Bedford Park, London

Development Bedford Park's developer was Jonathan Carr, who in 1875 bought of land just north of Turnham Green Station on the District Line, opened in 1869. The City of London was only 30 minutes away by steam train. File:Bedford House, The Avenue, Bedford Park with John Lindley blue plaque.jpg|Bedford House, The Avenue, is an 18th-century house, lending its name to the estate which grew up around it. File:Melbourne House, South Parade.jpg|Melbourne House, South Parade was one of the few other existing houses on the estate. The area covered by the estate's housing grew, and neighbouring areas were also developed. Estate plan File:Maurice B. Adams map of Bedford Park 1897.jpg|The architect Maurice Bingham Adams's map of Bedford Park, 1897 File:Focus of Bedford Park Garden Suburb.svg|Locations of community buildings. The development was enabled by the arrival of the District Line in 1869. The plan of the estate was of three main roads, namely The Avenue from the north, Woodstock Road from the northeast, and Bath Road from the east, which converged on the focal area with the new church, St Michael and All Angels, the new inn, The Tabard, its next-door neighbour the Bedford Park Stores, and an art school a little further up Bath Road. There was a club house, meant to be the social centre of the estate, on The Avenue, now much modified as the London Buddhist Vihara. The area at the western end of Bath Road was intended to be the centre of a village-like complex. He designed the estate church, St Michael and All Angels, in a similar Queen Anne Revival style to his Bedford Park houses, an unusual choice for an ecclesiastical building, though incorporating a measure of Perpendicular Gothic. The School of Art was designed by Maurice Bingham Adams. The school was meant to provide the estate with a feeling of community. It taught classes such as "Freehand drawing in all its branches, practical Geometry and perspective, pottery and tile painting, design for decorative purposes – as in Wall-papers, Furniture, Metalwork, Stained Glass". The historian Stephen Inwood writes that the plan was to look unplanned, without squares, without formal crescents, and almost without right angles; the bending streets could be village lanes, just as the houses give the illusion of being country cottages. quoted a report from the Daily News to the effect that the estate's roads were made "with cunning carelessness to curve in such wise as never to leave the eye to stare at nothing... [The streets] form a succession of views as if the architect had taken a hint from Nature". The eclectic approach is well seen in the estate church of St Michael and All Angels, where Shaw has incorporated Arts & Crafts, Georgian, medieval, Tudor, and Wren styles. Promotion by Frederick Hamilton Jackson, c. 1882 Carr commissioned the artist F. Hamilton Jackson to create a set of nine lithographs to publicise his Bedford Park development, including one, picturing St Michael and All Angels church, described as iconic, claiming that the suburb was "the healthiest place in the world". The development was promoted to people who had a moderate income but who had "aesthetic sensibilities". The promotion mentioned "A Garden and a Bath Room with Hot and Cold water to every house, whatever its size", and "A Kindergarten and good Cheap Day Schools on the Estate, and a School of Art. Also Church, Club (for Ladies & Gentlemen), Stores, 'The Tabard Inn', Tennis Courts, &c." == Impact ==

Fashion Living in Bedford Park, with its church, parish hall, club, shops, pub and school of art, became the height of fashion in the 1880s. W. B. Yeats, the actor William Terriss, the actress Florence Farr, the playwright Arthur Wing Pinero and painters including Camille Pissarro lived here. The artist Edmund Blair Leighton, too, was one of the first residents of Bedford Park, first in Queen Anne's Grove by 1881 and then Priory Road (now Priory Avenue) until 1922. The suburb is Saffron Park in G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and Biggleswick in John Buchan's Mr Standfast. The Man Who Was Thursday begins: Fletcher wrote that Chesterton knew the suburb well, having met his future wife Frances Blogg there; his depiction of it was "somewhat fantastic, somewhat inaccurate", as he liked to dramatise people, but his depiction was one of many, portraying Bedford Park as "Arcadian, Aesthetic, Bohemian; as ... a romantic Socialist Co-operative". Its residents were "artists, poets, academics, journalists, actors" and educated professionals, all self-conscious and articulate. Although it was not built in the co-operative manner like some later developments (Brentham Garden Suburb, Hampstead Garden Suburb), it created a model that was emulated not just by the Garden city movement, but by suburban developments around the world. Sir John Betjeman called Bedford Park "the most significant suburb built in the last century, probably in the western world". Herman Muthesius, the German author of the 1904 book The English House, commented that "It signifies neither more nor less than the starting point of the smaller modern house, which spread from there over the whole country". The historian of London Stephen Inwood writes that it "looks and feels like a true garden suburb, probably the best in London". and "that imaginary museum in the London suburbs where inhabitants tried to break down the limits between art and life by time-travelling in the historically self-conscious architecture of their homes". a parody of a famous couplet from J. W. Burgon's 1845 poem Petra about an ancient Middle Eastern city: "Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city half as old as time". 1882. The house belonged to Carr, and was later demolished by developers. Shaw designed it for him in 1878; it had 16 rooms, and its grounds were large enough to include both tennis and badminton courts. It served as St Catherine's Convent from 1908 to 1933, when it was replaced by St Catherine's Court. The Bedford Park Society, a registered charity, was formed in 1963 Their concerns were united by the demolition of another Shaw house, The Bramptons on Bedford Road, to make way for a flat-roofed old people's home. The poet John Betjeman, a founder of the Victorian Society, became its first patron. A breakthrough for the society came in 1967 when 356 of Bedford Park's houses were individually Grade II listed; this unprecedented move was seen to be necessary to protect the suburb, as conservation areas did not then exist in Britain. Notable residents , c. 1879,The Orchard / Bedford Road Before the estate was developed, John Lindley (1799–1865), botanist, lived at Bedford House, The Avenue, marked with a blue plaque. ; Born in the 19th century • Hubert Willis (1862–1933), silent film actor, lived at 39 Marlborough Crescent. • W. B. Yeats (1865–1939), poet, and his brother Jack Butler Yeats lived at 3 Blenheim Road, marked with a Bedford Park Society plaque. • Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867–1962), Fitzwilliam Museum curator, arts collector, lived at 51 Woodstock Road, 5 Priory Gardens, and 3 Fairfax Road. • Harold Hume Piffard (1867–1939), artist, illustrator, and early aviator, lived at 18 Addison Road. • Cecil Aldin (1870–1935), animal painter, lived at 47 Priory Avenue (then numbered 41). ; Born in the 20th century • Jo Grimond (1913–1993), Liberal politician, lived at 24 Priory Avenue. • Blake Butler (1924–1981), actor, lived at 33 Bath Road. • Richard Briers (1934–2013), sitcom actor, lived and died at 6 The Orchard. • Fenja Anderson (1941–2020) of 33 Abinger Road painted four watercolours of Bedford Park streets; these now hang in St Michael and All Angels Church. ==References==