Forum Topic

New place names for Paragon and Brentford Quarter

Following up on Matt Harmer's recent appeal for ideas for place names at Paragon and Brentford Quarter sites here are some thoughts I have recently passed on to the planning department.  Like Matt I can not say that I was particularly excited by, or indeed support, any of the ideas floated earlier this month.I believe that links to the history - recent and long gone - of a place gives substance to new developments and may contribute to creating a community rooted in the place.  Information boards or plaques should be erected explaining the significance of the names to newcomers on both of these sites. North Brentford QuarterPrimary suggestion: The Golden Mile (Quarter). Streets/lanes/mews and buildings within it might all be named after the famous businesses which used to line The Golden Mile, as the Brentford section of the Great West Road was known. Most of these are listed in: The History of the Great West Road, 1995, by James Marshall (published Hounslow). E.g. Simmonds, BOAC, Macleans, Trico, Firestone, Gillette etc etc Fairly recently the tower has been renamed Wallis House, after its architect (previous names included GSK House and Beecham House).  Perhaps it would be appropriate for Wallis House’s name to be retained? ParagonThe following are names of prominent past residents of Brentford. Overall, in view of the proximity to the nursing school of TVU I think a name linked with health or education would be most appropriate.  The “Boston Brewery” link may be appreciated by the students living on or close to the site though …although maybe nursing students take better care of their health than most!• Mary Trimmer, local exponent of the Sunday and Ragged School movement C18th. Dilapidated, one of her schools stands next to St Georges Church. Booklet about her by Mrs Yarde is published by Hounslow. Lived the last few years of her life in a house in Windmill Road, probably a little to the South of the Paragon site. • John Horne Tooke C18th, philosopher, philologist, minister at St Lawrence's church, friend of John Wilkes. Lived for some years in a cottage in Windmill Lane, probably a little to the South of the Paragon site. • John Wilkes, famous C18th parliamentarian and upholder of democracy whose hustings during the notorious Middlesex elections were held in the Butts (and depicted by Chiswick artist Hogarth). Sub-sections could be named after his broadsheet The North Briton and after the slogan “Wilkes and Liberty!” • Dame Mary Spencer, resident of Boston Manor and doer of good works for the poor, established local charities etc • JMW Turner, artist who spent part of his childhood staying with his uncle the butcher on the site of what is now The Weir restaurant/bar (formerly The White Horse), just off the Butts. • Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet, educated for a few years at Brentford. • Sir John Rennie, engineer, educated for a few years at Brentford. • Thomas Layton, antiquarian and collector who bequeathed his collection (now largely dispersed) to the people of Brentford • Fred Turner, first librarian at Brentford responsible for a photographic record of the town in the early 1900s Like Matt I look forward to hearing your thoughts on place names. Best wishesAndrew

Andrew Dakers ● 6840d13 Comments

Kevin and Andrew..thanks for that.Yes Brentford..and Brentford Park.When you travel down the Great West Road from Isleworth and Osterely and cross Gillette Corner..you enter Brentford but there are no signs to tell you..let alone welcome you!!So why a sign at scruffy Kew Bridge..and not one along the "this is business" section of the GWR which includes SKY, PC WORLD, GLAXO, etc etc?One sign wanted please? Syon Councillors' dept?Here is the Kew Bridge sign.

Jim Lawes ● 6834d

I rather like the Brentford Park idea.  On the point about people not realising where the are travelling through, I've thought for a while it would be great if we could get GSK and Bromptons Bicycles - or other key local companies - to have their names under the Brentford and Kew Bridge station platform signs.  Again this would help make the link between the area and what happens here.Andrew

Andrew Dakers ● 6834d

Something to do with Thomas Layton would be great.Well said Jim!No mention on any signs along the M4 of Brentford, especially from the West. Chiswick, Richmond, Nth/Sth Circular etc etc mentioned but not dear old TW8.I wonder how many people have landed at Heathrow or travelled from the west country & on seeing the floodlights at Brentford Football Club have asked the cab driver, coach driver, Mum/Dad, tour guide '' Who plays there?'' & got the reply ''Buggered if I know''

