LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
In the Middle Ages
and for some time afterwards Hanwell was a hamlet
of Greenford manor and was administered through
its courts. (fn. 11) During the 18th century, when the
court was becoming little more than a formal
meeting for the registration of copyhold conveyances,
the two villages began to be treated as separate
manors, and in the 19th century the Hanwell court
was moved from Greenford to Hanwell. It was held
at first at the 'King's Arms' and latterly at the
Viaduct Inn, and survived, with a vestigial court leet,
until about 1900, though the Greenford court
declined more rapidly. (fn. 12) In the later 19th century
a tenants' dinner, which a steward afterwards called
'rather a depressing function', was held at the
Viaduct Inn and an 'old tradition' was observed
whereby the steward and tenants played 'bat, trap,
and ball' in a field near the Brent. (fn. 13)
Long before the demise of the manor court most
of the functions of local administration had been
taken over by the vestry. (fn. 14) In 1788 the vestry chose
the headboroughs, who, with the constable, were
officially appointed at the court, and at about the
same time the vestry was reporting trespasses on
the waste to the steward and generally concerning
itself with rights over the open fields and common.
The vestry minutes are preserved from 1780, and
show a small body, under the chairmanship of the
rector and including several of the local gentry, which
seldom met more than once a month. Naturally
preoccupied a good deal with poor relief, the cost
of which rose from £128 in 1776 to nearly £550 in
1813-14, when 32 persons received relief regularly
and 75 occasionally, (fn. 15) its management of the matter
was nevertheless rather desultory. The help received
from Hobbayne's charity, (fn. 16) which amounted to
over £40 in 1822, no doubt reduced the sense of
urgency with which the vestry regarded the problem
of poor-relief. There was no workhouse, and attempts
to secure facilities at those of other parishes seem
to have been unsuccessful, (fn. 17) while a plan to send
pauper children as 'apprentices' to a mill at Cuckney
(Notts.) seems to have been rarely applied. (fn. 18) Instead
the vestry relied on pensions of the usual kind and
on sporadic measures like the formation of a charitable fund in 1795 to subsidize the price of bread.
The parish pump erected in 1815 was also designed
to benefit the poor. Instead of a workhouse the
vestry maintained poor-houses which were occupied
rent-free or at low rents. References to the poor's or
parish house or houses in the 17th and early 18th
centuries (fn. 19) may have generally related, as they
sometimes did, (fn. 20) to houses belonging to Hobbayne's
charity, which were leased for the charity's profit,
but in 1615 at least the charity made a grant to the
parish for repairing a 'church house' which seems to
have been a poor-house. (fn. 21) By 1740 this house was
probably no longer in existence, for the parish then
took a house for a year to serve the same purpose. (fn. 22)
Five houses rebuilt in 1790 by the charity on its land
in the Halfacre (now Halfacre Road) were thereupon
used to house the poor and three more were added to
them by the parish in 1793. They were under the
management of the parish officers, and the vestry
paid rent for them to the charity. (fn. 23) Later the rent
seems to have been discontinued, and after the
parish ceased to be responsible for its own poor in
1836 the charity continued to let some of the houses,
rent-free, to poor persons. (fn. 24)
The Hobbayne's trustees generally comprised the
more influential members of the vestry, and possibly
almost constituted a committee for parish affairs. (fn. 25)
According to the Chancery decree of 1612 under
which they worked, however, they made their gifts
to the poor in consultation with the parish officers.
It seems likely that as the duties of the vestry became
more onerous and the funds of the charity less equal
to the needs of the poor, so the influence of the
trustees, as such, declined. The relations of vestry
and charity in the late 18th and early 19th century,
however, remain slightly obscure and could be
unfriendly. (fn. 26)
No minutes survive to show how the vestry
reacted to the removal of its poor-law responsibilities
in 1836, but it never seems to have been an enterprising body and probably sank into inactivity. It
was not until some time later that rapid growth in
population made sanitary and other reforms imperative and that changes in administration were made.
