Today many TV & media folk live happily within its borders and its laid back charm seems to be able to absorb the A4/M4 and the excitements of Chiswick High Road, but then it has its share of open land and, of course, a long stretch of the Thames. It's just a pity that on several days of the week you can watch the planes queue up for Heathrow - and that's without Terminal 5.
Cutting a double swathe through W4 are Chiswick High Road (A315), now seamlessley blended with King Street in Hammersmith, and the A4, which enters Chiswick as the Great West Road from Hammersmith to the east and leaves as the M4, a road which goes all the way to Carmarthen in west Wales.
At the western end of the A4 is Chiswick roundabout, and at the eastern is Hogarth roundabout, supposedly the busiest in the world (the same is said of Marble Arch).
Here we find Chiswick's concession to heavy industry, the Axis Business Centre and the vast Fullers' brewery, which has been on this site for some three centuries and whose ale is among the best in London. London Pride, ESB and Chiswick are their staple bitters.
Generally speaking, the southern part of W4 is undoubtedly the more exclusive, happy to let the world fly by on the two main roads to the north. North of these two are Acton Green and the planned garden suburb of Bedford Park (an exclusive exception to all generalizations) and like the hamlets next door -Turnham Green, Strand-on-the -Green and Gunnersbury - firmly within the Chiswickian sphere of influence.
A special delight in W4 is the riverside walk, open to all and sundry from Kew Bridge to Grove Park Road and from Barnes Bridge to Hammersmith, but the real gem here are the grounds of Chiswick House.
A lot of restoration went on here in the Nineties, even to the extent of getting the grotto cascade, which broke down shortly after it was built, in full working order. The grounds are a real joy and a great place to explore, with Doric and Ionic columnns, obelisks and sphinxes, follies and temples, eyecatchers and glasshouses, lakes and bridges and the wonderful symmetrical villa itself.
HousingThis is the original high street for the original Chiswick as it wends on down to the river. Now seemingly crushed by the roundabout and the great and long-established Fullers' brewery, it has resisted wholesale development and appears as an odd pantechnicon of houses and their additions from the 17th century to the 20th.
At its river end it turns into Chiswick Mall, a road of superb Georgian houses, where some properties have gardens across the road and abutting on to the river, facing Chiswick Eyot. There are some unique and fantastic properties here, with a few recent additions in the form of Eyot Green (1960), Millers Court (70s) and Chiswick Wharf (90s).
Upstream, and next to the Mall, is W4's greatest redevelopment of recent times. Set along Pumping Station Road and Corney Reach, this vast industrial site became home to all manner of crescents, wrought ironwork, electronic gates and a great central piazza.
Developed by McAlpine and Persimmon Homes, they even built a pier with access for all and a riverside pathway that links the Mall to Duke's Meadows. Incongruously, council flats now form the western border of this development.
Duke's Meadows look inviting enough on the map but, except for the Riverside Recreation Ground on their eastern edge, the Meadows are not open to the public, forming as they do the sports grounds for the Civil Service. The river path, however, is open, until you get to Barnes Bridge, where you can elect to take either the footbridge to Barnes or the path that shadows the railway and takes you to Chiswick station.
The west side of this southern end of W4 is as exclusive as the Mall. This quiet area changed between the wars with the creation of Chiswick Bridge and Great Chertsey Road in 1933; the Alexandra Gardens estate of flats along the roadside also date from this time.
We are in Grove Park here, a planned wealthy development by the Duke of Devonshire, although it is twentieth century developments that deny the rest of us the chance to walk by the river. The seventies' Chiswick Quay surrounds a tidal marina and further upstream are Thames Village (1955) and Chiswick Staithe (1964). The inter-war Hartington Court breaks this mould with its mansion blocks.
Grove Park remains immensely popular, the host to many architectural delights, with mullions, great gables and stone gateposts to match the buildings. There are few flats in this part of W4, everywhere seems tree-lined and multi-occupancy is rare.
Moving upstream we come to the ancient hamlet of Strand on the Green, once a fishing village, then a favoured bolthole for artists and now a tourist trap with its four riverside pubs. Opposite one of them, the City Barge, is Oliver's Island.
Supposedly named after Cromwell - whose daughter Mary lived in the area - the barging posts have gone, good news for the herons and cormorants who nest here. Like the Mall, although not as frequent, the Strand can flood.
