It took place on November 13th 1642, near the then village of Turnham Green, at the end of the first campaigning season of the First English Civil War.
The Battle of Turnham Green, by John Hassall, 1642
You could be forgiven for confusing it with the weekday morning commute
It resulted in a standoff between the forces of King Charles I and the much larger Parliamentarian army under the command of the Earl of Sussex. In blocking the Royalist army's way to London, however, the Parliamentarians gained an important strategic victory as the standoff forced Charles and his army to retreat to Oxford for secure winter quarters. Never again during the war would the Royalists come as close to capturing London, and without it they couldn’t win the war.
Well that’s a summary of the battle. There's a painting of the battle later in this post, and the concluding map shows more on the battle lines.
I’ll extend this post by spending a little time on what followed, eventually, on the site (or a sizeable part of it) of the battlefield. As far as I can tell the area was relatively quiet for the next two hundred and thirty years or so, only to be disturbed by building work courtesy of the District Railway Company, which resulted in Chiswick Park tube station, and which has occupied part of the site of the battlefield for roughly the last one hundred and fifty years.
The station was opened on July 1st 1879 by the District Railway, (now the District line), on its extension from Turnham Green to Ealing Broadway, and named Acton Green after the adjacent Acton Green Common to the east. In 1887 it was renamed Chiswick Park and Acton Green, (presumably Chiswick residents had the hump).
Following the electrification of the DR's tracks north of Acton Town in 1903, services between Acton Town and central London were electrified on July 1st 1905. In 1910 the station was given its present name.
Between 1931 and 1932 it was rebuilt in preparation for the western extension of the Piccadilly line from Hammersmith. The reconstruction was required to enable the addition of two fast tracks for those services to be located between the District line's stopping service tracks. Although the Piccadilly line has never served the station, its trains run non-stop through the station on those centre tracks.
The new, (current), station was designed by Charles Holden in a modern European style using brick, reinforced concrete and glass. Holden's design was inspired by Alfred Grenander’s underground station Krumme Lanke in Berlin. Similar to the station at Arnos Grove that Holden designed for the eastern Piccadilly line extension, Chiswick Park station features a tall semi-circular ticket hall adjacent to the embankment carrying the tracks. Externally the brick walls of the ticket hall are punctuated with panels of clerestory windows, and the structure is capped with a flat concrete slab roof which abuts the cantilevered concrete canopy of the westbound platform. A similar canopy shelters the eastbound platform accessed through the embankment. To make the it more visible from Chiswick High Road the station was also provided with a square brick tower surmounted by the UNDERGROUND roundel and the station's name.
It has been a Grade II listed building since February 18th 1987.
Much as I like Chiswick Park station, it could do with a lick of paint. In fact “Neglected London Underground Stations” would be an interesting study. Chiswick’s other two stations, Turnham Green and Stamford Brook, are also - how can I put it politely - tired. I remember clearly about 38 years ago, when I first moved to the area, how grim, (dirty, damp, poorly lit and unloved), my nearby station Stamford Brook was. It was quite a shock for me to see recently that it’s barely changed from that sad state. And yet funding seems to know no bounds when it comes to some of the newer stations, (Westminster and Waterloo on the Jubilee line, for example).
The original station, 1879 to 1930
The current station, since 1931
March 2024 update: Pre-dating this original post there were plans for Turnham Green to be made a permanent stop on the Piccadilly line once the line had been upgraded. Work was scheduled to commence in 2019 with the introduction of the first new train in 2022. The project has shelved indefinitely, however, due to funding and the Covid pandemic.
Red arrow: Chiswick Park station
Blue arrow: Turnham Green station
And the vertical red and blues lines tell us more about The Battle of Turnham Green …
Red line: The Royalists, which started just south of today's Chiswick Park station, extending southwards to the modern Great West Road.
Blue line: The Parliamentary forces were deployed in a line running south from the location of the present-day Turnham Green station to the grounds of Chiswick House, which had been built in c. 1610 (the current house was built in the 1720s on the same site).
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