No. 13 Autumn 2005
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No. 13 Autumn 2005 elcome to the latest edition of our newsletter. – the lieutenant managed to maintain a remarkable speed The centrepiece is our chairman’s report, to be for the time. His last change was made at Hounslow at W presented to members at our annual meeting on about 15 minutes before midnight on 5 November. 6 October. We also have fascinating articles about the Lapenotiere then drove on through Isleworth, Brentford, New Trafalgar Dispatch, William Parnell park, the bull in Chiswick and Hammersmith, passing along King Street King Street, historic cemeteries, and, most importantly, about 25 minutes past midnight on 6 November. Emery Walker House at 7 Hammersmith Terrace. The Continuing on through Kensington and Westminster and fate of this house, our very own Arts & Crafts jewel, skirting the old royal coaching stables in the area now hangs in the balance and must be decided this year. occupied by Trafalgar Square, he arrived at the Admiralty in Whitehall at 1 am after a road journey of 37 hours and FULHAM PALACE RESTORATION STARTS 271 miles. After years of development and months of delay, work on the first phase of the restoration of Fulham Palace started Despite the lateness of the hour, navy secretary Marsden in July. The work will cost £4 million and last a year. was still hard at work in the Admiralty boardroom, which During this time the function facilities will be closed. The still exists. Lapenotiere apparently announced to him: grounds and walled garden will remain open as normal. ‘We have won a great victory, but we have lost Nelson’. The museum will open only on weekend afternoons. The Marsden immediately roused the first lord of the main Tudor courtyard will be open on weekdays – admiralty, Lord Barham, who ordered the Admiralty subject to the odd closure as building work requires – but clerks to make copies of the dispatch. One was delivered close at weekends. Phase 2 may start as early as 2007 if to William Pitt, the prime minister, in Downing Street, by the necessary funding is secured by then. For updates, 3 am and another to King George III at Windsor by 7 am. visit the council website and click on Fulham Palace It was thus more than two weeks after the battle that the Museum in section F of the A-Z listing at the top of the news of the victory and the fact of Lord Nelson’s death home page. To check exact museum opening times, ring became known to the government in London. 020 7736 3233. Scott Cooper, Project Director, Fulham Palace The passage of the Trafalgar dispatch along King Street is our borough’s first connection with the battle of DISPATCHES FROM TRAFALGAR Trafalgar. The second concerns the men who fought in You might think there is no obvious connection between the battle. Thousands served in the British ships, coming Hammersmith and Fulham and the Battle of Trafalgar, a from every part of the country and from overseas as well. pivotal event in both British and world history. In fact The muster lists for all the ships present at the battle are there are two interesting links. preserved at the National Archives at Kew. In these lists are the details of seven men who gave their birthplaces as The first relates to the news of the battle. After the death either Hammersmith or Fulham when they signed up. of Lord Nelson in the hour of victory on 21 October Listed in age order, the Hammersmith men were James 1805, Vice Admiral Collingwood succeeded him as Douglass, 36, George Frost, 28, George Wayman, 27, commander in chief. Within a few hours of the end of the William Wittick, 24, and John Kelly, 21; the Fulham men battle a westerly gale arose, threatening to drive the were Thomas Flowers, 41, and William Twitchen, 24. enemy’s surviving ships on to the rocks at Cape Trafalgar. Collingwood’s immediate concern was to save John Kelly was a Royal Marine. The rest were all the ships and rescue their crews. It was thus only on 26 ordinary sailors. Interestingly, three of the sailors – October – five days after the battle – that he was in a Douglass, Wittick and Twitchin – all served on HMS position to send his famous first report on the battle back Colossus, a new 76-gun two-decker launched at Deptford to the government in London. The dispatch was entrusted in 1803. Colossus suffered higher casualties than other to the care of Lt John Lapenotiere, commander of HM British ships at Trafalgar, with 40 dead and 160 Schooner Pickle, for delivery as soon as possible to wounded. One of the wounded was James Douglass, who William Marsden, secretary of the navy in London. suffered injuries to his