Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate – one of the oldest houses; photograph Stephen Peiris
“A particularly good example of a housing development of the interwar period”
Residents of the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate are celebrating 100 years this September since their estate was designed.
Originally part of the banking family the Rothschilds’ country estate, the land was sold off in 1925, partly to the local authority to form Gunnersbury Park and partly to create the housing development.
Built in a triangle of land between two major roads, the North Circular and Gunnersbury Lane, and the railway line, the housing estate is “a particularly good example of a housing development of the interwar period”, says local historian James Marshall.
Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate – aerial view
“A haven of peace and quiet”
It was specifically designed as “a haven of peace and quiet” between the major transport routes, says Stephen Peiris, Chairman of the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate Centenary Society:
“It has a winding road, which not many housing estates in London do, Princes Avenue, built to evoke the countryside”.
Part of the thinking behind the design was that houses with gardens would be the best possible places for soldiers returning from the First World War to start families.
It is around this time that the first outside market was set up in Chiswick in what is now known as ‘Old Market Place’, where the Sunday markets are held currently, to provide returning soldiers with an income from the sale of their garden produce.
Community noticeboard; photograph Stephen Peiris
An active local community
The Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate has a very active community life. Residents came together to organise opposition to Transport for London building a car park on a wild bit of land known locally as ‘Bat Corner’.
READ ALSO: Transport for London staff car park at ‘Bat Corner’ turned down
They have also organised litter clear ups and ‘Front Garden Awards’.
READ ALSO: Gunnersbury residents give local green spaces a pre-Christmas clean up
READ ALSO: Winners of Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate ‘Front Garden Awards’ announced
They care greatly about the look and the upkeep of their estate, which is designated a Conservation Area, though there has recently been division over the application of planning regulations.
READ ALSO: Residents win approval for home improvements despite intervention by Chiswick councillor Joanna Biddolph
“Not just a boring street party with tea and cake”
Ana Soto with her dog Luna at the tennis club
For the centenary they are planning a mini festival at The Ridgeway, a cul de sac on the estate, and at the Triangle Tennis Club as the end of it.
Architects Douglas, Smith and Berkley deposited plans for 400 houses on 18 September 1925, James Marshall discovered, so the main event is being held on the nearest weekend, on Saturday 20 September, and Stephen hopes they will win funding to carry out a history research project throughout the year.
Ana Soto, who is organising the party along with fellow committee members Gavin Lawson, Hanna Green, Elettra Marziani, Claudia Hearne and Stephen, told The Chiswick Calendar:
“I didn’t want just a boring street party with just tea and cake, so what I’m going for is a mini-festival along the lines of what they do every year for Kew Green Fete in June.
They are using just the cul de sac and the tennis club to minimise disruption, but they are thinking big: a stage at the end of The Ridgeway, with a programme of bands from 12 – 9pm; a dog show on the bowling green sponsored by vets Creature Comforts; stalls and games for children and adults.
The party is open to all, and free to attend and to take part in the Dog Show. You need have no connection to the estate to take part.
The Dog Show will have categories such as ‘My Dog’s Got Talent’, and ‘My Dog’s Got Style’, ‘Waggiest Tail’ and ‘Owner and Pet Look-alike’. Creature Comforts will be providing a goody bag for all entrants, and the overall winner will receive a year’s Creature Comforts membership.
Triangle tennis club; photographs Stephen Peiris
Entertainment ranging from a human fruit machine to Bollywood style dancing
The tennis club and the various associated sports clubs are organising tennis, snooker, karate and table tennis interactive events. Amanda Frolich is donating an Amanda’s Action Club session for little children for free. There will be food stalls and a bouncy castle.
Evoking the 1920s there will be old fashioned circus games, such as the ‘High Striker’, to test the strength of the participants, and a human fruit machine, as well as Noel Coward songs and music by Gershwin. Twenties costumes are encouraged, but not obligatory, says Ana.
Local councillors have got involved. Cllr Ron Mushiso is rumoured to be organising something involving sumo wrestling fat suits, and Cllr Ranjit Gill has organised a Bollywood troupe of dancers, who will not only perform themselves but promise to get everyone involved, up and dancing in classical Indian style.
Stephen Peiris as a boy growing up on the estate, and now; Vee Lin and John Gann, parents of Cherie Gann, who continued to live on The Ridgeway for a while as an adult, and her sister Selina, who still does; Vee Linn is one of Stephen’s neighbours, who has known him since at least the age he was in the first photograph
A multi-generational, diverse community
Integral to the estate’s history is its diversity, Stephen told me. There are many families who have been on the estate for several generations, including South East Asian and Polish families.
Stephen’s father Lakshman, ‘Lucky’, Peiris, settled there from Sri Lanka when he won a scholarship to Imperial College. He worked as a physicist on an early version of the Large Hadron Collider. Stephen also works in the scientific sphere. His company Triangle IP marries scientific ideas with investment money.
Polish families settled in the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate during the Second World War and there are two famous Polish pilots buried in the local cemetery.
Zygmunt Bieńkowski became the squadron leader of Squadron 303, the highest performing squadron in the Battle of Britain and his great friend Stanislaw Oktawian Leszczyński was leader of 301 Squadron. His nephew Andrzej still lives on the estate.
“The families on the estate have strong ties with RAF Northolt”, Stephen told me, “and I love the fact that the RAF handed Hitler his first defeat”.
He is particularly keen to include the older residents, so the celebrations are a means of combatting isolation in the community as well as celebrating its history.
(L) 1 The Ridgeway – the oldest house on the estate; (R) Triangle Way; photographs Stephen Peiris
All welcome, from 12pm onwards, Saturday 20 September
The Mayor of Hounslow, Chiswick Riverside Cllr Amy Croft, will officially open the proceedings at 12.30. Headlining the music at 7pm will be Luca Firth’s band (Colin’s son), who play ‘alternative folk’. Full line up of the bands as follows:
12.45 – DJ Max Power
1.00 – Jay Kumar and his Bollywood dance students
2.00 David Sinclair Four
3.00 – DJ Max Power
4.00 – Carlotta Gershwin Fall
4.30 – Beatfox
5.00 – Billy Bones
6.00 – Mike Reed
7.00 – Luca Firth and band
8.00 – Mystery special guest
A mystery celebrity has been invited, to be confirmed, and Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith & Chiswick will be speaking.
The organisers are grateful to sponsors Creature Comforts and the Clayton Hotel Chiswick, who have donated a raffle prize of a night for two with a meal at the hotel. Ana’s own company, APA Translations, and another local resident Claudia Hearne’s company, Hearne House, have both put in money, as have the Residents’ Association and Hounslow Council through the Thriving Communities Fund.
Luckily for the organisers, the Triangle Tennis Club is the only place in the estate to have been granted a licence to serve alcohol, specifically for the benefit of soldiers returning from WWII, as part of the club’s covenant.
The Triangle club is not just a useful venue, but also an integral part of the estate’s history, as the builder George Cooper had a triangular bit of land left over and decreed that it should be used for recreational purposes. No doubt residents will be raising a glass to him on Saturday 20 September.
Above- A typical view of one of the roads in the estate
Below (L) – Post box with George V’s ‘GR’ on it; plaque above the fish and chip shop with ‘GC’ for George Cooper and the date 1927, when the row of shops was built
Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar
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