Kevin Farnan ● 6835d

Could I suggest that the North Brentford Quarter..the development between Clayponds Lane and Ealing Road..be called BRENTFORD PARK.At present, travellers on the M4 ...either leaving or approaching London... are given little indication that the sight before them is called BRENTFORD!  Perhaps the same could be said on the Great West Road.Chiswick have their CHISWICK PARK…a posh development opposite Gunnersbury Station (although previously Chiswick Park was a sports ground in Sutton Court Road), we can have our BRENTFORD PARK…and further up the road are other parks.The Main Tower could remain as Wallis House..as Andrew has suggested, and the roadways and buildings on the site could be named after the companies who were based there..and local people. An offshoot of Dan Mason’s Chiswick Products (boot polish) was there during the War..HG Products..helping the War effort..and don’t forget Carnegie who gave(?) us the Library.The Gillette Factory..by the way..is in Isleworth TW7.So NO to Golden Mile (not appropriate IMHO)..but please consider BRENTFORD PARK!

Jim Lawes ● 6835d

We already have a Bowles Hall on Ealing Road - it's good to see some semi-permanent marker down.

Matt Harmer ● 6835d

Okay I will ask John Grigg he may have more

Alan Sheerins ● 6835d

Sorry for the repetition, I just read the 1st post!

The Pseudometer ● 6835d

What about Bowles (after Stan) or Stewart (after Rod)?Or maybe Firestone - a keepsake of the industrial giant that occupied the Golden Mile for so many decades?

The Pseudometer ● 6835d

Alan - thanks for the fascinating short history of the Labour Party in this area.  Really interesting.  As the two sites in question are in Brentford Tom O'Brien doesn't make much sense to me though (unless I've missed something) as he seems to have been Chiswick based. It would be interesting to learn more about the life and times of George Haley if you are able to track down more info.Best, Andrew

Andrew Dakers ● 6836d

Thanks to all suggestions received and passed on.

