Dukes Meadows

About

Dukes Meadows is a riverside park on metropolitan open land in Chiswick, London. The land was bought by the council in 1923, and the park was opened in 1926. It is cared for by the Dukes Meadows Trust. The area is home to the Chiswick Farmers' Market, which helps to pay for the park's maintenance. From 2023 the Dukes Meadows Footbridge forms part of the Thames Path.

Threats: In 1902, the land to the south of Chiswick's Grove Park district consisted of orchards and meadows with a farmhouse. A plan was made that year to build homes for 40,000 people (more than the population of Chiswick at that time) on the site, in a new town to be called Burlingwick, but they were never built. A second threat arose in 1914, when the Brentford Gas Company introduced a bill in Parliament to build a gasworks over 80 acres (32 hectares) of the meadows. Chiswick residents objected to the plan. On 6 February 1914, The Times printed an editorial opposing the scheme, stating that "The scheme offends against the modern axiom of town-planning which insists that all amenities of living for workers should be safeguarded in densely populated areas, the new industries should be established as far...