John and I both woke up early this morning, and we set out to find some coffee. This gave us an excuse to wander about the neighborhood. Brentford has a reputation today as being a bit of a down-at-the-heels neighborhood in an unfashionable borough. This is certainly an understandable response to a stroll down Brentford High Street or a visit to the Beehive pub, but there are a number of interesting and sometimes quite affluent neighborhoods here, and there is an astonishing amount of history.
Brentford is situated on towards the eastern end of the Borough of Hounslow when the River Brent meets the River Thames. Brentford is a Celtic word and it means “a place where the River Brent can be crossed.” Yet that definition is rather misleading as the Brent is a fairly small tributary of the Thames and it could be far more easily crossed a little further north in Hanwell. So what was fordable here was not the Brent so as the Thames. Brentford was the first spot, about 80 miles west of the open sea, where the Thames could be forded by cattle or horses. And this is quite historically important. Brentford is the most likely spot for the battle between Julius Caesar and the British tribal king Cassivellaunus in 54 BC. A bit of history here: after conquering Gaul, Caesar demanded the submission of the British tribes. Not surprisingly, they refused and Roman legions invaded Britain, landing at the mouth of the Thames and moving west along the south side of the river. At Brentford, Caesar moved his forces successfully across the Thames even though the north side of the river was apparently well-protected with sharp oak stakes. The British tribal forces were beaten by the better-armed Roman legions, and Cassivellaunus fled. This woodcut image is how a nineteenth century illustrator imaged the battle.
Cassivellaunus's location was later disclosed to Caesar by rival British tribes and he surrendered to the Roman leader. Although many have questioned Caesar’s accounts of his own successes, this one appears to be fairly accurate. When the Brentford Dock, right by Vicki and Jerry’s house, was built in the middle of the nineteenth century, the ancient remnants of the sharp oak stakes were unearthed.
Another important battle was fought here in 1016, this one with a better outcome for the English. Canute, the Danish King, invaded Britain, one of many Norse incursions into the British Isles, and his forces were repelled here at Brentford by the English King Edmond Ironside. This was one of Edmond’s few victories, and what was left of his kingdom fell into Danish control after his death. Ultimately the Danish victory was somewhat short-lived as the Norman would invade England and take control of the country in 1066.
Oddly enough, Brentford is not mentioned in the Domesday book though nearby Hanwell to the north is. Possibly this area was considered part of Hanwell at the time, and the land is that part of Middlesex County was owned by the monks of Westminster Abbey. The first known building in Brentford was the establishment of Saint Lawrence’s church in the twelfth century. It is not easy to get a good picture of this building, so I took this one from Wikipedia (consider that attribution).
The stone tower dates from the 15th century, while the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1764 in brick. The parish was closed by the Diocese of London in 1959, and the building has been vacant ever since. In the redevelopment of the high street planned by an Irish firm, this building will be saved but converted into something, possibly a fitness center. Given the historical significance of the spot, it seems like it deserves more than that even if it is an ugly building.
Other than a minor battle in the Civil War, not much happened in Brentford until the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Grand Union Canal was built to link Birmingham and other Midland industrial centers with the port city of London. Portions of the River Brent were incorporated into the canal route, and the Thames was dredged at this time to make it deeper and more accessible to shipping. In the middle of the century, a train line was built to link the Brentford Docks with the Great Western Railway. Like much of Middlesex County, Brentford changed from a fairly bucolic farming area to a largely urban and somewhat industrial one. Much of the work was to build the railways and canals was done by Irish laborers, and a good bit of cheap housing was built for them. The area was largely spared the devastation of the Blitz, though several bombs were dropped on the docks just south of Brentford High Street.
Today, Brentford is being slowly changed into a high-end residential neighborhood. The factories that once lined the Great West Road on the north of Brentford have now been replaced with skyscrapers housing major firms like GlaxoSmithKline and Sky. The Hounslow Council has approved demolishing most of the structures between Brentford High Street and the Thames for a mixed commercial and residential use. I suspect we will see the same kind of tall apartment building with a river view here that now line much of the rest of the Thames. The old canal is now becoming a natural area, and as two centuries of industrial contamination is clean up, fish and birds are now returning to the area as the following canal-side plaque describes.
But enough history, even if it is one of my obsessions. Our big adventure for the day was a trip to Bristol to see Zöe and her husband Arden. Zöe and Sandra, as you may recall from previous entries, were our two new best friends on the barge trip. Zöe helped us arrange our plane tickets to London, and invited us, probably not expecting we would accept, to visit her in her hometown of Bristol. But she was delighted when we let her know a couple days ago that we were coming out for lunch and some sightseeing.
