Chiswick Mall

While the area was once populated by fishermen, boatbuilders and other tradespeople associated with the river, since Early Modern times it has increasingly been a place where the wealthy built imposing houses in the riverside setting.

The street has been represented in paintings by artists such as Lucien Pissarro and Walter Bayes; in literature, in Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair; and in film and television, including in the 1955 Breakaway, the 1961 Victim, and the 1992 Howards End.

[2][3] The area was described by John Bowack, writing-master at Westminster School, in 1705; he wrote that "the greatest number of houses are stretched along the waterside from the Lyme kiln near Hammersmith to the Church, in which dwell several small traders, but for the most part fishermen and watermen who make up a considerable part of the inhabitants of this town.

"[4] The street was part of a rural riverside village until late in the nineteenth century; the 1865 Ordnance Survey map[5] shows orchards to the north and west of Old Chiswick.

The naturalist Charles John Cornish, who lived in Orford House on Chiswick Mall,[8] wrote in 1902 that the river bank beside Chiswick Eyot had once been a "famous fishery"; he recorded that "perhaps the last" salmon was caught between the eyot and Putney in 1812, and expressed the hope that if the "purification" of the river continued, the salmon might return.

[1]British History Online states that the prebendal manor house and its medieval neighbours must have been reached by a road that ran eastwards for an unknown distance beside the river from the ferry, and that this eventually became Chiswick Mall.

[1] In 1470, Robert Stillington, Chancellor of England and bishop of Bath and Wells had a "hospice" with a "great chamber" by the Thames in Chiswick.

[12][13] In front of the house is an elegant[13] Grade II* listed screen and wrought iron gate;[13] the gateposts are topped with globes.

It was conveniently placed to attract passing trade from thirsty workers from the Mall's draw dock, where boats unloaded goods including hops for the brewery and rope and timber for the local boatbuilders.

Inside, it has a handsome staircase; its sitting room is equipped with two fireplaces and decorated above with a frieze in plasterwork showing bowls of punch.

[19] Two more three-storey Grade II 18th century houses are those named Thamescote and Magnolia; the latter has glazing bars on its windows, with iron balconettes on its second floor.

Another Grade II house of the same era is the two-story Oak Cottage; it has a stucco facade, a moulded cornice, and pineapple finials on its parapet.

At the centre, they have paired Ionic columns supporting a balcony with a balustrade; to either side, the windows on the first floor are adorned with pilasters and topped with a pediment.

[21] Belcher also designed Greenash in Arts and Crafts style, with tall chimneys and high gables for the local shipbuilder, Sir John Thorneycroft.

It was then used for accommodation for Charing Cross Hospital, and as a film set, including for the BBC TV series Bergerac and Not the Nine O'clock News.

From 1986 it served as Chiswick Lodge, a nursing home for patients with dementia or motor neurone disease; it closed in 2006, and the building was demolished in 2010, to be replaced by housing.

The Tate Gallery holds a 1974 intaglio print on paper by the artist Julian Trevelyan[b] entitled Chiswick Mall.

[26] The Victoria and Albert Museum has a 1940 pen and ink and watercolour painting by the London Group artist Walter Bayes with the same title.

The book begins: While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.

Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the window of that lady’s own drawing-room.Henry Cass's 1955 detective thriller film Breakaway involves a houseboat on Chiswick Mall; the Rolls-Royce driven by 'Duke' Martin (Tom Conway) stops in front of the Mill Bakery, now Miller's Court.

[30][31][32] William Nunez's 2021 The Laureate, about the war poet Robert Graves (Tom Hughes), features a barge on Chiswick Mall.

[33] The scene in the 1992 Merchant Ivory film of E. M. Forster's Howards End, where Margaret (Emma Thompson) and Helen (Helena Bonham Carter) stroll with Henry (Anthony Hopkins) in the evening, was shot on Chiswick Mall.

West end of Chiswick Mall with houseboats in front of St Nicholas Church , at low tide . Woodroffe House and waterfront gardens are on the right.
Sketch map of Chiswick Mall with house names. All positions are approximate.
Engraving of Chiswick Mall from the Thames in 1829, showing (from left to right) St Nicholas Church above the cottages of Fisherman's Place; the slipway leading to Church Street; the Parsonage or Old Vicarage; Bedford/Eynham House; the cross-river ferry; the Red Lion Inn; the Drawdock; Chiswick Lane; and Whittingham's Printing Office. Chiswick Eyot provides the greenery in front of the right hand half of the image. The river flows from left to right.
Panorama of Chiswick Mall from the river at low tide in 2021
The Old Vicarage, seen from St Nicholas churchyard, had been built by 1590. The western end of Chiswick Mall is on the right.
The Grade II* Bedford House and Eynham House, once a single property
Painting Chiswick Mall by Lucien Pissarro , 1922, looking downriver across the waterfront gardens. The grand houses are on the left, Chiswick Eyot on the right.
The first-floor drawing room of the 1920s "Galleon Wing" extension to Said House, with its large curved plate-glass window, was the "home" of the first series of the BBC's The Apprentice in 2005.