Brentford Information

Rise To The Second-Tier (1990-1993)

Brentford, who by the end of the 19901990 season had already been eliminated from all cup competitions, began the 199091 season in dire financial straits. The club was saddled with a £1. 5 million-pound overdraft and rumours were abound that they would have to inject as much as £3m into the club in order to keep it afloat. Manager Phil Holder publicly stated that he would have to sell his whole squad if the club were unable to find a buyer before the beginning of the season.

Despite the drama off of the pitch, Brentford started fairly well on it, amassing 10 points from their first eight matches including an impressive 3­–0 defeat of recently crowned League Cup champions Manchester United, Brentford (brentford.org.uk). [3. Holder's first season as manager turned out to be a struggle. The side were deducted nine points for financial irregularities. There were also problems off the pitch, one player, Clive Mendonca, was shot in the leg and another, Micky Droy, was arrested for his alleged involvement in an armed robbery.

The squad was hit by an injury crisis that saw them turn out with as few as eight players on the pitch on two occasions. Holder was told to prepare for life in non-league football by chairman Ron Noades after a delegation of Bees fans met with him following a 4defeat to Newport County in January 1991. However, at the end of the season, Noades reneged on this and informed. The 1991 close-season would prove to be a busy one for Brentford manager Phil Holder.

He had some decisions to make regarding the squad that had just finished 8th in the Championship, and was preparing for life in new Division 1. Holders recruitment focused on building an efficient and solid unit for the new challenge ahead of him. The revised squad saw a number of changes, with Holders main priorities being defensive additions. Keeper Chris Roberts was replaced by Catts at the top of the goalscoring ranks, but that proved to be the only time in which Catts place in the starting XI was under threat.

Holder had a tough start to the season, losing 3 of his first 4 games in charge of the Bees. But his team found form after these initial setbacks, and won 5-0 against Hayes in the FA Cup. The manager then led the club to wins in 5 of their next 6 league games, including a run of 4 consecutive victories which sent them into the top 10 of Division 3 by mid-November. The move was somewhat unexpected, given his relative inexperience compared to the other candidates.

Local Government

The parish of Brentford was split between local government and ecclesiastical control in the 19th century. It fell within the Ealing District (Metropolis) from 1855, the Brentford Poor Law Union Act of 1835, and Ealing Local Board District from 1872. The Local Board built its council offices on Palace Avenue, opposite St Paul's Church. The urban district council replaced the local board in 1894, but with only minor boundary changes. It was a predominantly residential area with a commercial strip running along Kew Bridge Road to the west.

The Brentford chapelry of Old Brentford covered most of the ancient parish of Ealing, and part of that of Southall, Brentford (brentford.org.uk). Besides the chapel at Old Brentford, there was another chapel for a time at Kew Bridge. By the late 19th century Old Brentford divided into four ecclesiastical districts: St Paul's (later replaced by a mission church, now named Holy Trinity), St Stephen's, St Mary's, and All Saints. The parishes were used for census and electoral purposes until completed obliteration in the 19th century.

Old Brentford is situated in central west London, predominantly south of the A4 road (Great Britain) running between London and Oxford. It was an ancient parish in the Ossulstone hundred of Middlesex. In 1889 it became part of Ealing poor law union which became an urban district in 1894. The ancient parish comprised the chapelry of Old Brentford, in Ealing rural sanitary district. Brentford is separated from Chiswick to the west by Acton Lane (the A4) leading to Acton and Hounslow.

The 18th-century Duke's Cut was made along this lane. Brentford's market gardens supplied one of the most extensive areas of green space in west London, but with infilling and modernisation much of this has gone. Old Brentford lay to the east of St. Mary's Church, which formed its historic nucleus. It was a small village that shared fields with the larger parish of Ealing. A stream, called Dukes Brook from the manor of Duke's Meadows to the south, formed the southern boundary before joining the River Brent.

New Brentford was a hamlet in the parish of Hanwell. It had no direct connection with the manor or other estates which took its name. Although there were farms here, particularly noted was. The former England National Cricket Ground was also investigated before deciding upon Kew Bridge. A catalyst to choosing Kew Bridge was a meeting. It was also confirmed that Brentford would play home games at Griffin Park until all works on the stadium were complete.

Demography And Housing

Of the occupied households, 27. 5% were single person households (figures lower than that of London as a whole). The figures show that there is no age discrimination as 19% of the householders were between the ages of 30-44, whether it was males or females. Out of all the people living in Brentford and Syon wards in 2011, 33% described themselves as being 'White'with 61% saying they are 'White British', and only 4% saying they have another white background.

Brentford Dock

One of the great Victorian engineering projects to be undertaken in west London was the construction of the Brentford Dock. It involved the reclamation of almost 7 acres (2. 8 ha) of land from the River Thames and the construction of a dockyard on what had recently been meadowland next to Brentford High Street. The Thames had once looped south-westwards from just east of Kew Bridge, looping around what is now Oatlands Park and rejoining itself at what is now Brentford Docks.

