Fulham

Fulham, a western metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N.W. by Hammersmith, N.E. by Kensington, E. by Chelsea, and S.E., S. and S.W. by the river Thames. Pop. (1901) 137,289. The principal thoroughfares are Fulham Palace Road running S. from Hammersmith, Fulham Road and King’s Road, W. from Chelsea, converging and leading to Putney Bridge over the Thames; North End Road between Hammersmith and Fulham Roads; Lillie Road between South Kensington and Fulham Palace Road; and Wandsworth Bridge Road leading S. from New King’s Road to Wandsworth Bridge. In the north Fulham includes the residential district known as West Kensington, and farther south that of Walham Green. The manor house or palace of the bishops of London stands in grounds, beautifully planted and surrounded by a moat, believed to be a Danish work, near the river west of Putney Bridge. Its oldest portion is the picturesque western quadrangle, built by Bishop Fitzjames (1506-1522). The parish church of All Saints, between the bridge and the grounds, was erected in 1881 from designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield. The fine old monuments from the former building, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, are mostly preserved, and in the churchyard are the memorials of several bishops of London and of Theodore Hook (1841). The public recreation grounds include the embankment and gardens between the river and the palace grounds, and there are also two well-known enclosures used for sports within the borough. Of these Hurlingham Park is the headquarters of the Hurlingham Polo Club and a fashionable resort; and Queen’s Club, West Kensington, has tennis and other courts for the use of members, and is also the scene of important football matches, and of the athletic meetings between Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and those between the English and American Universities held in England. In Seagrave Road is the Western fever hospital. The parliamentary borough of Fulham returns one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 36 councillors. Area, 1703.5 acres.

Fulham, or in its earliest form Fullanham, is uncertainly stated to signify “the place” either “of fowls” or “of dirt.” The manor is said to have been given to Bishop Erkenwald about the year 691 for himself and his successors in the see of London, and Holinshed relates that the Bishop of London was lodging in his manor place in 1141 when Geoffrey de Mandeville, riding out from the Tower of London, took him prisoner. At the Commonwealth the manor was temporarily out of the bishops’ hands, being sold to Colonel Edmund Harvey. There is no record of the first erection of a parish church, but the first known rector was appointed in 1242, and a church probably existed a century before this. The earliest part of the church demolished in 1881, however, did not date farther back than the 15th century. In 879 Danish invaders, sailing up the Thames, wintered at Fulham and Hammersmith. Near the former wooden Putney Bridge, built in 1729 and replaced in 1886, the earl of Essex threw a bridge of boats across the river in 1642 in order to march his army in pursuit of Charles I., who thereupon fell back on Oxford. Margravine Road recalls the existence of Bradenburg House, a riverside mansion built by Sir Nicholas Crispe in the time of Charles I., used as the headquarters of General Fairfax in 1647 during the civil wars, and occupied in 1792 by the margrave of Bradenburg-Anspach and Bayreuth and his wife, and in 1820 by Caroline, consort of George IV.

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