“Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St Paul’s.” (Edmund Clerihew Bentley, 1905)
Christopher Wren also found time to design the layout at Bushy Park; a magnificent avenue lined by four rows of chestnut trees each side stretching for a mile with a view of Hampton Court and another impressive avenue of limes. At the intersection of these avenues is, rather prosaically, a roundabout but the eye catcher in the centre is a circular ornamental pond with a magnificent wedding cake fountain topped with a statue of Diana.
Yesterday the gilded statue of Diana had a cormorant on her head, wings outstretched drying its wings; such a sought after location other cormorants were waiting their turn. The fountain is Listed Grade I and the most photographed thing in the park.
Possibly the least noticed objects are two memorials commemorating the United States Air Forces base in the park in WW II.
The circular plaque surmounting a brick pentacle reads:
”This tablet marks the site of the European headquarters of the United States Army Air Forces July 1942 – December 1944 and is dedicated by the Royal Air Force to their comrades-in-arms. It is through fraternity that liberty is saved.”
A sentiment as relevant today as eighty years ago.
A short distance away is another memorial set in the centre of brick paving that marks the location of Eisenhower’s temporary office in Bushy Park. The inscription reads:
”SHAEF On this spot stood the office of General Dwight D Eisenhower Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. Here for the three vital months leading up to the D Day landings on the 6th June 1944 Eisenhower and his staff planned the invasion of Europe.
The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force moved to Bushy Park from Grosvenor Square on Sunday 5th March 1944. Eisenhower moved to his Advance Headquarters at Southwick House, Portsmouth, on 2nd June 1944.”
I cannot resist digressing. Seven years ago I wrote a post about The Eisenhower Centre in central London that you may have forgotten.
I have just discovered the distinguished small publishing house, Marble Hill, so it is good to have a picture and account of the house and park it is proudly named after. To add to the synchronicity (apropos your crossing): in the early 1960s as a youth I often did shifts as the driver of the pedestrian (and pram) Surbiton-Bushy Park cross-Thames Hart’s Ferry, where my father also kept my National 12 dinghy for my river sailing and picnics. There is now a fancy restaurant on-site, where once I ate my Wall’s chicken and mushroom lunch pie, in company with the old boat builder who made the wooden launches we rented out. A great man called Vic Townsend ran this small empire and was a brilliant and unfussed occasional dinghy racer. Thanks for the memory rabbit hole you have opened.
My (American) parents were both at Bushy Park in WWII. My father a captain with U.S. 8th Air Force headquarters, and my mother with the U.S. Women’s Army in public relations. They met and married in Teddington. I just finished transcribing my father’s letters home to his parents. Very dull because he couldn’t talk about anything he did! My mother went through a list of the states alphabetically and found a woman soldier to write about from each one! They never stopped talking about their time there; it was the great romance of their lives. It’s nice to see someone take notice of their presence. Thank you.