Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney | Page 8

walls enclose three acres of land, including site.
St. Joseph's School for pauper children is adjacent to the practising-school, on the north side. This building is certified for 180 children, who are received from the workhouse, etc. They enter at the age of three years, and leave at sixteen for situations. It was founded and is managed by the Daughters of the Cross, and was established in its present quarters September 19, 1892. Faulkner says of Brook Green, "Here is a Roman Catholic Chapel and School called the Arke," so that this part of Hammersmith has long been connected with the Catholics.
In the Blythe Road, No. 79, is a fine old house with an imposing portico, which now overlooks a dingy yard. This is Blythe House, "reported to have been haunted, and many strange stories were reported of ghosts and apparitions having been seen here; but it turned out at last that a gang of smugglers had taken up their residence in it." It was once used as a school, and later on as a reformatory. It is now in the possession of the Swan Laundry Company.
In Blythe Road there is a small mission church called Christ Church. In Shepherd's Bush Road, at the corner of Netherwood Road, is West Kensington Park Chapel of the Wesleyan Methodists. Shepherd's Bush and many of the adjoining roads are thickly lined with bushy young plane-trees. St. Simon's Church, in Minford Gardens, is an ugly red-brick building with ornamental facings of red brick, and a high steeple of the same materials. It was built in 1879. St. Matthew's, in Sinclair Road, is very similar, but has a bell-gable instead of a steeple. The foundation-stone was laid 1870. In Ceylon Road there is a Board school. Facing Addison Road Station is the well-known place of entertainment called Olympia, with walls of red brick and stone and a semicircular glass roof. It contains the largest covered arena in London.
Returning once more to the Broadway, we traverse King Street, which is the High Street of Hammersmith. It is very narrow, and, further, blocked by costers' barrows, so that on Saturday nights it is hard work to get through it at all. The pressure is increased by the electric trams, which run on a single set of rails to the Broadway. In King Street is the Hammersmith Theatre of Varieties, the West End Lecture-Hall, and the West End Chapel, held by the Baptists. It stands on the site of an older chapel, which was first used for services of the Church of England, and was acquired by the Baptists in 1793. The old tombstones standing round the present building are memorials of the former burial-ground. At the west end of King Street is an entrance to Ravenscourt Park, acquired by the L.C.C. in 1888-90. The grounds cover between thirty and forty acres, and are well laid out in flower-beds, etc., at the southern end. The Ravenscourt Park Railway-station is on the east side, and the arched railway-bridge crosses the southern end of the park. A beautiful avenue of fine old elms leads to the Public Library, which is at the north end in what was once the old manor-house.
All this part of Hammersmith was formerly included in the Manor of Pallenswick or Paddingswick. Faulkner says this manor is situated "at Pallengswick or Turnham Green, and extends to the western road." The first record of it is at the end of Edward III.'s reign, when it was granted to Alice Perrers or Pierce, who was one of the King's favourites. She afterwards married Lord Windsor, a Baron, and Lieutenant of Ireland. Report has also declared that King Edward used the manor-house as a hunting-seat, and his arms, richly carved in wood, stood in a large upper room until a few years before 1813. But the house itself cannot have been very ancient then, for Lysons says it had only recently been rebuilt at the date he wrote--namely, 1795. The influence of Alice Perrers over the King was resented by his courtiers, who procured her banishment when he died in 1378. After her marriage, however, King Richard II. granted the manor to her husband.
There is a gap in the records of the manor subsequently until John Payne died, leaving it to his son William in 1572. This was the "William Payne of Pallenswick, Esq.," who placed a monument in Fulham Church to the memory of himself and his wife before his own death, and who left an island called Makenshawe "to the use of the poor of this parish on the Hammersmith side." This bequest is otherwise described as being part of an island or twig-ait called Mattingshawe, situated in the parish of Richmond in the county of Surrey. At the time the bequest was left the rent-charge on the island