Matt Harmer ● 6836d

Hi AndrewSome worthy names there, but there are too many of the well heeled Victorian middle and upper classes for me. Below is an article from John Grigg, on some working class people who undoubtedly did great work in the local community. Tom O'Brien and George Haley would be my favourites.     Labour is celebrating its centenary this year.  Some say the party was really founded in 1900 with the formation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC).  1906 was just the year when 29 MPs, standing as Labour candidates, were elected to Parliament and formed the first Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) independent of the Liberals.  1900 was when 65 Trade Unions, The Independent Labour Party (ILP), the Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Federation met at the Memorial Hall in London to form the LRC.  You could go back further and regard 1893 as the starting year when the ILP was formed in Bradford.    But 1906 was the culmination of years of negotiation, wrangling and arguing that marked the launch of the Labour Party as a national force.    By June 1895 a branch of the ILP was functioning in Chiswick and was advertising in the Chiswick Times its fortnightly meetings at 41, Glebe Street.  Its secretary was Mr C. Irons.  No council seats were contested until April 1905 when Tom O’Brien, a labourer who lived in Brackley Terrace, stood in Chiswick Park ward and Alfred Hillier, an engineer who lived in Devonshire Road, stood in Old Chiswick ward.  The wards were adjacent to each other and roughly covered a working class area around the Glebe estate.  They polled decent votes and O’Brien lost by 14 votes.  In 1906 Labour stood in 3 wards, Hillier losing by 13 in Old Chiswick.  O’Brien stood in Turnham Green and lost heavily – as did Bill Evans, a bricklayer of Dukes Road who stood in Grove Park.  They had not contested Chiswick Park, the most likely seat, and had stood aside to allow Edwin Stone, a grocer with Labour sympathies a free run.  Stone managed to get the support of the Ratepayers Association and won easily.     In July 1906 Tom O’Brien won a by-election in Chiswick Park and became Chiswick’s first Labour Councillor.  He polled 327 votes to his opponents 177 and became a thorough nuisance on the council uncovering corruption and jobbery and demanding TU Rates for the Council’s workforce.  The following year Labour won again in Chiswick Park when  William McConnell, a driller who lived in Cranbrook Road, came top of the poll  and joined O’Brien.  Labour had a group on Chiswick Council – 2 of the 18 councillors.    Meanwhile in Brentford George Haley – a self styled TU and Labour candidate – had got onto Brentford District Council at the eighth attempt in a by-election in May 1905.  He had been standing for the Council every year since 1899 and described himself as a navvy.  He spent his time on Brentford Council campaigning for better housing, TU rates of pay, Council schemes for fighting unemployment and improvements at the Council’s Isolation Hospital.  There was a move to have him adopted as the 1906 Labour Parliamentary candidate for the Brentford Division.  However Labour’s national secretary, Ramsey MacDonald, had done a secret deal with the Liberals.  In return for the Liberals allowing Labour a free run in 35 seats, Labour would not stand against the Liberals and split the vote in any other seats.  MacDonald would not support a Labour candidate in Brentford and without financial backing there was no prospect of Haley standing.  This worked well for the Liberals and they gained the Division from the Conservatives. Haley lost his Brentford District Council seat in 1908.    Over in Hounslow the first appearance of a Labour candidate was when William Lowry, a bank clerk who lived in Osterley, stood in 1908 as an ILP candidate in a Hounslow South by-election.  He lost by 303 votes to 439.  Hounslow was part of the Heston & Isleworth District Council and local elections were held every three years, each ward returning a number of Councillors.  Hounslow South was allocated 5 councillors and in 1910 Lowry became Hounslow’s first Socialist Councillor.  His running partner Arthur Norris, a bricklayer of Chapel Road, was unsuccessful.    There was a complex relationship between the ILP and the Labour Party.  The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party but held its own conferences and devised its own policies.  In some areas there were ILP branches alongside Labour Party branches.  This appears to have been the situation in Chiswick.  In Hounslow there was only an ILP branch until 1914 when the Hounslow South Labour Party was formed after Tom Goode stood as a TU and Socialist candidate in 1913.  Labour began to win seats in Heston & Isleworth after World War I.  In 1919 Ernest Beldam won Hounslow North and three more seats were won in 1920 including Labour’s first Isleworth Councillor – Sidney Bartholomew in Isleworth North.  The Isleworth Labour Party had been formed at a meeting in Haliburton Road in 1915 and by the early 1920s there was an active Labour Party branch in Heston.    1918 was the first year when Labour put up Parliamentary candidates in this part of Middlesex.  W. Hayward stood in Brentford and Chiswick and polled 20.2% of the vote.  Labour eventually won the seat in 1945.  Hounslow, Heston and Isleworth were parts of the Twickenham seat and Labour’s first parliamentary candidate was the Rev Humphrey Chalmers who polled only 16.8% of the vote.  In 1945 the constituency was divided and Bill Williams won the Heston & Isleworth seat for Labour.     In 1906 the party, nationally and locally, was a coalition of Trade Unionists and Socialists who believed in a society based upon equality and collectivism.  The Labour Party has changed since then.  Now the emphasis is on individualism and the party is distancing itself from the Trade Union movement.  I wonder what future historians will make of New Labour and the way the party has moved away from its traditional values. Sources:  Story of a Party – The Story of the Labour Movement in Heston & Isleworth.  Walter Brown. 1950The ChiswickTimes.  The Chiswick Gazette.  The Middlesex Chronicle.

Alan Sheerins ● 6836d

Andrew,Thanks for the suggestions. All seem good. When I worked for LBH, Council had a policy that all new developments roads etc had to have a historical link.The exemption was Steve Biko way.

Neil Chippendale ● 6837d

Golden Mile always brings to mind Blackpool to me - not in a good way either.

Dan Evans ● 6837d