Early morning after rain, Decemnber 2023. With thanks to friend of Furnival Gardens Jane McGregor.
FURNIVALL GARDENS TODAY
Furnivall Gardens is today owned by the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, and is managed by its parks department. The Friends of Furnivall Gardens is a local voluntary organistion, which helps to care for the Gardens. The chair of the Friends of Furnivall Gardens is Rachel Purcell. The Secretary is Jane Skinner, and the Treasurer is Laura Heath. All are local residents. The contact email for the Friends of Furnivall Gardens is furnivallgardens@hotmail.co.uk.
The Friends of Furnivall Gardens have a Facebook Page as means of communicating with their members. Please click here for the page.
HISTORY
Furnivall Gardens is named after Dr. Furnivall, founder of the Furnivall Sculling Club. It was once the location of the mouth of Hammersmith Creek, which had an active fishing trade until about 200 years ago. The creek, shown in the image below, was filled in in 1936.
In 1948, it was decided that there should be a public open space on bomb-damaged land between the river and the Great West Road, to coincide with the 1951 Festival of Britain. The new riverside park was named after Dr. Furnivall. A park was created on what had been the Hammersmith Friends Meeting House burial ground, destroyed by a flying bomb in the war. In 1963, a street lamp that had formerly been in West Berlin was given by Willy Brandt, then Mayor of West Berlin, to mark Hammersmith's twinning with the Berlin (previously West Berlin) district of Neukölln. It now stands on the wall of Westcott Lodge, facing the gardens. Below it is a plaque which reads: "The lamp above this plaque was formerly used to light a street in West Berlin. It was presented by Herr Willi Brandt, Mayor of West Berlin to Councillor Stanley Atkins, L. P., The Worshipful the Mayor of Hammersmith, as a token of friendship between the two communities on the occasion of the Jumelage held in this Borough, 1st June 1963."
DR FURNIVALL
In April 1896, the 71-year-old Dr. Furnivall founded the Hammersmith Sculling Club for girls, later becoming Furnivall Sculling Club. Having learnt to row in his teens, rowing became a lifelong obsession for Dr. Furnivall. He was admitted to Trinity Hall Cambridge in 1842, where he rowed in the first eight. He also sculled regularly and at the age of 20, he and his friend John Beesley built the first narrow, outrigged single scull to be seen on the Cam. In 1891 when the Amateur Rowing Association refused to accept working men as ‘amateurs’, Furnivall founded the National Amateur Rowing Association which anyone could join. Given his passionate opposition to discrimination, he wanted to break into the traditionally male-dominated world of river sport, by building a club for women. Membership of the Hammersmith Sculling Club was extended to men in 1901. It was also in this year that the name was changed to Furnivall Sculling Club for Girls and Men. The captaincy continued to be restricted to female members for the first half of the century, however, in honour of Dr. Furnivall's original purpose for founding the club.
Dr. Furnivall continued to row regularly every Sunday, to Richmond and back, a habit he maintained throughout his life until he died in 1910 aged 85. Dr. Furnivall was a true Victorian. Not only did he found the club when he was a young 71 but he was also the ultimate enthuiast; passionate about social justice and personal health. He never smoked or drank and, unusually for the time, became a vegetarian. In 1849 he opened a school for poor men and boys and in 1851 he sold his book collection so as to give £100 to support striking woodcutters. The following year he helped establish the Working Men’s Association. But it was his literary work that attracted national attention. In 1861 he started work on a dictionary which finally saw the light of day as The Oxford English Dictionary. That task was taken out of his hands as he was diverted by new pursuits. He founded the Early English Texts Society in 1864, the Chaucer Society in 1886, the Ballad Society and also the New Shakespeare Society in 1873, the Wicliff Society in 1881, and in 1886 the Browning Society and the Shelly Society. In his spare time he became the leading expert of the day on Chaucer. The redoubtable and progressive Dr Furnivall is shown above.
