Park of the week

215. Warwick Dene

Warwick Dene is a woodland garden and conservation area on the edge of Ealing Common. It was the result of a land swap between Ealing Council and the Rothschild family, who lived at Gunnersbury and owned most of the land between Ealing Common and Acton Town Station. They developed this for housing and, in 1895, Leopold de Rothschild exchanged the land for a strip near Ealing Common station, to provide a road. He also donated land for the All Saints Church and contributed funds to the Victoria Hall. 

It took four years for the park to be completed as workmen were only assigned to it when they had no other Council work to do. Once finished, it was greatly appreciated, and one resident wrote to a newspaper, in 1927, of “the Woodland Garden, on the east side of Warwick Dene, where one revels in the sunlight giving the supremist touch of beauty to nature’s beautiful handiwork. It was originally a “Rest Garden for the Aged and Blind and Those Requiring Rest”, two of which apply to me. A play area was introduced in 2011, decorated with carved wooden acorns. 

The garden is enclosed by railings, with a metal arch forming a gateway, inscribed with ‘Frasers Patent: Disinfecting Apparatus’. The apparatus referred to on the arch was a contraption for disinfecting clothes and other objects, often used in hospitals and workhouses. It became popular in the 1870s as a result of an increase in the number of smallpox cases. The arch may have come from the Royal India Asylum which stood where All Saints Church used to be, founded in 1870 by the East India Company for employees returning from India with mental health problems. The apparatus was a type of large oven, and what’s now the gateway was part of the door.

Writing over 100 years ago, the borough architect and surveyor mentioned several features that are in the garden today: cedar, lime and horse chestnut trees, and shrubs. And an open gateway bearing the words “Fraser’s Patent Disinfecting Apparatus”.

Judith Field

Warwick Dene Garden, Warwick Dene, London W5 3XA