The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability is a much better name than The Hospital for Incurables, which is how this place started out in 1854. It's less a hospital, more a turbo-charged convalescent home for those whose brain injuries mean they may never lead an ordinary life. A bad traffic accident might bring you here, or a neurological condition like multiple sclerosis, but the rehabilitation you'd get here in Putney is as good as ever. It's still a charity too, so was never absorbed into the NHS, which is why a lady in a mouth-operated wheelchair might be waiting in reception with a collecting tin.
The hospital faces a substantial portion of West Hill near Putney Haath, and has been sympathetically extended several times. Reception is the original Georgian mansion, with its classical reliefs, ionic columns and hand sanitiser dispensers. Additional wings were added in 1868 and 1879, with long institutional corridors and hand-cranked lifts, and the Queen opened a new block with the latest facilities in 1985. Having a hairdresser and dental surgery on site, for example, enhances patient wellbeing and helps keep transport costs down.
Chris the archivist was the driving force behind opening up the building for Open House. He laid out a selection of historical treats in the De Lancey Lowe Room, including a letter from Florence Nightingale and a Royal Charter with a whopping great red seal, then attempted to lead us around the ground floor and across the garden. We popped into the canteen. We admired the facilities in the art therapy room. We walked amongst the raised beds where patients in wheelchairs enjoy high-level gardening. We saw a 500 year old oak tree. But mainly, we just got in the way.
The RHN remains operational even on a Sunday morning, so two dozen tourgoers blocking a corridor to look at some stained glass windows isn't ideal. Staff pushing patients to church in the Assembly Hall waited patiently while we shuffled over, while a latecomer squeezed through so he could start his shift cleaning the floors. In one of the dayrooms we disturbed a family come to visit mum, so she wheeled out to the verandah (where we interrupted them again quarter of an hour later). I don't like to stare, but I couldn't help but be impressed by the care, the technology and the stoicism that was in evidence for these very special patients. Sometimes it's less about the buildings and more about the people, and my trip to Putney has left an indelible mark.
I couldn't describe Park View Road in North Ealing as a typical suburban street because the houses are mostly on the larger side, but number 46 is in a totally different league. It's called the White House, and it gleams, and it was built here by a self-made Polish businessman as a blinging tribute to his parents. That's not even the house you can see from the road, that's a massive entrance arch topped off by classical statues with a driveway through the centre.
The house itself is supposedly a recreation of the palace outside Warsaw where 'Prince' John Zylinski's family lived until the start of WW2. It took seven years to build, not least because the decoration is so ornate, with gold leaf on the walls and ceilings, polished birchwood for the internal doors and marble all the way up the stairs. The salon has a Steinway piano painted gold to match the decor. The dining room seats more people than might ever need to be simultaneously impressed. Britney Spears once filmed a video in the bathroom with the forest-effect marble, not the bathroom with the alarmingly angled mirrors. Ask nicely and the White House might be available as a wedding venue.
I think it's fair to say that yesterday's visitors were impressed, or at the very least amazed. A lot of jockeying for prime photographic positioning was taking place, and one family went round taking repeated selfies against increasingly glitzy backgrounds. Those present at 2pm would have been treated to a self-indulgent snatch of Swan Lake performed by John's ballet-dancing partner, so keen are the couple to showcase their artistic talents. But the view from the library balcony is irrevocably of lowly Acton, and just over the fence is a bland grass-topped covered reservoir, so the sumptuous ambience doesn't really stretch beyond the house.
If you voted in the last London Mayoral elections, John was one of the outsider independent candidates, indeed he limped home in 11th place. Having experienced his house, and been dazzled by his ego, his 2016 candidature suddenly makes perfect sense.
Once upon a time, for which read 100 years ago, Perivale was a tiny hamlet beside the River Brent with a 12th century church. Then Western Avenue was built, inspiring much suburban development but all on the wrong side of a roaring dual carriageway, and St Mary's became superfluous to demand. In 1972 its parish was disbanded, leaving vacant a Grade I listed building, after which a group of volunteers took over and transformed it into the West London Arts Centre. It still looks and feels very much like a church, admittedly a very small one, but it now has a grand piano in the chancel and a sound mixing desk up the tower.
The volunteers are just as devoted, as I discovered when I popped in, be that to preserving the history of the building or promoting the series of regular concerts that takes place within. Had I been local and/or with a penchant for classical music, I would have been hard pressed into attending future recitals. Thank you, I said, but I see you livestream many of them on YouTube so I shall obviously check in there starting this Tuesday afternoon.
Another volunteer showed me a brass in the nave dated February 1500, also the tiny leper window, then invited me up the stairs to see her exhibition. A few cases of ecclesiastical ephemera fill a small space in the tower, along with various paintings of the church in its former sylvan setting. Today the churchyard abuts a golf course, immediately alongside the 12th tee, where you might find a lost golf ball amongst the graves and winged memorials. I was also invited to ring one of the bells, from a peal of three installed after the war, and proved impressively inept at getting the rhythm right. The music will be a lot better tomorrow.
