St George's Churchyard

The Manor of Hanworth is referred in the Domesday Book in 1086, owned by Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Arundel; in 1294 two-thirds of the manor was owned by Wallingford and the remainder by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. In the C15th the manor was in the ownership of the Crown and Henry VIII gave it to the Rector of Hanworth in 1519. Hanworth Park (q.v.) was the site of a hunting lodge of Henry VII, which burnt down in 1797 but whose stables survived, now flats, adjacent to St George's Church. The first reference to a church here is in 1293 and in 1315 the first known Rector was Adam de Brome, founder of Oriel College, Oxford. Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr and Queen Elizabeth I must have worshipped here when at Hanworth Park. In the C17th Charles I witnessed the baptism at the church of the son of Lord Cottingham, then Lord of Hanworth Manor, the family regaining the Manor at the Restoration in 1660. In 1670 it was purchased by Sir Thomas Chamber, who is buried here (d.1692), as is the 5th Duke of St Albans (d.1802). In 1808 the old church was demolished and a new church rebuilt in 1812 at a cost of £5,000 on its site. St George's Church was designed by architect James Wyatt, one of his last commissions before his untimely death in an accident in 1813, and it was completed in 1816 by his eldest son B D Wyatt. James Wyatt owned Hanworth Farm as his country retreat, near the site of the current South West Middlesex Crematorium (q.v.). Members of his family were buried in the churchyard, although James himself was buried at Westminster Abbey. A small obelisk by the path to the south porch commemorates one of his descendants, James Matthew Hearn Wyatt, who died in 1869 aged 9.

The church was remodelled by S S Teulon in 1862-5 when the spire was added. The lych-gate to the churchyard was erected in 1882 to the memory of 'L E C', mother of the Revd John Lyndhurst Winslow's wife, and is said to be a copy of the lych-gate in Beddington church in Surrey. a descendent of the architect. Members of the Hyde family of Kempton Park are commemorated with an obelisk, and there is a gravestone for Anne (d.1887) and James (d.1919) Mindenhall, who were the first master and mistress of Hanworth National School, which opened in 1848. Owners of Hanworth Park House buried here include members of the Perkins and the Lafone families. The church windows were damaged on a number of occasions by explosions at Hounslow Gunpowder Mills 2 miles away. William George Lewcock, who was killed in one such explosion on 3 May 1887, is buried here. In 1992 the church's stained glass was made bullet-proof after air rifle vandalism.