Hanworth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the North Norfolk village, see Hanworth, Norfolk
- For the Bracknell suburb, see Hanworth, Bracknell
Hanworth lies to the south east of Feltham in the London Borough of Hounslow and the name is though to come from the Anglo Saxon words “haen” and “worth”, meaning “small homestead”.
During Edward the Confessor’s time, Haworth was held by Ulf, a “huscarl” of the King. Huscarl’s were the bodyguards of Scandinavian Kings and were often the only professional soldiers in the Kingdom. The majority of huscarl’s in the kingdom were killed at Hastings in 1066, and William the Conqueror granted Hanworth to Robert under Roger de Montgomery, the Earl of Arundel. After his death his second son held the land until his death in the Mowbray conspiracy of 1098, after which it passed to his eldest son, Robert de Bellesme, who also rebelled against the Crown in 1102 with the result that the lands were confiscated.
Towards the end of the 14th century the manor was occupied by Sir Nicholas Brembre, who was Mayor of London in 1377 and 1378. Sir Nicholas was hung at Tyburn in 1387 having been accused of treason.
In 1512 Hanworth came to the Crown and Henry VIII, who enjoyed hunting on the heath surrounding the village, gave the manor to Anne Boleyn for life. After her execution, the manor returned to the King who held it until his death in 1547, when it passed to his final wife Katherine Parr, who lived in the house with her stepdaughter Princess Elizabeth. When the princess became Queen she stayed at Hanworth Manor several times, often hunting on the heath.
In 1784 General Sir William Roy, the military draughtsman, measured a base line across Hounslow Heath passing through Hanworth Park. This measurement, which earned the General the Copley medal of the Royal Society, was the origin of all subsequent surveys of the United Kingdom, and still forms the basis of the Ordnance Survey maps today.
In 1797 the manor house was destroyed by fire, leaving only the stable block, which survives today as flats, and the coach house, which was converted into homes. Tudor House was built in 1875 as a replacement for the house that was built in the manor ruins and is today used as flats.
By the end of the 19th century, William Whiteley, of Whiteleys in Bayswater, had bought 200 acres of farmland that had previously been Butts and Glebe farms. Renamed Hanworth Farms, these supplied all the produce for the store’s food hall having been transported daily by horse and cart. Following Whiteleys murder by his illegitimate son in 1907, his legitimate sons sold the farm to a jam manufacturer who operated there until selling the land for new homes in 1933.
In 1917 Hanworth Park was converted into an airfield for Whitehead’s wartime bi-plane factory. Between the wars, the airfield was taken over by a flying club with Hanworth Park House as its clubhouse. The Graf Zeppelin, Germany’s passenger carrying airship, visited the London Air Park, Hanworth, in 1931 and 1932.
After service as a fighter repair works and wartime aircraft factory during World War II, Hanworth’s Air Park closed down in 1946 to avoid air traffic conflicts with the new airport at Heathrow. Feltham District Council purchased the park in 1956. Feltham Airparcs Leisure Centre was built on parkland beside the Uxbridge Road in 1965.
The construction of the M3 feeder road in the 1970s cut Hanworth in two, and in preparation for this, the library was relocated to Mount Corner, opposite the Hanworth Park House icehouse mound, Forge Lane Infants and Junior School was built on the south side of the new road, and the war memorial was relocated.
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