EastSheenMatters

The Mortlake with East Sheen Society is opening the Air Raid Shelter in St Leonards Road on Sunday 15 September 2024 from 1.00 to 5.00pm

Heritage buildings nationwide, which are not normally open to the public, will be open on 15 September. This includes the air raid shelter at St Leonards Court, a unique local structure.  Your primary school children or grandchildren may have visited, so do not miss this opportunity to see what they have seen.

The building is an important relic of World War 2, which was saved by MESS and the Environment Trust (now Habitats & Heritage) over 15 years ago and spot-listed. 

The shelter was started in late 1938. It was built in two stages, solely for the use of the residents of St. Leonards Court. The first stage was a couple of rooms with toilets for people to wait out the danger for a short while, but later as the war got worse, a second section was added for people to spend the whole night down there.

Entry is through a solidly locked door in a very back-garden style round brick shed with a tiled roof and then down twelve steps to the underground spaces.


School age children were evacuated from Sheen. They took their suitcase and gas masks (which were never used) to school and left for Windsor by train with their teacher. So only under fives and their parents used it. They would only spend a couple of hours down there until the all clear sounded.

There is no lighting down there, so tours are illuminated by large portable floodlights.

During an air-raid, up to 120 people could have sat here. In 1940 a second row of rooms was added and this time fitted for sleeping in. Divided into cells, with three rows of double-width beds in each, it could hold 48 families – or more likely mothers and children — in the space. They had toilets and each bed had its own lamp and switch so people could read without disturbing their neighbours.

Residents of the flats had to pay £7 a year for the family to use the bunks, although with so many families in close proximity often chatting at night, it was not an easy place in which to sleep. Residents sometimes took their chances above ground. One local resident who died a few years ago, Leslie Hammond, recalled that his father would never stay down there at night because he could not sleep. He went back to his flat and took his chances.

Members of the MESS Committee will be there to greet you and show you round.

Sheen resident and former Royal Marine Alastair Grant is to drive a refurbished ambulance to Ukraine at the end of September and is raising £10,000 to assist. It will be one of several, packed with donated medical equipment.

To aid fundraising a concert is being held at All Saints Church East Sheen from 6pm to 7pm on Sunday 15 September 2024. Wigmore Hall piano soloist Vedran Janjanin and Soprano Tena Loncarevic will be giving the concert. Doors open 5:45pm. Please come and show your support. Free entry.

Financial donations to the appeal will be most welcome at any time to – Alastair Grant-Just Giving-Ukraine. https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-grant-1718028919236

Painsfield Villa is a mystery. There is no mention of it in the excellent works about Mortlake and East Sheen listed in the bibliography recently published here.

It does not appear on a map of the area in 1850. It is shown in the map above which is dated 1873 in what is now Paynesfield Avenue. Houses were built in that part of the road in 1902. An Indenture (or Lease) of that year sets out that Joseph Neville of Barnes granted the lease for 99 years to Alfred Basden of Fulham in consideration of the costs and expenses incurred by William Hattersley, Builder, who lived, according to the Electoral Register of 1904, at No 2 Paynesfield Avenue. An early example of a developer who lived on the premises?

The first of what might now be described as council housing was built in Alexandra Road in the 1890s. Between the two roads was a wall, the route of which appears originally to have run from Sheen Lane to Queen’s Road. It is believed that the wall was demolished shortly after the war, so that the two roads are now one thoroughfare. Exactly when that occurred is not recorded.

What happened to Painsfield Villa and who lived there?

Almshouses have a long history and provide a significant contribution to the housing stock in the Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The Juxons Almshouses arose as a result of a bequest by John Juxon who bought the Manor of East Sheen and West Hall in 1619. After his father died in 1626 his son John built the almshouses in 1631 at the end of Church Path. The photograph below shows the original almshouses with the mock tudor house on the Upper Richmond Road in the background.

Part of Church Path which leads into Church Avenue is still wide to the right of the photograph. It is thought there was an air raid shelter there in the 1940s but there is now no trace of it.

Juxon’s Almshouses were rebuilt on Milton Road just round the corner in 1911.

And now

The closure reported yesterday as planned to continue to 16 September appears to have reopened.

What can we expect tomorrow?

St. Leonards Road is currently closed. There is no through road from Sheen Lane to the Upper Richmond Road. Expect delays at the Milestone Junction, as more turn right there. Cadent emergency gas works are estimated to be completed by 16 September 2024.

Sarah Olney reports that the works at Manor Circus are due to be completed ‘soon’. Don’t hold your breath then.

Barnes and Mortlake Past with East Sheen, Maisie Brown, (1997), Barnes and Mortlake History Society

Barnes, Mortlake and Sheen, Patrick Loobey (1995), Alan Sutton Publishing Limited

Halfpenny Green: Postcards from Barnes and Mortlake (1994), Barnes and Mortlake History Society

They lived in Sheen Lane, Mike Smith (2011), Barnes and Mortlake History Society

The Wizard of Mortlake: Essays on the Legacy of John Dee. JJ Griffin IV (2020), Crown Hill Press

Some of the pictures on this blog are copied from works published by the Barnes and Mortlake History Society and used with their kind permission.

The invaluable website of the Society is at www.https://barnes-history.org.uk/ It contains videos of past lectures, a gallery of pictures, publications and antique maps.

Portobello House was one of the largest and most imposing of Mortlake houses. It may be something of a surprise to discover that it was at the corner of Sheen Lane and South Worple Way.

The picture of the House was posted last week.

Built in 1747 for Vice-Admiral Perry Mayne it took its name from the naval action which resulted in the capture in 1739 from the Spanish of Porto Bello in the West Indies in which Mayne took part under Admiral Vernon. The entrance was in South Worple Way.

Mr Joseph Gandolfi resided in the house around 1782. Lady Constantia Mostyn, a  Catholic, lived here from 1842 to 1849. There was no nearby Catholic church, so  she fitted up her hayloft as a place of worship. Many of the local Irish market-garden workers attended this small chapel. Consequently St. Mary Magdalene’s Church was built in Worple Way in 1852.

The illustration shows the house ten years before demolition in 1893. So from 1846 until then it was adjacent to the Richmond Railway.

Vernon and Howgate Roads were laid out on the grounds in 1898.

•Palewell Lodge stood on the site of one of Mortlake’s common fields, Stonehill Shott, built in 1756. The Palewell estate was an extensive one from the Upper Richmond Road to what is now Vicarage Road and from Richmond Park Road to Hertford Avenue. The house was approached by a fine avenue of elms, now East Sheen Avenue. During the 19th century it was owned by three generations of the Gilpin family, notably William Gilpin.

In 1896 50 acres of the estate were sold for development, and  150 houses were built on Palewell Park and later All Saints’ Church. The house itself was pulled down in 1925.

From the River to the Park

There was a good turnout and an interesting discussion at the Tuesday Talk about the history of East Sheen and Mortlake. Some of the slides from the talk have already been posted, Hare & Hounds 1900, Portobello House and information on St. Mary the Virgin and its graveyard. More will be posted over the next few days.

The Tuesday Talk on 10 September 2024 at 11am at the Barnes Green Centre is about Agatha Christie. Mystery awaits.