St. Nicholas, Chiswick. St. Nicholas, Chiswick, Middlesex

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1 , Middlesex Introduction to this Church and Layouts document This short document contains some information on the church history of St. Nicholas, Chiswick, the survey of monumental inscriptions that was carried out in 2015/16, and in particular layouts which can help the reader to locate a particular memorial should that be of interest. To locate St. Nicholas it is recommended to access the church s own website at This write-up continues with a brief history of the church and its churchyard, and a short section on the survey itself. It is then followed by a recent photograph of the church, and by a set of layouts which will enable the reader to find the actual location of any memorial using the reference number assigned to each inscription. Church History These notes have been taken from the Visitor s Guide pamphlet available at the church, and from Wikipedia. The church stands in Church Street on the banks of the River Thames near the former ferry, which was the only means of crossing the river for many years. There is reason to believe that during the time of Mellitus, Bishop of London in the 7th century, a pagan shrine on this site was converted to Christian worship. Certainly it existed in the reign of Edward the Confessor. The current church dates from , when it was rebuilt to a design by the architect John Loughborough Pearson, except for the west tower which was built for William Bordall (vicar ). Because of the small distance between the tower and the road at Church Street, Pearson made the nave short but wide, so it is nearly square in plan. The Duke of Devonshire gave 1,000 for the rebuilding, but most of the cost was paid for by Henry Smith of the nearby Lamb Brewery company, Fuller, Smith & Turner. The church is built of courses of squared Kentish ragstone masonry in the Perpendicular style. It has a stone coping with a copper roof. Inside the church, surviving 15th-century features include the tall archway to the west tower and the hoodmold over the window above the west door. The Churchyard and Memorials The churchyard immediately surrounding the church was Chiswick s only burial ground for many centuries. It was closed in 1854 because of lack of space, except for limited burials in existing vaults. However, in 1838 and again in 1871 the Duke of Devonshire gave to the parish gifts of land adjoining the churchyard for enlarging the burial ground. These extensions are now known as Chiswick Old Burial Ground, and continue a long way to the west of the church.

2 The first two extensions to the churchyard were known as the Extension, and Old Ground, but over time the extended churchyard was opened up as Sections A to Z, using a very regular grid pattern for the graves. The south end of Section A is called Section Ai and was reserved for the burial of infants. The graves in the Churchyard and its Extension were never officially numbered, and hence have been assigned new numbers for the purpose of this document. Graves in the remaining sections are all numbered according to a grid system, and the numbers shown in this document match those used in the Burial Registers and Register of Graves. The only exception to this relates to the many smaller memorials, small scrolls, small wedge-shaped stones and some urns, which have been placed next to the walls of the cemetery, particularly in sections R, U and X. These have been assigned numbers like Rw1, where w is used to signify that the location is next to a wall. Layout charts are included which will help the reader to find a grave should they wish to do so. For the majority of graves a simple number of the grave is placed where the grave will be found. For any larger grave, such as the double-width graves, the grave number is framed in a box, which helps to locate these graves more precisely. Raised tombs which dominate the surrounding area have also been framed with a box. The graveyard has the distinction of including two Grade II listed structures. One listed structure is the wall to the southern edge of The Extension. The second listed structure is the memorial to Sir Percy Harris, politician, numbered I171/2. There are many notable graves. The ones usually mentioned are for Richard Wright, bricklayer (69), William Hogarth, painter (105), Charles Holland, actor (133), Ugo Foscolo, Italian writer (Ext42), Philip James de Loutherbourg, landscape painter (Ext64), George, Earl of Macartney, diplomat (Ext100), Henry Joy, trumpeter (C52), James McNeill Whistler, American artist (B87a/8), William Blake Richmond, portrait painter (P1), Frederick Hitch VC (P17), and Arthur Howell Burdon, assistant purser on the Lusitania (P18/9). Among further interesting graves I would single out the large Viking style grave to Johan Richard Schram, engineer and designer of rock drills, whose inscription is written in Swedish on a serpent-like scroll (F3/4). He was born in Sweden, and died in Switzerland. Another grave of some interest is the grave to Sir Charles Tilston Bright, engineer, who oversaw the laying of the first transatlantic cable. His grave (OG136) consists of a body stone containing his coat of arms with inscription in a surrounding frame, which was completely earthed over in 1980, and hence the entire memorial to him was missed in that survey. The church includes a number of memorials written in Latin. These inscriptions have been translated, as also any more obscure Latin phrases found on gravestones throughout the churchyard. Further translations have been provided for text in Greek, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Welsh and Croatian. Whereas the vast majority of memorials clearly identify the deceased, there are always a few which do not, and for these it was necessary to see the corresponding entries in the Register of Graves. One example is a grave to three Sisters from the local St. Mary s

