William Gladstone

2009

William Gladstone

Dollis Hill celebrations for William Gladstone’s 200th birthday

2009 is a big year for anniversaries: 250 years since the birth of Robbie Burns, 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin and 200 years since the birth of William Ewart Gladstone, four times prime minister of Great Britain, finally stepping down at the grand old age of 85, in 1894.

Gladstone’s anniversary has a special significance for people in Brent as the Grand Old Man (GOM) spent so much of his later life staying in Dollis Hill House, the home of his friend and foreign secretary the Earl of Aberdeen. The grounds of this house are named Gladstone Park in his honour; the local phone code, 452, is of course GLA; and Hawarden Hill, the flats opposite, are named after his family home near Chester, Hawarden Hall. Gladstone Park is 70 acres of playground, grass and trees, with the stables of Dollis Hill House now the Stables Arts Centre and Gallery.

At weekends, Gladstone and his beloved wife Catherine regularly drove out to the rural retreat of Dollis Hill House, to get away from the stress and strains of Downing Street. Here Gladstone picked strawberries and rose buds from the walled garden. He slept under the trees in a hammock and bathed in the pond. He served sandwiches and tea to the haymakers and sang hymns with Catherine. On Sunday mornings they drove to St Mary’s Church in Willesden and thousands of people turned out to cheer him. Sometimes the crowds were so large that the couple went instead to St Andrew’s Church in Kingsbury.