RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY – 1 offence Saturday 8th March – St Leonards Road – Entry via rear garden and items stolen.
THEFT FROM MOTOR VEHICLE– 2 offences:
Wednesday 12th March – Bexhill Road – Car broken into and items stolen. Method of entry unknown.
Friday 21st March – Fife Road – Van broken into and tools stolen.
THEFT OF MOTOR VEHICLE – 4 Offences:
Saturday 8th – Sunday 09th March – Stanley Road – Yamaha Motor Cycle stolen and later recovered with two suspects arrested. The investigation is continuing.
Saturday 22nd March – Derby Road – Piaggio scooter stolen.
Tuesday 25th March – Hertford Avenue – Volkswagen Motor van stolen via keyless theft.
Sunday 16th March – Enmore Gardens – Attempted theft of two Motorcycles.
ATM DEVICE TO CASH POINT
Sunday 16th March – Post Office Upper Richmond Road West – ATM tampered with and device found fitted to cash point. Device was designed to catch money being withdrawn as opposed to taking bank card details.
ADVICE
Do not leave valuables on show in vehicles.
Use car security locks and keep keyless entry vehicle keys in a signal blocking pouch.
Be alert when using an ATM.
NEXT POLICE LIAISON GROUP (PLG) MEETING: 15th May 2025 at 1900 hours – East Sheen Baptist Church It is your chance to speak with the local Police Safer Neighbourhood Team (SNT) officers who will provide updates on local crimes and policing issues. Local councillors also attend.
Please feel free to contact the following on community engagement matters: Neighbourhood Watch (NHW) Andy Lindesay Stonehillnwatch@gmail.com Police Liaison Group (PLG) Peter Burrows-Smith pbsmith456@outlook.com
He became a High Church Anglican minister in 1852. In 1854, he became curate at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Moor Lane, in London. Marshall was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1857 but never became a Catholic priest. He studied law and was called to the Bar in Middle Temple in 1868.
In 1873 he accepted an appointment in the British Colonial Service as Chief Magistrate and Judicial Assessor to the native chiefs in the Gold Coast. On the breaking out of the Ashanti War in 1874, he secured the chiefs’ assent to the impressment of their tribesmen, and was of great use throughout the campaign in raising levies. He made a good impression on the Ashanti people, who regarded him as a veteran general who had lost his arm in battle.
In 1874 Marshall left the Cape Coast and transferred to Lagos. He served as Chief Justice of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) from 1880 to 1882. When he became chief magistrate in the Gold Coast there was no Roman Catholic church in the country. Marshall believed that the Gold Coast offered a very favourable environment for Roman Catholic missionaries. Marshall played a significant role in enhancing the growth of the Church in Ghana and Nigeria.
Marshall was a great believer in the value of publicity and the written word. In 1889 he was received by Pope Leo XIII in private audience. Subsequently the Pope bestowed upon him the order of Knight Commander of Saint Gregory in recognition of his service to the cause of the African missions.
His funeral took place at Saint Joseph’s Roehampton. His body was then laid to rest at Mortlake. His widow survived him until 1926 when she too was buried in the same grave.
In 1926 a group of Catholic men in Ghana requested help from the Knights of Columbus. They had brought the Catholic faith to America. They recommended that the Catholic Laymen in Ghana should look for someone who had played a similar role in their history and so it came about that the Knights and Ladies of Marshall were founded.
The Knights of Marshall are a West African and London Roman Catholic male and female fraternal society, founded 18 November 1926; 98 years ago. Membership is open to “any literate and practicing Catholic or communicant and between the ages of 18 and 60 years . . . of good character not convicted by any court of competent jurisdiction for an offence involving dishonest or moral turpitude”. Current membership extends to many countries of West Africa, along with London, England. As of 2021, the Knights of Marshall is organised into 146 groups, known as Councils, and can be found throughout Ghana, Togo, Benin, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, and England and the United Kingdom.
The Knights and Ladies do charitable work, look after a school, orphanage and hospital.
In 1989 a delegation from Ghana visited Marshall’s grave on the centenary of his death and explained that they were taking steps to have him canonised as he was to the Ghanaians what St Augustine was to the English. No progress has been made in that respect yet.
They visit the Mortlake Parish every year on the first Sunday of May. The next visit has been arranged for 4 May 2025, when Mass will be celebrated at 11am.
On Thursday 3rd April 2025 Sarah Olney MP spoke in a debate in the House of Commons regarding government support for Thames Water.
