The London Daily Newsletter Monday 26 June

Ravenscourt Park
Ravenscourt Park is a public park and garden located in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

The origins of Ravenscourt Park lie in the medieval manor and estate of Palingswick Manor on this site and first recorded in the 12th century. In the 13th century, the manor house was surrounded by a moat fed by the Stamford Brook, and the lake in the centre of the park is a remnant of that original moat. The house was rebuilt in 1650 and in 1747 it was sold to Thomas Corbett who named it Ravenscourt, probably derived from the raven in his coat of arms, which was itself a pun on his name since ’corbeau’ is French for raven. In 1812 the Ravenscourt estate was bought by George Scott, a builder/philanthropist who developed nearby St Peter’s Square. Scott employed landscaper Humphry Repton to lay out the gardens of the estate and encouraged the building of houses along its edges. Ravenscourt House was demolished after severe damage by incendiary bombs in 1941. The surviving former stable block now houses the park’s café. In 1887, the Scott family sold the whole estate to a developer. However, the ground leases of the row of detached and semi-detached residences called Ravenscourt Park, extending southwards from No. 23, contained a proviso giving ground-tenants the right to forbid any building on the width of the park opposite their frontages. Two of the tenants, Ebenezer Stanley Burchett and Frank Dethbridge determined to block any development by demanding sums of £1000 each. Other lessees then demanded similar sums. The developer agreed to sell the land for the greatly reduced sum of £58,000 and it was acquired by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1887. The Board of Works established a public park, laid out by J. J. Sexby in the 32 acres of land surrounding the House, as which was opened on 19 May 1888.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

Finborough Road, Chelsea

Nancy Weir Huntly (1890-1963)

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.