A new Brentford Dock (also known as Brentford Waterfront or simply The Dock) is being proposed by the London Borough of Hounslow. There was an old Brentford Dock on this site but it was closed to shipping in 1877 and converted into pleasure gardens (which became the Brentford Pleasure Gardens, which were mocked by Jerome K. Jerome as "Ratcliffe Highway on Thames"). It was to be the last Thames dock built under the terms of the 1847 Act (see above) and in its early years was one of the most successful such ventures, but soon became overshadowed by railway competition.

most of the original docks have been filled in. The entrance to them is now Brentford Dock Marina. The only one remaining undeveloped is now blocked off at both ends by houses. Brentford Dock is a canalised river, stream and former dock in Brentford, west London. It was constructed between 1855 and 1859 by the Brentford Dock Company. Asian or Asian British is the second largest group with 34%, followed by Black or Black British at 3%.

Timeline

To great advantage, the Great West Road was constructed through the area from around 1930, and further benefited from linking with the M4 motorway in the late 1960s, making Brentford a major hub for roads to the west. The A316 road passed through Brentford, running north from Kingston upon Thames. The old street name of this route was Kingston Road, and this can still be seen in various places to the north and south of the town centre.

As well as many routes south of London, this meant that up until 1965 there was a regular bus service passing through Brentford. However, the last bus company operating through Brentford ceased operation in early 2008 after experiencing severe financial difficulties. The original route of the Great West Road follows the line of a pre-Roman trackway, which was part of a wider route between Canterbury and St Albans being used by the London-to-York post road in 1380.

By 1571, when John Ogilby produced his road atlas of Britain, this track had been Turnpiked (with turnpikes still being called "Great West Road" in several parts of the country in 1755). The Great West Road in Brentford was turnpiked on 26 March 1727, as the third section and final part of the new road from Paddington to Wandsworth. The point at which it was to start was set on Brentford High Street.

Brentford's historic High Street is no longer such a major route from the City of London to the West of England, but still contains an interesting variety of shops and cafes. It also contains one of the few remaining buildings from medieval Brentford at no. 35 High Street (it was built in 1535, and has been extended many times since). The original building was located close to the present Lion public house (ca. 1754), where the street now narrows.

This had been rebuilt considerably when it was described by John Newman in Victorian times. Brentford has been one end of several important journeys throughout history. A stop-off point for Roman legions on the way to Britain, a capital of early Anglo Saxon England, and a fort in the route of Norman conquest, Brentford was for centuries a must-stop-off-point. In later years it was on roads leading from London to Bath, Southampton and (by way of Putney Bridge) Kingston upon Thames.

The area that is now Brentford High Street was part of an ancient path way dating at least as far back as Roman times.  This path started in Old Brentford via St. Paul‘s Church and went through to Kensington Gravel Pits, crossing the Thames by ferry, before continuing onwards through Kew Bridge and then through London towards Canterbury and Dover. The Romans constructed a paved road and gave it the name 'Strada Vicaria'which survived for several centuries until the building of the Great West Road in the 19th century.

On The Periphery

If you only visit one part of the five in the London Borough of Hounslow it should be Gunnersbury Park. The park is quite big and covers 149 acres which makes it one of the biggest parks in west London. Gunnersbury Park is not only a great place to walk your dog but also home to half-a-dozen playgrounds, seven tennis courts, a bowling green, a skate park and even an athletics stadium. It also contains pretty well preserved historic houses which are named after places from all over the world that used to be owned by the famous Rothschild family.

In 1868 the family bought a large estate in Chiswick on which they built Gunnersbury Park House. This was finished in 1871 and so impressed Queen Victoria that she insisted on it being made available for her to use when she visited the German Kaiser. In 1873 The Great Exhibition and its glass pavilions were erected north of the lake on the site of a former nursery garden. When the exhibition finished, the Crystal Palace was relocated to Sydenham Hill in South London.

Others

The Brentford War Memorial, situated in front of Brentford Library on Kew Bridge Road, is a monument to the memory of the men from Brentford who gave their lives in the First World War. The borough had many casualties and this is reflected in the high number (nearly one third) of names inscribed on the memorial. In 1922 an identical war memorial was erected in Kew opposite St Mary's Church, which served Kew and Brentford until 2013 when it was moved to West Middlesex Hospital and replaced by an abstract design with no names.

The old Brentford library is one of the finest examples of late 19th century municipal public libraries in London and has been listed Grade II since 1988. It is situated in what known as the Colonnade behind the previous council offices on Kew Bridge Road, Brentford, in a group with a war memorial and three others dedicated to members of the Women's Institute from this area who died in World War I. The library has changed little since opening in 1904, and is now a grade II listed building with an attached listed garden.

It was built using funds from the will of a wealthy local brewer Henry Young Castor (1830-98). The main hall on the ground floor was divided by an undercroft reading room, which later became a British Book Centre used by students from the Polytechnic of Central London. Brentford Town Hall is a Grade II listed building that contains the Town Hall, police station, library and other facilities. It was designed by architect Henry Tanner, who also designed The Old Bailey, and was opened on 3 March 1889 by Lord Rosebery.

Brentford's library was the first public library to house a children's section, which opened in 1908. The library is open seven days a week and offers free wifi and public internet access. The importance of this main Roman thoroughfare meant that Brentford developed into a prosperous and important town. The road is now known as 'Wells Street'. On 30 August 2020, Brentford confirmed that the stadium was complete and ready to host football matches.