist for the Poor Servants of the Mother of God Sisters at the Convent in Brentford Butts since 2001. The talk will focus on the founder of the order in Brentford, whose interesting life included service as a nurse with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea

17 November
A Chiswick House Inventory of 1811
an illustrated talk by Carolyn and Peter Hammond, authors of Life in an Eighteenth Century Country House. When the sixth Duke of Devonshire inherited Chiswick House in 1811 he commissioned an inventory of its contents. This talk uses the inventory to begin to reconstruct the house as the home of the Duke, his guests and his servants.