About the talk
On the night of 25 October 1690, locals would have witnessed a magnificent procession from Gunnersbury House to Ealing’s parish church, St Mary’s. Along with pennants, banners, standards, flambeaux, decorated horses, feathers, carriages and a huge escutcheon of the Royal Arms, crowds of mourners, led by his widow, followed the body of the late Sir John Maynard. Drawing on rare surviving notes recorded in the tiny pages of an unused almanac, this talk reveals the details of what was perhaps the grandest funeral ever seen at Gunnersbury.
About the speaker
James Wisdom has been closely involved with the study of local history in West London since the 1970s; he chairs the Brentford & Chiswick Local History Society. He helped to set up the Friends of Gunnersbury Park & Museum and has been studying the history of the Gunnersbury estate since the 1980s. He is joint author of Gunnersbury Park: The Place and the People, Scala Publications, 2018.
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