3 Convent. The gravestone (P171) identifies the Sisters as Sister Juliana, Sister Felicitas and Sister Margaret Ruth. The Register of Graves shows them to be Mary Ann Holmes, Louisa Hodgson and Margaret Janetta Baker. As a second example, from the infants section, the grave at (Ai319) is a simple kerb with just three words Duerme, Nene, Duerme. The words are Spanish for Sleep, baby, sleep, but the Register of Graves identifies the infant as Sylva Mary Vincent, and provides her burial date and age. The survey of memorials In this latest survey of memorials use has been made of previous surveys when considered appropriate. The main preceding survey was undertaken in 1979/80 jointly by a large team of volunteers from the Society of Genealogists and West Middlesex Family History Society. The aim at the time was to capture as complete a record as possible of memorial inscriptions currently in the church, or known to have been in the church, and all inscriptions from the extended churchyard relating to deaths before They took a complete record of the graves, progressing down the burial ground, but stopped their recording in the middle of Section F, somewhat short of the half-way mark of the full churchyard and cemetery. In this survey of 1979/80 the work of Thomas Faulkner titled The History and Antiquities of Brentford, Ealing and Chiswick, which was published in 1845, was used to provide detail of memorials that had been in the old church prior to the rebuild of 1882, and to provide some of the no longer readable text from inscriptions on memorials in the churchyard. The survey also used transcriptions recorded by H. W. Hailstone and Miss G. Owen-Jones of the churchyard memorials. In the current survey, the memorials in the church are recorded just as they were found in For memorials in the churchyard, rather than undertake difficult reading of gravestones which had been read before, the 1979/80 readings have been used freely. Where the 1979/80 recording itself acknowledged use of either Faulkner s work or more frequently Hailstone and Owen-Jones s work this has been duly acknowledged by means of a note to the inscription. Acknowledgements The Society thanks Roland Bostock for undertaking the completion of this project, including the recording, transcription and indexing of the full set of records. Our thanks are also to Father Simon Brandes, vicar of St. Nicholas, for providing access to the church and its churchyard; to Alan Rice of Carillion Services for providing access to the Register of Graves; and to church archivists Wendy Cundy, Ann Rix, Peter and Carolyn Hammond; all of them for their respective support for the project. West Middlesex Family History Society

4 Photograph by Roland Bostock, November, 2015

5 LAYOUT OF THE MEMORIALS Overview

6 The church (prefix CH)

7 The churchyard (no prefix)

8 Churchyard Extension (prefix Ext)

9 Old Ground (prefix OG)

10 Section A (prefix A)

11 Section Ai (prefix Ai)

12 Section B East (prefix B) Section B West (prefix B)

13 Section C (prefix C)

14 Section D (prefix D)

15 Section E (prefix E)

16 Section F (prefix F)

17 Section G (prefix G)

18 Section H (prefix H)

19 Section I (prefix I)

20 Section J (prefix J)

21 Section K (prefix K)

22 Section L East (prefix L) Section L West (prefix L)

23 Section M East (prefix M) Section M West (prefix M)

24 Section N East (prefix N)

25 Section N West (prefix N)

26 Section O (prefix O) Section P (prefix P)

27 Section Q (prefix Q)

28 Section R (prefix R)

29 Section S (prefix S)

30 Section T (prefix T)

31 Section U (prefix U)

32 Section V (prefix V)

33 Section W (prefix W)

34 Section X (prefix X)

35 Section Y (prefix Y) Section Z (prefix Z)