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Before becoming Norwood Parish Church in 1859, St Mary the Virgin was originally a chapel of ease within the large parish of Hayes and under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury until 1846. Henry Chichele, Archbishop in 1414, provided money to restore the chapel in 1439 and gave the octagonal font; a stone cross commemorating him was erected in the churchyard in 1894. Victims of the plague of 1665 were buried in the churchyard, and among the monuments is a fine C19th sarcophagus to the Robins family of neighbouring Norwood Hall. The area was largely agricultural until the late C19th and the large village green and some old buildings, including the parish church, remain to mark the old village centre.
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The small church of St Mary the Virgin dates from the C12th, the manor formerly called Little Greenford or Greenford Parva to distinguish it from Greenford Magna, but from the C16th known as Perivale. Until the C18th the rural hamlet contained no more than a church, rectory, manor house and a few farmhouses. The churchyard has many C18th and C19th monuments and 2 fine yews; the lych gate was erected in 1904/5 to the memory of the wife of music publisher John Boosey. The church closed in 1972, after the parish was bisected by the A40 with a new church built to serve the north of the parish. In 1976 a group of volunteers got together to rescue the church and leased it from the Diocese as the Friends of St Mary's Perivale. It is now a venue for musical and other events.
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St Mary's Burial Ground was established here in 1863 on 1 acre of land that was purchased by the Acton Vestry to provide additional burial land for the parish church of St Mary. The land had been part of a field called Conduit Close that had a number of springs, providing the village with water. By 1929 the cemetery was almost full. In 1979 it converted into a public garden laid out with a paved area, raised planters and seating along the Churchfield Road boundary. It was partly cleared, with headstones largely set against the perimeter walls although some remain scattered among the grass.
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Acton was part of the Manor of Fulham at the time of the Domesday Survey and a church had stood at the old centre of the village from at least 1228. An important stop on the London to Oxford coaching road, Acton developed into a market town and was later popular as a rural retreat. A larger parish church was erected in 1837 to serve the growing population, reconstructed in 1865-67. St Mary's Churchyard served as the main parish burial ground until 1863 when Churchfield Road Burial Ground was opened as a relief ground. It was used for burials under family rights until the 1920s, and contains some interesting monuments. In front of the church what was once the village green is now a pedestrian precinct.
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Ealing dates back to a Saxon settlement, and there was a church in the centre of the old village from at least 1130. The medieval church was rebuilt in 1735-40, after the old church collapsed having suffered damage in the Civil War. It was remodelled in the 1860s when a more significant church was needed to reflect the growing importance of the district, now that Ealing was a town. The church and its immediate churchyard are reached through a picturesque lych-gate, with the area at the front laid out as a garden with grave slabs and a number of chest tombs, and the area behind having numerous monuments. The graveyard is in two parts, separated by a footpath with a roughly triangular area with a few tombstones to the east. In 2014 a project to renew the eastern churchyard grounds and create a more welcoming and accessible space was completed, with funding from a number of sources, including the Pocket Parks initiative.
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Hanwell is mentioned in the Domesday Book as an independent manor although it became a subsidiary of Greenford. First mention of a Christian church at Hanwell occurs in 958 AD and in the C12th a small thatched church was built, later rebuilt in 1781/2. The village consisted of only a few houses along Church Road until the late 1830s but in 1841 a larger parish church was needed for the growing population and the current church was built. The walled churchyard overlooks the Brent Valley and is part of the rural landscape of Brent Lodge Park, once owned by Hanwell Rector G H Glasse; the church lych gate is now the entrance to the park. Among the monuments in the churchyard are box tombs, a monument to Glasse's wife and daughter, and one gravestone dated 1707 by the west door.
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Twyford is an ancient parish, which in the C17th and C18th consisted of little more than a manor house and church. The C16th church was rebuilt in the C17th and an early C19th chapel by William Atkinson was later incorporated when the church was enlarged in 1958. There is a small area to the south of the church with a memorial stone set in the grass and a couple of large tombs including a chest tomb. In front of the church is grass, a few trees, flagpole and modern gates. Beyond the churchyard,was the old burial ground of the Alexian Brothers within the lands of Twyford Abbey, a rectangular paved area with two rows of headstones and an altar with wooden cross.
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The Woodlands Park was created on part of the grounds of an C18th villa 'The Woodlands', which was purchased in 1903 by Acton UDC, largely for educational purposes, the remainder for a small public park. The existing layout of the grounds was retained in part, which had significant numbers of trees planted in belts and as specimen trees with a network of paths around the perimeter and through the shrubberies. There was a large circular pool on lower ground to the east and an ice-house. Municipal layout included retention of some paths, use of the ice-house as a gardener's hut but the pool eventually ceased retaining water and disappeared. A restoration project in 2006 enabled the ice-house to be restored and the round pool to be recreated.
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Twyford Abbey is an historic landscape setting encompassing a listed house and garden walls. Between 1807 and 1809, owner Thomas Willan engaged architect, botanist and geologist William Atkinson to build a mansion in a romantic castellated gothic style, incorporating an earlier moated manor house. To this were added an impressively walled garden of approximately 0.5 hectares, a picturesque pleasure garden and park, and nearby St Mary's Church was remodelled in gothic style. During the C20th various extensions and alterations were made to the house, which the Alexian Brothers, an order of monks, ran as a nursing home. The property has been vacant since 1988.
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Twyford Avenue Sports Ground has been used for sports since 1899 when it was leased to the Mill Hill Cricket Club by the Elms Estate. In 1921 the Gas Light and Coke Company, later British Gas, purchased the land and opened its Sports Ground here with football pitches, a cricket square, tennis courts, and a bowling green in the north-east corner. While primarily for its employees and their families, the facilities were also available to members of the Salamander Bowls Club and from the 1960s local schools and sports clubs were able to rent the facilities. In 2000 Loftus Road plc purchased the site and it is now owned partly by Shanley Homes and by Wasps FC, mainly used as the training ground of London Wasps RFC professionals and Wasps FC amateurs.
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The area was farmed until the 1890s, much of it part of the Elms Estate owned by the Wegg family from the C18th until 1842. Twyford Avenue, originally an old field lane, was at one time called Wegg Avenue. The site that became the public gardens was predominantly a Fish Pond on the Estate, providing grazing for livestock and horses. The land was purchased by Acton UDC in 1903 from the Round family who had inherited the Elms Estate and began developing it for housing. The public gardens were laid out in two sections, divided by Twyford Avenue, each section having lawns with island beds, perimeter paths, tree and shrub planting. The gardens were renovated in c.2008 with a new entrance to the west and new planting to provide year-round interest.
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Warwick Dene is a small enclosure in the south-west corner of Ealing Common, dating evidently from shortly after Ealing Local Board's acquisition of the Common, now called a 'Rest Garden for the Aged and Blind and Those Requiring Rest'. There was previously a lodge in one corner, shown in the OS map of 1865 with a hedge behind it and a cedar in front, which was unenclosed to the west with a path running to the building. By 1914 the lodge is no longer shown and Warwick Dene has been built up. The garden has a simple lawn but with a notable Cedar, and horse chestnut, lime, and shrubs along the Warwick Dene boundary.