It has been suggested that the site here of the Chiswick parish church, as of others, is where there was a Romano-British chapel. The proposition is that when a new Roman province was being surveyed the practice was to create squares at the corners of which small open structures were constructed as shrines. Bishop Augustine was instructed by the Pope in 601 A.D. that it was the idols in the chapels that should be destroyed and not the chapels. There are records at St Pauls of the presence of Church furniture in 1252. The tower was built under the direction of the vicar William Bordall between 1416 and 1435 at a time when the king Henry VI frequented the neighbourhood. There were a variety of additions over the centuries paid for by the parishioners subscriptions and collections. That building other than the tower was demolished in 1882 and a new church to much the same plan rebuilt between 1882-4. This was done under the direction of the architect J.L. Pearson. The local historian Warwick Draper is not impressed.

O/S Co-ords:2158.7771
Source(s):

Chiswick

Rural Walks around Richmond