Murray Park

Whitton Dean was originally one of three parishes comprising the Isleworth Hundred; Twickenham and Heston being the other two. Heston and Isleworth merged into the London Borough of Hounslow when it was created in 1965. The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames was created at the same time to include the Municipal Borough of Twickenham, which included Whitton. A minor tributary of the Thames formed the parish boundary separating Twickenham and Isleworth parishes. About midway along its length from Heston to Isleworth is Murray Park where, in the 1740s, John Rocque's Survey shows a substantial winged house centrally placed and set within a walled enclosure facing west towards a small parterre garden and with a barn to its rear. Comprising the northern half of the ground is a large garden.

On seeing his opinion in 1993, Sir Roy Strong wrote to the then President of the Garden History Society where it transpired a study had been made of Twickenham gardens clearly influenced by Alexander Pope that had not included the ‘lost formal garden' in present Murray Park. It emerged that while Pope spent much time devising garden schemes for Marble Hill, with Charles Bridgeman eventually carrying out the work, sketches for squiggly wilderness paths found amongst Pope's manuscripts suggest that he was the author of a plan never implemented at Marble Hill, but remarkably similar to that at Whitton.

When Archibald Campbell, Lord Ilay and later 3rd Duke of Argyll, purchased this land in 1738, half of it lay in the parish of Twickenham and half in Isleworth. In keeping with his preferred methodology, he first created a garden before building a house. In 1740 Mrs Elizabeth Anne Williams, Campbell's mistress, is recorded as being in occupation of a new house, a fine Palladian villa, matching Campbell's own half a mile away. Both were linked with an avenue of his famed cedar trees.

The formal garden encompassed many of the features earlier considered for Marble Hill House on the banks of the Thames in Twickenham where Archibald Campbell had assisted in acquiring land for the house built as a settlement for the Prince of Wales's mistress, Henrietta Howard. The ‘elegant Italian Villa' at Whitton Dean that Campbell provided for his own mistress was described as being complete with coach houses, stabling for twelve horses, a riding house and numerous offices. The garden, sloping towards the brook that fed the ornamental pond, was set in nine acres of beautifully wooded pleasure gardens and grounds, the whole including 31 acres of good pasture land to create the idyllic C18th pastoral landscape.

When Argyll died in 1761 he left his estate at Whitton to Mrs Williams, who survived him by a year. The property then went to their son, Colonel William Campbell, who had been granted permission to take his father's name. In 1765 he sold the estate to George Gostling, except for 10 acres of the Whitton Dean Estate where he continued to live with his wife and their son, Archibald. George Gostling then divided the estate, creating out of it Whitton Park and Whitton Place. The garden at Whitton Dean was de-formalised together with Argyll's own garden, probably in 1797, when Humphrey Repton was commissioned to undertake landscaping work on a number of Whitton estates.

In 1806, Archibald Campbell sold Whitton Dean to George Gostling II, who then set about re-uniting the estate, greatly increasing its size as a result of land purchases and the 1818 Enclosure Awards. By the time the family came to live at Whitton in 1847, the estate was known as Whitton Park. Three years later and Argyll's Palladian villa was demolished together with that of his former mistress at Whitton Dean. The Riding House there became a drill hall for Colonel Murray's rifle volunteers and throughout the 1870s and 1880s sat in a Pleasure Ground used for local activities such as fetes and school sports.

When Colonel Charles Gostling Murray died in 1892 the Whitton Park Estate was put on the market and sold by auction. Despite great efforts made by local residents, supported by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, to acquire part of the estate as a public park, money had already been allocated by the London County Council to save Marble Hill and so the attempt failed. In 1913 Councillor James Wills led moves to create public open space, as a result of which Twickenham UDC bought the 10.5 acre Pleasure Ground at Whitton Dean for £2,100, which led to the creation of Murray Park.

The Old Riding School survived until 1925 when it was replaced with the present community hall. The offices, lake and many fine trees disappeared a decade later when a new road was built that took the altered name of Whitton Dene. Hedged today on three sides, Murray Park has paths running north to south with gates on Kneller Road and Whitton Dene. Mature sweet chestnuts, ash, sycamore, oak etc., join a single mature cedar tree and three more recent plantings marking the once historic avenue. Parch marks on the grass revealing the foundations of the villa are evident during hot summers and the Great Storm of 1987 revealed an historic underground brick chamber that once fed the ornamental pond. As open land of townscape importance, it is beneath the gentle slope of the northern half of the park that evidence might remain of the meanders and serpentines, the hippodrome shaped lawn, the amphitheatre, groves and irregular walks of this once ‘new fashionable garden'.