Hammersmith
lay four miles from London on the great western road. It boasted a nunnery
which had been founded in 1669; during the Georgian period all fashionable
ladies of Roman Catholic faith were educated there, and many of them
afterwards took the veil.
There
were many fine residences along the Thames. One of the houses, once
occupied by Queen Catharine, wife to Charles II, was run as an academy
during the late eighteenth century.
Brandenburgh
House agreeably occupied a scenic site on the river near Hammersmith.
A mansion on this spot was first erected by Sir Nicholas Crispe in the
seventeenth century. The house was plundered by Parliamentarians during
the Civil War. In 1683 Prince Rupert purchased the house and gave it
to his mistress, the actress Margaret Hughes. In 1740 the house was
purchased by George Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, who undertook
extensive renovations. The Margrave of Brandenburgh-Anspach purchased
the house in 1792; by the close of the eighteenth century the house
still contained a fair portion of the original house built by Crispe
in the mid-seventeenth century.
The
curious building in the foreground is possibly the villa of
the Earl of Cholmondeley which was situated close to and just south
of Brandenburgh House on the banks of the Thames. The villa was notable
only for the fact that during its building in 1809 workmen found several
variously mutilated skeletons buried in the river bank. It was thought
these remained from a skirmish of the Civil War.
Hammersmith
was generally a peaceful hamlet, but that peace was shattered one night
in 1804 when a Thomas Millwood was shot while he was out walking. In
the weeks preceding Millwood's death the residents of Hammersmith had
become certain they were being haunted by a vengeful ghost. One night
a man called Smith set out to hunt the ghost down with a gun - he shot
Millwood instead. Smith was found guilty of murder, but under the exceptional
circumstances his death sentence was commuted to a year's prison.
