Buildings supported by the Trust

Grove Gardens Chapel

This lovely Grade II listed Chapel, located off Lower Grove Road, Richmond, was built in 1873 to a design by Sir William Blomfield and is a major contribution to the borough’s architectural heritage.

Having fallen into serious disrepair over the years, the Chapel has been beautifully restored through an initiative of the Environment Trust, financed by grants from English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, a loan from the Architectural Heritage Fund, and donations from local charities and individuals. The Chapel was given its finishing touch in 2004 with the installation of a pathway across Grove Gardens with embedded lighting.

Now available for hire as an event location, the Chapel is having a highly successful second life playing host to classes in fine arts and pilates, music and drama rehearsals, weddings, workshops and concerts. If you would like to find out more about hiring the Chapel, please follow this link or call the office.

8 King Street (Broad the Printer’s)

Broad’s is a rare example of an early Victorian printer’s shop, in a building thought to originate from the 17th century, at the core of historic Richmond. Listed Grade II, with valuable internal features, it has been empty for many years and is in an advanced state of decay. It is listed by English Heritage as a Building At Risk.

The building’s shopfront, with its oversized fan-glazed window, dates from its first use as a printer’s shop in 1840, but the staircase and much of the internal panelling may belong to an earlier period.

The business was taken over in 1896 by JH Broad, a former apprentice of FW Dimbleby, whose family firm had taken over the Richmond and Twickenham Times at nearby 14 King Street. With two printing works in close proximity, King Street was the Fleet Street of Richmond in the Victorian era.

The Environment Trust sees Broad’s as one of the most important restoration projects in the centre of Richmond.

Kilmorey Mausoleum

Kilmorey Mausoleum is a Grade II listed building with exotic origins and a colourful history. It was built in the early 1850s by the Earl of Kilmorey for his mistress, Priscilla Hoste. They had a son, but she became terminally ill with heart disease and died in 1854. The mausoleum was designed in Egyptian style by the architect HE Kendall and first erected in Brompton Cemetery before coming to Twickenham.

The Mausoleum has received a lot of attention since the Environment Trust offered to maintain and develop the grounds, and we have opened the site to the public on several occasions (including as part of London Open House weekend), attracting hundreds of visitors on each occasion.

In addition to a grove of silver birch trees, the Trust has planted amelanchier, buddleia, viburnum, ferns, wild rose bushes and narcissus, seeded a wild flower meadow, and laid a path of bark chippings. All of the work is done by volunteers, led by a Kew-trained conservation gardener.

We are also looking at ways to develop the site for wider community use, working with local schools and the education staff of the Orleans House Gallery, the arm of the council that is responsible for the Mausoleum.

Terrace Gardens Watchman’s Hut

Built in 1887, the Terrace Gardens Hut has survived for more than 115 years against all odds. The wooden hut represents a sophisticated and exceptionally rare architectural style – Anglo-Japanese. The style was briefly current during the years of the Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s and 1880s – the era of the Mikado and Walter Pater’s ‘Art for Art’s Sake’.

The modest Terrace Gardens Hut is one of the only surviving structures that can properly be described as ‘Anglo-Japanese’.

The two leading exponents of the Anglo-Japanese style were Edward William Godwin (1833–86) and Thomas Jeckyll (1827–81). Both were closely associated with James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who was among the most ardent worshippers of Japan. Jeckyll designed the furniture and panelling for Whistler’s famous Peacock Room (1876–77) for his wealthy patron FR Leyland. The room is now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Richard Norman Shaw’s early partner, W Eden Nesfield (1835–88), was also enthusiastic about Japanese design and incorporated Japanese motifs in his Lodge House in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1866). However, that building is so eclectic that it hardly fits squarely into the category of Anglo-Japanese.

Jeckyll designed one of the few Anglo-Japanese buildings in England. It was a pavilion for the iron and brass founders Barnard, Bishop & Barnard of Norwich and was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, then re-erected for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878. The elegant two-storey pavilion was subsequently sited in a Norwich park before being demolished in 1944.

The arrangement of the glazing bars in the windows in the Terrace Gardens Hut could have been adapted from the first-floor handrail of the pavilion, which was illustrated in The British Architect in November 1878. The carved decorative motifs above the windows are evidently of Japanese derivation – a published source could have been Christopher Dresser’s Japan, Its Architecture, Art and Art Manufactures, 1882.

Other features of the Terrace Gardens Hut, however, are decidedly not Japanese – not surprisingly, since it was the product of an eclectic era. The tiled roof is an interesting feature; the tiles are made of a lightweight metal, possibly zinc, and are likely to have been manufactured according to a long-forgotten patented system. The diagonal tongue-and-groove panels on the door are typical of ‘reformed gothic’ design of the 1860s and 1870s. Remains of the wrought-iron fixings for a notice – possibly enamelled – that announced the purpose of the hut, are still visible on the apex of the roof.

The Hut has undergone repairs organised by the local council. We are awaiting the certificate from the Conservation Officer before contributing the funding that we raised from the Heritage of London Trust. The Hut’s future use will be part of the long-term scheme for Terrace Gardens, subject of a Heritage Lottery Fund bid and currently being put out to public consultation by Land Use Consultants.

Petersham Lock-Up

Petersham Lock-up has been screened off and made watertight during the construction stage of the mews development behind Montrose House. Its repair and protection will be part of a Section 106 agreement with the developers, and the Environment Trust has provided proposals for interpretation to explain the history of this small gem.

St Helena Boathouse No. 4

These listed boathouses on Richmond riverside, near Richmond Bridge, were built in the 1830s for the St Helena Terrace row of houses above and were originally used for coal, which was delivered by river barge. Later they were used for boats and general storage.

The Environment Trust has a long lease on No. 4 Boathouse, which can hold six dinghies. There is also one dinghy space currently available to rent at £60 a quarter. Please contact the office for further information.