Conversations, dispatches and ideas from the Bush Theatre.
In celebration of This Place We Know kicking off this week, we’ve launched WeAreW12 a free photography exhibition and a celebration of Shepherd’s Bush, created by photographer Eileen Perrier and the people of Shepherd’s Bush. Eileen’s photos and submissions from the public will pop up on the walls of the Bush Theatre during September and October. You can find out more about WeAreW12 here.
We’re in love with 21st century Shepherd’s Bush in all of its diversity and vibrancy as seen in Eileen’s photographs.
But we’ve also become fascinated with the history of our little patch of W12 and with the help of our friends at twitter account @OldW12 have been trawling through the archives to find these total gems.
This picture by Nobby Clark was taken outside our old home on Shepherd’s Bush Green in 1979.
Sindercombe Cottage (photo c1800s) on the Goldhawk road was the home of one Miles Sindercombe, a disgruntled Roundhead who in 1657 made several attempts to assassinate Oliver Cromwell. Sindercombe planned to ambush the Lord Protector using a specially built machine with muskets fixed to a frame. His plan failed, Sindercombe was sentenced to death, and his cottage was eventually demolished in the 1760s. It later became the Bush Hotel, which later became the Bush Theatre! Revolutionary beginnings…
Punishment book from St Stephens School 1944 . Plenty of stick ! #bushw12 pic.twitter.com/fulLcCzndU
— Old Shepherds Bush (@OldW12) June 15, 2016
Sant Fateh Singh, Sikh leader, leads the morning prayer at his headquarters in Shepherds Bush in 1966 (Photo by David Cairns/Express/Getty Images)
‘The Lawn’ a terrace on west side of #bushw12 Green c1910. Demolished for Pavilion , now @DorsettLondon pic.twitter.com/az3eCR20G8
— Old Shepherds Bush (@OldW12) February 6, 2016
Harry H Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell, stars of the popular TV series Steptoe and Son, on a patch of waste ground in Shepherd’s Bush in 1970 (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)
In 1846 Charles Dickens set up Urania Cottage in Shepherd’s Bush, a home for so-called ‘fallen’ women. For just over a decade the home taught young women from prisons, penitentiaries and workhouses, and from the streets of London basic literacy and how to cook, sew and clean.
A little girl and a baby crying at the Old Oak Infant Centre, Shepherd’s Bush in the 1930s. On the orders of Hammersmith Borough Council, infants at this welfare centre are wearing badges with ‘Please do not kiss me’ printed on them, because of fear of infection (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)
A woman poses outside Shepherd’s Bush police station in February 1965, wearing clothes identical to those of murder victim Bridget or Bridie O’Hara, in an attempt to jog the memory of witnesses. O’Hara was one of the seven victims of a London serial killer known as Jack the Stripper. The murders, as yet unsolved, were known collectively as the Hammersmith Nudes (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Let’s finish on a lighter note… John Cleese doing his silly walk down Thorpebank Road in Shepherd’s Bush
