History
Our beautiful cherry trees were planted in 1932, soon after the houses were built in 1929. The glorious pink spring blossom has given joy to successive generations. We found an article about the trees in the Chiswick and Brentford Times in 1971. According to this article the trees were planted to commemorate the Borough of Brentford and Chiswick being granted its charter by a Mr. Collier, the foreman at Chiswick House Grounds.
The video below shows how the area has evolved in the last 150 years.
Royal connection?
It is widely reported that both Her Majesty Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother visited Staveley Road to see the cherry trees.
We know from Her Majesty Queen Mary’s biography by James Pope-Hennessy that Edward VII as Prince of Wales leased Chiswick House. George Wales, the future King George V, tended a small garden plot when young and played with Mary Teck who would later become his wife Queen Mary. Her Majesty Queen Mary was a frequent visitor to Chiswick House and presumably enjoyed the cherry blossom. It is very plausible that both Her Majesty Queen Mary, and her daughter-in-law, The Queen Mother, made detours to see the cherry trees in Staveley Road as Chiswick is on the route from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle. We contacted the Royal Household and they informed us that have searched the Royal Archives but are unable to find any reference to either of them visiting Staveley Road. We were told that if these were private visits (e.g. a detour from a journey on the A4) they are unlikely to have been recorded.
An elderly relative of a member of our Steering Committee knew Mr MacIntyre, the Parks Superintendent, who lived inside the Chiswick House Gardens. The relative, who live in Duke's Avenue in the early 1960s, told us about a conversation with Mr MacIntyre at around that time in which he telephoned "the palace" to let them know when the Staveley Road cherry blossom was at its best so that Her Majesty Queen Mary could visit.
Mr MacIntyre was born in 1910 and died in 1991. According to a newspaper entry about the death of his wife in 2003, he worked for 50 years in the parks department, presumably from age 15 to 65, retiring in 1975. Queen Mary died in 1953 so the most likely period for her visits is between 1945, when he was in his thirties and the Second World War had ended, and 1953, when Her Majesty Queen Mary died. We understand that she preferred the title "Her Majesty Queen Mary" after her husband, George V died in 1936.
According to her biographer, James Pope-Hennessy, Her Majesty Queen Mary kept a daily diary from 1891 to 1953, so any visits to Chiswick may be recorded there. The diaries are in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.
Cherry Blossom Boot Polish
The “Cherry Blossom Boot Polish” made at Dan Mason’s Chiswick factory preceded the cherry trees in Staveley Road as is shown from this excerpt from “The Memoirs of a Masonian” which recalls events in 1904 and 1905.
"Cherry Blossom" had not arrived at that time . Floral names played a prominent part in those days in this line of business. We had "Red Poppy" and "Primrose" soft-soaps, "Forget-me-not" furniture polish, "Buttercup" metal polish and finally "Cherry Blossom Boot Polish"...
We have been told that four cherry trees which were planted by Jack Murray, the company’s gardener, in the early sixties at the entrance to the company’s retirement flats in Staveley Gardens, would have been near to the entrance to the Cherry Blossom factory. This video gives the full "Cherry Blossom Story" and probes our Royal connection.
V2 bomb
The space race was started when a V2 bomb fell in Staverley Road on September 7th 1940. There is a very interesting article about Chiswick, the Blitz and the V2 which fell in Staveley Road on the Chiswick Book Festival website. The video below describes the V2 bomb in more detail.
Recent developments
Another article from the Chiswick and Brentford Times in 1992 explains how local residents raised £1,220 to purchase and plant 17 young flowering cherry trees.
The photo on the right below shows the planting in 1992.
We also found an article in the Hounslow Informer from 2005 that describes how a cherry tree was planted in a German town on the 60th anniversary of VE Day to remember the victims of the first V2 flying bomb, which crashed into the Staveley Road. The tree being planted by our former Councillor and Mayor of Hounslow Paul Lynch, Val Bott, Dirke Zache and Rd Hans Robert Metelmann, minister of culture for the state of Meckelburg Vorpommen, as is shown by the photo on the left below.
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Blossom Day W4 was formed in October 2019 to protect the trees for future generations.
 Planting in Germany in 2005 |
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