With some minor problems, we took the train from Paddington Station. While not exactly a bullet train, the express from London toward Bristol made remarkably good time getting us nearly from one side of the country to the other in about two hours. We disembarked at Bristol Temple Meads Station. Zöe met us there and introduced us to Arden.
Zöe explained that the neo-Gothic station was the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the man responsible for the Great Western Railroad itself. While I had never heard of Brunel, I learned later, thanks, of course, to the internet, that he is absolutely revered in the United Kingdom and placed second, ahead of William Shakespeare, in a BBC poll of the 100 greatest Britons. I will grant Brunel’s engineering genius, but the station is as ugly as anything build during the nineteenth century as far as I am concerned.
Zöe is an indefatigable booster of her hometown, and I like that about her. Britons today generally lack that sense of what Italians call “campanilismo,” the enthusiastic love of where you were born and raised. But such reverence for your roots, without that absurd sense of chauvinism one sometimes finds along the Pacific coast, is the heart of a truly authentic local culture. Zöe pointed out to us that one of the many creative people who has made Bristol their home is Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit. To honor his contributions, Bristol has placed many statues of the laconic inventor and his faithful dog around the city. Different individuals and companies have decorated them. We found one just as we entered the harbor area looking for lunch.
We had a lovely tapas lunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. We could see a reproduction from there of the ship that John Cabot sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland. Cabot, whose real name was Giovanni Caboto, was a Venetian navigatorand explorer whose 1497 discovery of the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England was the first European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse expeditions of the eleventh century.
After dropping off Arden, an talented saxophonist for a rehearsal, we went on to the look at some of the landmarks of the city. Bristol was very badly damaged during the Second World War because it was the home of the the Rolls Royce aircraft factories, and Germany was intent on destroying Britain’s industrial capabilities. Many important buildings were destroyed in the bombing, but quite a number survived. One of them is the church of Saint Mary Redcliffe, a building Queen Elizabeth I once called "the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England.” And who am I to disagree with the Virgin Queen herself? It is a large parish church, almost as large as some cathedrals, and it is a magnificent example of perpendicular gothic. Take, for example, the ceiling of the bell tower.
The nave is astonishingly lovely.
The stained glass windows, unfortunately, we destroyed during the Civil War by Cromwell’s forces, and the tile on the floor is an unfortunate bit of Victorian “restoration.” Otherwise, though, it is just about perfect.
Since it is a landmark, Saint Mary needed its own Gromit statue as well.
After our visit to the church, we were all ready for some ice cream. Zöe is an ice cream connoisseur. She took us to a place down the street from the University of Bristol which had some pretty cool flavors. John tried Charcoal Vanilla. He said tasted just like regular vanilla, but it did look like something that they use to patch potholes. Arden joined us as we were eating. Apparently it was a really short rehearsal. They took us over to see one of the first pieces done by the guerrilla artist called Banksy.
Zoe was clear that she had a pretty good idea who Banksy is and that he was a resident of Bristol. Checking this out a little more online, I discovered that she is probably right about that, and that a local artist named Robin Gunningham is most frequently identified as Bristol. Cunningham was a student at the cathedral school here. And speaking of the cathedral, that was our next stop.
Bristol was not one of the medieval cathedral cities, and the building that is today Bristol Cathedral was an Augustinian abbey until the Reformation. The building was still unfinished at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries until King Henry VIII, and the nave of the church was not built until the middle of the nineteenth century. The most historically important section of the church is the old chapter hall which dates from the Norman Era. Somehow, I did not get pictures of this. A few snapshots, though, of the choir
and some details of the stone work.
Zöe and Arden invited us to see their house. It is modern and not dissimilar to Vicki and Jerry’s house. They have the most darling dog, a poodle and spaniel mix. She’s about nine, but zipped about like she was barely two.
They also have a horse in the back yard.
Not a real one, obviously. We had some coffee and chatted a bit. But it was finally time for us to try to catch the train back to London in order to try to see if we could get some last minute theater tickets. They drove us back to Bristol Temple Meads Station. Along the way, we stopped to admire Brunel’s famed bridge over the Avon River. It looked pretty enough from where we all posed,
but it was only later when I did a bit of research on it that I finally understood why it was a big deal. This is the angle I wished I had seen the bridge from.
This bridge predates the Brooklyn Bridge by about a decade.
The trip back to London was pretty crowded at first. We did not get a seat until after a large number of passengers disembarked at Bath and even then we did not have seats together until near Reading. Our efforts to get theater tickets for the night were ultimately fruitless, but we did get tickets to the the Tina Turner musical for July 4.