She noted the high level of correspondence from her constituents regarding the significant rise in cost of their water bills. Despite executives continuing to receive hefty bonuses and shareholders taking billions of pounds in dividends out of the company, the burden to pay for the targets set by Ofwat has fallen onto Thames Water’s customers. She argued that it should not be the responsibility of bill payers to raise funds for Thames Water after greed and negligence has placed them into £19bn of debt.
By their own admission senior managers of Thames Water acknowledge that many of their departments are understaffed, while they do not have the funds to invest in critical infrastructure to prevent leaks and sewage dumping into our rivers. During the debate, she raised the traffic chaos that has been caused in Kingston Vale over the past two years due to Thames Water’s reluctance to finance a new sewage pipe despite it repeatedly bursting. Thames Water have assured her that plans for the replacement of this pipe would be communicated by the end of March, but this is yet to happen.
She also raised her serious concerns about Thames Water’s disregard for our environment after a report showed that the company was responsible for 298,081 hours worth of sewage spills in 2024. In a recent BBC documentary, Thames Water staff members admitted to presenting favourable statistics when measuring the concentration of E. coli in the Thames. The cleanliness of our rivers should not be an exercise in PR, and it is extremely important that Thames Water are held to account for polluting our rivers.
She expressed the view that Thames Water should be placed into special administration.
Richmond Council issued a statement yesterday expressing ‘serious concerns’ following the announcement that the Royal Parks Police will be disbanded with other cuts to the Met Police.
“We are deeply disappointed at the Metropolitan Police’s decision to disband the Royal Parks Police and other vital policing roles, raising serious concerns about the future safety of Richmond Park, Bushy Park, other green spaces, and the wider borough.
We are actively seeking assurances on the extent of the impact these cuts may have on community safety, including high streets, residential areas, and emergency response times.”
This mausoleum was built to commemorate Guilaume Henri, Comte de Vezlo (1894-1901), who died aged seven. Beside his plaque is another referring to his mother the Comtesse de Vezlo (d.1938).
Very little is known about the family but Sheen and Mortlake did have French families living locally. Guilaume is said in one source to be the Pretender to the French Throne.
The splendid building does suggest that there was wealth available.
No birth certificate has been traced in England, so it can reasonably be assumed that Guilaume was born in France. During the 1890s there was an influx to London of French subjects.
After Guilaume’s death his mother spent long days in the Mausoleum. The Custodian Fr Adrian speaks of letters among the historical church documents, written by the Comtesse to the then parish priest, requesting that he celebrate Mass in the Mausoleum. She was not best pleased that he declined!
We were extremely fortunate to be granted access by the Custodian Fr Adrian. Nowhere on internet search engines will you find – until now – the photo of Guilaume below or his belongings lovingly maintained in the Mausoleum. The coffins remain in place.
The beautiful altar depicts the flight of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus to Egypt. The then King Herod thought that the child would threaten his throne and sought to kill him. He initiated the Massacre of the Innocents in hopes of killing the child. Tradition has it that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him to take Jesus and his mother into Egypt.
The structure needs full restoration. Another one for Habitats and Heritage?
Note the residence of Annette De Vezlo, a French Subject aged 24, living on her own means at the Grand Hotel in Brighton at the time of the Census on 31 March 1901.
For over thirty years in the latter half of the nineteenth century, London was home to hundreds, and at times thousands, of French revolutionary, republican and socialist exiles. These refugees were drawn from across two generations and were associated with periods of intense political instability in France. During their time in London, they had a significant impact on the life of the city, transforming several of its neighbourhoods into essentially French enclaves, infused themselves into certain sectors of London’s economy, blended into particular social milieux, and greatly affected the shape and trajectory of political radicalism in the capital.
During the 1880s, little groups of exiled French ‘companions’ (the nickname adopted by the French anarchists) were formed in London. They became larger and far more active and influential in the first half of the 1890s, when the theory of ‘propaganda by the deed’ gained ground among anarchists. The concept of propaganda by the deed, developed from 1876–7 among the anarchists of the First International, justified acts of violence as a way of publicising anarchism and initiating the revolution. The main consequence of its propagation was a series of anarchist-inspired terrorist attacks which swept over the Western world throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, peaking in France between 1892 and 1894. The authorities of the Third Republic retaliated with a fierce repression, resulting in the arrest or silencing of most comrades. Hundreds of them were forced into exile,
The Metropolitan Police has confirmed its decision to disband the Richmond Park Police Unit in conjunction with the other royal parks.
The complete defiance of the vast majority of local opinion demonstrates how little they really value public safety or public support in the Richmond area. It is unaccountable autocracy of the highest order.