right leg. Lapenotiere sailed into Falmouth on the morning of 4 Douglass married a Hammersmith lady at Fulham November. By noon he was en route for London, (presumably at All Saints) in 1816. Ten years later, by travelling in a post chaise along the old coaching road to which time he was 60, he was awarded a Greenwich the capital. By changing horses regularly – 21 times in all Hospital pension in recognition of his 11-year naval career – and perhaps also because of the wounds he had fulfilled a similar role of friend and supporter to that sustained at Trafalgar. In March 1810 Marine John Kelly other bulwark of the Arts & Crafts movement, Philip was discharged because of ‘derangement of intellect’. He Webb, who designed Red House in Bexleyheath for was only 26 at the time. Perhaps his illness was Morris when he first got married. When Webb died in something to do with his experiences during the battle 1915 he left all his possessions to Emery Walker. five years before. Further research may reveal what became of the other men. As a result of these friendships, Walker’s home contains an unrivalled collection of furnishings and mementoes As part of the Trafalgar 200 celebrations, the journey from the key figures of the Arts & Crafts movement. taken by the original Trafalgar dispatch is being There are woven hangings and rugs designed by Morris commemorated by a recreation and the presentation of a New Trafalgar Dispatch to towns along the route. Hammersmith’s turn comes on 7 September, when the post chaise, horses and the actor playing Lapenotiere will arrive in St Peter’s Square W6 around 1.00pm. The procession will assemble on the west side of the square and leave about 1.45pm for the presentation of the dispatch to the mayor outside the town hall about 2.15pm. Afterwards a special Trafalgar Way plaque will be unveiled on the Salutation Inn at 154 King Street. Mounted police and other supporting groups like sea scouts and horse rangers will help make the occasion a colourful, fun pageant for al the family. More information will be published in the Council magazine, HFM, nearer the time. Bill White, New Trafalgar Dispatch HAMMERSMITH’S ARTS & CRAFTS JEWEL 7 Hammersmith Terrace (extreme left): the Georgian terrace ‘There is now no other Morris interior in London to home of Morris’ great friend, Emery Walker equal it… and the way the walls are hung with a mixture of photographs, watercolours and illuminated for his own home, plan chests, cabinets, bookcases and manuscripts and the way the twinkling light from the glasses designed by Webb for himself or for Morris, as Thames at the bottom of the garden shines on the blues well as choice pieces of furniture and metalware by and greens of Morris papers and fabrics and old brown Cotswolds artists such as Ernest Gimson and the Barnsley hand-made furniture, leads one in to a kingdom that can brothers. Every room in the house has original Morris never be created again. This house and its contents must wallpaper, the only house in the world of which this can be preserved.’ be said. For anyone with more than a passing interest in the Arts The survival of the interior at 7 Hammersmith Terrace is & Crafts movement these words will no doubt strike a in some ways a testament to the affection Walker inspired chord. How could an interior associated with William in people, including his own family. At his death in 1933 Morris, a figure whose followers around the world now he left the house to his only daughter Dorothy, who never number in their millions, be under threat? But the words married. Dorothy was a great enthusiast for the Arts & quoted above are even more remarkable when one learns Crafts movement, had grown up with Morris and Webb that they were written more than 40 years ago, that the and venerated her father’s memory. As a result she strove writer was John Betjeman, and that the danger that all to keep the house as it had been in his lifetime, a mission this might be lost is still very real. that was pursued by her companion, Elizabeth de Haas, who arrived in Hammersmith in 1948. Miss de Haas The interior in question is in Hammersmith Terrace, inherited the house in 1963 and devoted the following 36 hidden inside a tall, slightly austere Georgian riverside years of her life to preserving the interior and trying to house, only a few hundred secure its future after her death. In the early 1990s she yards upstream from sold Emery Walker’s library of private press books to William Morris’s own Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, which has the best London home, Kelmscott Arts & Crafts collection outside the V&A, in order to set House.