The houses here can be small terraces but this in no way dents their popularity. This conservation area has a sense of continuity with its Arts & Crafts terraces and lack of flats. There have been a few modern developments here, such as the demolition of a perfume factory for town houses on Thames Road, but they are few and tasteful. By the bridge that separates the Strand from Brentford there is Rivers House, once Kew Bridge House and now an office-to-dwelling conversion of 61 flats.
The air of tranquility is abruptly broken here by the M4, an upgrade of the 1925 Great West Road. Here is the Chiswick roundabout and the Chiswick flyover, a manic place and one to be avoided whenever possible.
We are in Gunnersbury here, and in the shadow of the flyover are derelict industrial sites making way for business parks. Old BBC studios are now the Power Road work unit studios and the old London Transport depot next door is now the Richard Rogers-designed Chiswick Business Park, designed to cope with 7,000 workers with accompanying shops and a health club.
Move east back onto Chiswick High Road and we come within reach of the modern centre of Chiswick. North of the High Road there's open territory in the form of Acton Green, Acton Green Common, Chiswick Common and, most visible of all thanks to its proximity to the High Road, Turnham Green.
Several mansion blocks surround the Green on the south and west sides, notably Arlington Park Mansions and the complex of Watchfield Court, by the old Town Hall, dating from the Thirties. The galaxy of retailers here are led by the 24-hour Sainsbury's.
The High Road area itself has seen a few new developments in recent times, such as 51 flats in an old military depot on Heathfield Terrace, and some new blocks have appeared on the High Road. North from here to Chiswick Common are more parades of workmen's cottages, and beyond the common we find ourselves in Acton Green to the north-west and Bedford Park to the north-east.
Bedford Park was London's first garden suburb, begun in 1875. Brainchild of Johnathan Carr, his inability to get along with his chosen architects (the first two, E. Godwin and Norman Shaw, were both sacked) has left a legacy of some 35 house types.
Designed as a middle-class commuting village - placed where it is to take advantage of the recently arrived Turnham Green station - there are 400 buildings here, mostly Grade II protected and with a sole twentieth century block of flats, St. Catherine's Court, dating from 1933.
Its irregular layout was to protect existing trees in the area, and the range of housing is impressive, from 3 bed cottages to 7 bed detached houses. The Park has kept a self-contained air throughout its history, somewhat inward-looking and with a reputation for community and people moving within its borders. They do say the gardens are small here, but it's only because the houses feel so big.
To the west is Acton Green, cut off from its Acton namesakes by the railway, which hems in this area and forces it to look to Chiswick High Road. Some unscrupulous folk are trying to rename it Chiswick Park (after the tube station). There is a more evolutionary air here than Bedford Park, with infilling up to the inter-war period, and the mix is greater.
Grand houses rub shoulders with terraces split into flats, and at its northern end is a 1999 warehouse conversion of 18 flats. There are refurbished or rebuilt mews houses at Chapter Close, Steele Road and Amblemede Court, and ex-council flats on the northern side of the Green itself are a common way for first-time buyers to get a foothold in W4.
Sandwiched between the High Road and the A4 to the south is the Glebe Estate of workmen's terraces whose pub, the Boltons, was converted into flats in 1996. South of the A4, and to the west of Chiswick House grounds, are some immense houses, now within a conservation area created in 1977.
TransportThe big sticking point over public transport has been and remains the campaign to get the Piccadilly line to stop at Turnham Green tube. Although there are four tube stations in W4 - Turnham, Stamford Brook, Gunnersbury (to Richmond) and Chiswick Park (to Ealing Broadway), they deal only with the District Line.
All but Gunnersbury have the Piccadilly running past their platforms and only Turnham Green has a very limited access to it. The battle between residents and London Transport is an old one, the latter claiming it would cost £30m to effect a permanent transition.
There are two train lines here, with the North London/Silverlink passing through Gunnersbury and South Acton (at Acton Green) and Chiswick and Kew Bridge for Clapham Junction and Waterloo. Buses try their best to get up and down Chiswick High Road, or Bath Road for Shepherds Bush and Acton Lane for Acton.
Steve Roberts.
© Find A Property 2000-2007
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