Working together to make West Ealing a better place for residents, businesses and visitors.
We are all working hard to make sure we have enough stock for Hanwell Carnival on 18th June at Elthorne Park. We will be there from 11am setting up our stall until around 5pm. Come early to make sure you get a bottle of our delicious elderflower cordial (£2.50). Why not stick with the elderflower theme and also buy some lemon and elderflower marmalade? (£3.00) We will also have a selection of other jams/jellies and chutneys to tempt you.
Sergeant Pinder Chana of the Walpole Safer Neighborhood Team and Patrick Chapman, of Walpole Residents’ Association discuss local policing priorities in the wake of concerns about drug-dealing anti-social behaviour in West Ealing
Many people are unsure how our Safer Neighbourhoods Teams (SNTs) fit in with the other police teams – and who to contact for assistance or support.
The SNT are working closely with the Council and local community to tackle problems in Walpole. Ealing Police take drug dealing as a serious issue and we would encourage members of the public who witness any drug related activity to call on 0300 123 1212 and ask to be put through to the SNT – or to call 999 if there is a need for an emergency response. Alternatively if you wish to remain anonymous, call Crime stoppers on 0800 555 111.
If you’ve ever tasted the locally grown beef sold on occasions by Tony Luckhurst in Melbourne Avenue you’ll know it is absolutely delicious – it melts in the mouth. The beef will almost certainly have come from Rowley Farm near Slough, which is pretty local for West Ealing.
Rowley Farm lies three miles north of Slough and is home to three generations of the Whitby family. As well as the beef cattle, the farm grows various cereal crops and is now part of Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship Scheme, so looking after the wildlife is a key part of the farm’s role.
This Sunday (12th June) is Open Farm Sunday when the farm is open to the public from 10am to 5pm. There are tractor and trailer rides along with children’s activities, a live band and hot food. You can watch the cows being milked at 2pm and meet the other animals – calves, chickens and a pony.
Contact details: Black Park Road, Wexham, Slough SL3 6DR. Tel: John Whitby 07768 473787 or email john@rowleyfarm.co.uk.
Entrance is free.Parking is £2.50. No booking needed.
I went to second in a series of history of modern art talks last night at OPEN Ealing. Admittedly, the talks are given by an artist friend of mine Nick Pearson but he’s always been a good talker and I really enjoyed hearing about the radical impact of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists and how they were rubbished by the press at the time in much the same way as modern artists now.
I’d never realised the impact of Japan on 19th century art and how the influence was initially through some goods imported from the newly opened up Japan being wrapped up in copies of prints by Japanese artists. It’s odd how seemingly trivial things can end up having an enormous influence. Japanese art was very different to Western art. It was more stylised and, for example, whilst Western art would have its main subject clearly visible and obvious, Japanese art might have its subject, such as Mount Fuji, almost tucked away discreetly in the distance.
I also enjoyed hearing that Constable’s painting The Haywain, which is now used on biscuit tins and goodness knows what else, was one of the most radical paintings of its time. It caused a sensation in Paris when exhibited in 1824 and was praised for its honest depiction of a contemporary rural scene. And it had a major influence on artists and contributed to the birth of Impressionism. Strange how what was once a ground-breaking painting of a rural scene can a century or so later become almost a cliche of a romantic rural idyll.
The talks (12 in total) will take us up to the ‘Young British Artists’ of the late 20th century so there’s lots to go yet. They are every Thursday evening from 7-9pm at OPEN Ealing (113 Uxbridge Road) and cost £7.50 each. So you can always dip in and out if there’s something you particularly want to hear about.
David Highton
In his second post on local history David Shailes gives a brief history of Northfields station.
The stretch of line from Acton Town (then called Mill Hill Park) to Hounslow was opened in 1883 by the Hounslow and Metropolitan Railway. The motivation behind its opening was property speculation in the Spring Grove area of Isleworth and the line passed through open countryside. At the time what we know as Northfields was farm land, so no station was provided and the nearest being at South Ealing and Boston Road (Boston Manor).
The line was a sleepy steam-hauled branch line, which was electrified in June 1905 as part of the modernisation of the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR). By the time a station was provided in April 1908 housing development in Northfields had been underway for some time. In 1911 it was renamed Northfields & Little Ealing. The station was on the opposite side of the road to the current station and at platform level the canopies and fixtures were of a similar style to those that remain at Boston Manor today.
By now the MDR was part of the Underground Group (UG) and the District Line with its many branches was becoming severely taxed in terms of line capacity. So the UG resolved to extend the Piccadilly line from Hammersmith to Acton Town and for the Hounslow and South Harrow services to be transferred to the Piccadilly Line. This was funded by a cheap loan provided in 1929 by the Government for the purpose of alleviating unemployment.
Northfields was chosen as the site of a ‘Car Shed’ which required considerable earth moving. Work started in 1931 and the four tracks from Acton Town to Northfields along with the new Northfields Station, in the handsome ‘Adams, Holden & Pearson’ style on its current site, opened in December 1932. Piccadilly Line trains had reached Hounslow West in February 1932 and took over all services (sharing peak hours with the District) in March 1933. As part of further service changes in October 1964 the last District Line train ran to Hounslow West and the line became exclusively used by the Piccadilly services.
David Shailes
Following on from the success of West Ealing garden designer Lesley Faux at the Chelsea Flower Show , it’s now congratulations now to West Ealing food blogger Katie Bryson (thanks to Ealing Today for spotting this story). Katie’s blog Feeding boys and a firefighter has been shortlisted for The Mum and Dad (MAD) blog awards.
Katie’s blog has been shortlisted in the Best Food Blog category. Visit www.the-mads.com for more information and how to vote.
David Highton
OPEN Ealing is launching its second contemporary art exhibition this Friday evening from 6.30-9pm. Please do come along. We ask you to bring an open mind and your imagination with you!
The exhibition is entitled Insert Title Here and we have asked people to give us written descriptions of how they see particular works of art or images and put these on the gallery walls. What we are asking visitors to do is to use their imagination to interpret these descriptions in their own way and, with our help, produce your version of any one of the descriptions. So, for example, one description is ‘Something too beautiful to describe’. How would you interpret that? Others descriptions are more ‘traditional’, so there is something here for everyone. We will then collect these interpretations and use them as the basis for this exhibition and build up these
images in the gallery over the exhibition’s three-week run.
OPEN Ealing is at 113 Uxbridge Road (opposite the fire station) and its number is 020 8579 5558.
David Highton