Bedford Park Society Annual Lecture
Thursday 24 September, 7.30pm, ArtsEd Schools
While photographs of Victorian and Edwardian house interiors are rare, a few surviving contemporary descriptions, prints and photographs, some of them only recently discovered, record real Bedford Park interiors. At The Bedford Park Society’s annual lecture on 24 September, curator and historian Val Bott will use these resources to discuss what might have influenced the choice of furnishings that would make the new houses of the estate into homes from its beginnings.
We furnish our homes to express our taste, values and style. Val Bott considers whether peeping behind the red brick gables and white painted joinery of Bedford Park’s façades enables us to discover more about the estate’s early residents.
Val asks what elements of the interiors were installed by the builders? Did newcomers bring family pieces from their previous homes or buy new Aesthetic Movement or Arts & Crafts pieces appropriate to the new style of “Queen Anne” architecture? Were they influenced by the early Bedford Park community’s tendency to look back fondly to the past or by the presence of numerous skilled crafts people working nearby? And from whom would residents have purchased furniture, accessories and textiles?
Val Bott is a curator by profession and a historian of Brentford and Chiswick by enthusiasm. She was awarded an MBE for services to the heritage after overseeing the refurbishment of Hogarth’s House in 2009-11. She edits the annual Brentford & Chiswick Local History Journal and runs the garden history website nurserygardeners.com.
VENUE: The Arts Educational Schools, 14 Bath Road, Chiswick W4 1LY
TIME: Lecture starts at 8.00pm. Bar open from 7.00pm.
TICKETS £15:
– online from TicketSource plus administration fee OR
– pick one up from Postmark on Turnham Green Terrace, Chiswick
Sketch above: Dining room of Artist and designer George Haité at Ormsby Lodge, c1900