Chiswick & It's History

With big Victorian family terrace houses, fine Arts and Crafts homes, parkland, Thames walks and a quick motorway exit to the West, the prosperous west London suburb of Chiswick is a popular spot for settling down — and for partying, too.

Chiswick loves a festival. Last year’s Bedford Park Festival was opened by local celebrities — TV’s Jeremy Vine, Rageh Omaar and Sarah Greene, plus singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor and actress Phyllis Logan.

This year the two-week festival begins on the weekend of June 9-10 with the Green Days Fête and Craft Fair on the green opposite Turnham Green station.

September is the busiest festival month, with Tidefest, a celebration of the Thames at Strand on the Green; the Devonshire Road Street Party, hosted each year by the independent shops that line the street; the London Mela in Gunnersbury Park, the country’s largest celebration of South Asian culture, and the Chiswick Book Festival. Christmas holidays bring the Magic Lantern Festival in the grounds of Chiswick House.

Helping Chiswick residents to keep abreast of all this activity are two brilliant community websites — Chiswick W4 and The Chiswick Calendar, which also runs the Chiswick Club Card offering discounts of up to 20 per cent in local shops.

The hot local topic is Transport for London’s proposals for Cycle Superhighway 9, running all the way from Olympia to Brentford with a two-way segregated cycle lane along the south side of Chiswick High Road. It has divided the community with Jeremy Vine coming out in favour but many local businesses along the route opposed.

Local café the Outsider Tart even asks customers to “stick it to TfL” with thumbs-down stickers available to attach to a plan of the scheme in the café’s window.

Transport

Chiswick is exceptionally well connected, being close to the South Circular and the North Circular roads, the M3, the M4 and the A40.

Spread out along the District line, Chiswick is served by Tube stations at Ravenscourt Park, Stamford Brook and Turnham Green on the Richmond and Ealing Broadway branches. Gunnersbury is also on the District line but only the Richmond branch.

Chiswick Park is also on the District line but the Ealing Broadway branch only. Additionally, Turnham Green is on the Piccadilly line.

There are trains from Chiswick station to Waterloo, which take 27 minutes, via Clapham Junction and Vauxhall.

All stations with the exception of Chiswick Park, Gunnersbury and Chiswick are in Zone 2 with an annual travelcard to Zone 1 costing £1,364. The others are in Zone 3 and an annual travelcard costs £1,600.

Council

Most of Chiswick is in Labour-controlled Hounslow, where Band D council tax for 2018/2019 is £1,461.99. However, Bedford Park is in Ealing, also Labour controlled, where Band D council tax for 2018/2019 is 1,440.12.