A strongly adverse report (fn. 27) on the sanitary condition
of the parish in 1876 noted the entire absence of
control on building standards and recorded that the
only steps ever taken to deal with the lack of sewerage
and the pollution of the wells and the river had been
the making of a few ineffectual changes in the various
open drains about fifteen years before. Brentford
rural sanitary authority had appointed a parish
committee on sewerage, but the committee's term
of office had expired before the scheme it prepared
was accepted, and it had not been reappointed. The
report gives examples of the different fevers that were
prevalent as a result. The rural sanitary authority,
after some reverses, (fn. 28) began sewerage operations and
opened a sewage farm on the present site of the
sewage works by the Brent about 1884-5. (fn. 29) About
the same time, although hampered by its association
in the very small rural sanitary authority with entirely
rural parishes (Greenford, Perivale, and Twyford),
and no doubt by its own small area, Hanwell seems to
have begun to awaken to the need for new expedients. (fn. 30) A lighting committee was formed in 1876, (fn. 31)
a burial board in 1881, and a highway board in
1885. (fn. 32) The proposal of Norwood to construct
sewage works with an outfall into the Brent close
to the built-up area of Hanwell seems to have
provided the final impetus needed for the forming of
a local board of health. (fn. 33) This took place in 1885,
apparently with the virtually unanimous approval of
the parish, though in face of some opposition from
Greenford, whose inhabitants feared that the absence
of Hanwell from the rural sanitary authority would
throw an unfair burden on the remaining parishes. (fn. 34)
The board comprised nine members, whose
attendance, poor in the early years, was said in 1894
to have been lately improved. The number was then
increased to twelve. (fn. 35) It met in hired rooms until
the winter of 1891-2, when it moved into Cherington
House, which it had purchased a few months
before. (fn. 36) The completion and enlargement of the
drainage system and sewage works, and the making
of by-laws about building were the primary tasks of
the board. (fn. 37) Despite some efforts neither it nor the
council which succeeded it provided an isolation
hospital, but they managed to secure facilities at
those of other authorities nearby. In the same way,
when the arrangements originally made by the
burial board for the use of the St. George's, Hanover
Square (now City of Westminster), cemetery were
no longer practicable, the council made arrangements
for the use of a private burial ground in Greenford.
Town planning was discussed in 1911 but no scheme
was adopted. The council was not, however, inactive: it opened its first recreation ground (Churchfields) in 1898, (fn. 38) and had 34 acres of parks by 1926,
as well as 749 allotments. (fn. 39) The Carnegie public
library next to the municipal offices was opened in
1905. In 1917 the council took over an existing day
nursery at no. 44, Uxbridge road, to be a crèche for
the children of munition-workers, and continued to
maintain it until after the war. (fn. 40) The council built
122 houses and flats in Townholme Crescent under
the Housing Act of 1919, and it later started another
estate of 30 houses in Montague Road and Cambridge Road, which was completed by the borough
of Ealing after 1926. (fn. 41) The inhabitants of Hanwell
favoured the amalgamation with Ealing which took
place in 1926. Relations between the two councils
were friendly, and Hanwell people already used the
baths as well as the isolation hospital of the larger
authority, since Hanwell was too small to be able to
afford similar facilities. (fn. 42) By that date the council's
two original committees had grown to nine and the
staff had increased from seven to about twenty:
the treasurer remained part-time throughout, (fn. 43) and
the medical officer of health was in later years shared
with Ealing. (fn. 44) For some time before 1926 the council
had a strong Labour minority, chiefly from the West
Central and South wards. Most of the members in
the last years, however, belonged to the Ratepayers'
Protection Association. (fn. 45)
A school board of seven members was formed in
in 1899 and the clerk to the council acted as its
clerk, but its functions were transferred under the
Act of 1902 to the county council, not to the urban
district council. (fn. 46)