A Day Out at Thameside Chiswick

A small but impressive Festival of Music starts this week. The ancient Thameside village of Chiswick hosts its biennial 'Grove Park Music Festival' from 5 - 16 June. The event is the inspired love child of soprano Julia Kennard and her husband bass singer Michael George who live here. Fortified by the success of their first Festival in the millenium year and they have put together an eclectic programme for this Jubilee Year which will certainly entice me up the Thames to Chiswick for a musical evening. I particularly like the sound of An Evening with Queen Victoria, (Sunday 9 June), with Actress Prunella Scales, Tenor Ian Partridge and Pianist Richard Burnett bringing the Queen to life in an evening of theatrical and musical entertainment. The Festival will also give me a chance to hear the renowned young Rodolfus Choir under Ralf Allwood, their acclaimed choral conductor and Director of Music.

One of the charms of Chiswick is that it lies on the river; a pleasant journey up the Thames by riverbus service which plies a regular service from Westminster pier all the way up-river to Hampton Court Palace. The parish church, venue of some of the Festival concerts, is by the waterside, its 15th century tower dominating the Thames skyline.

Artists Hogarth, famous for his 18th century London scenes of the 18th century, and Whistler are buried here, as may be the decapitated remains of Thomas Cromwell, who was disinterred from Westminster Abbey and hung at the Tyburn gibbet, (now Marble Arch), following the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. His daughters Lady Fauconberg and Lady Francis Russell, worshipped and were buried in a vault here together with a third shorter coffin. We unfortunately shall never know whether Cromwell was finally brought to rest here with his daughters as the vault was later filled and sealed with concrete.

I propose to make a full day of my Festival visit. I shall enjoy the passage upstream on the riverbus service from Westminster Pier in the morning. Disembarking at the Chiswick Pier, I shall first wend my way to the famous waterside pub the Bell & Crown at Strand on the Green for a spot of lunch and a pint of Fuller's locally brewed beer on the patio overlooking the river. The pub is proud of its unsalubrious past when smugglers landed contraband at its steps in the days when the river was London's main thoroughfare. The river is tidal here so they needed to know their water lore as the Thames drops several metres at low tide to reveal its muddy bed. Today the customers come for the food, wine and quality real ales, duty paid of course.

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