St Nicholas Chiswick

St Nicholas' Church in Chiswick largely dates from the 1880s - only the tower is older, dating back to the fifteenth century - but it stands on a site that has been a centre of Christian worship for over a thousand years. When the church was rebuilt in 1882-84 it was designed by the ecclesiastical architect, John Loughborough Pearson (whose best known work was the building of Truro Cathedral). The churchyard was Chiswick's only burial ground for many centuries and is the last resting place for a number of noteworthy people, the most famous of whom is William Hogarth, the celebrated painter, engraver and caricaturist, who spent his last years nearby in Hogarth's House and was buried here in 1764. His tomb on the south side of the church bears an engraved poem by David Garrick. A guide to the location of the most notable graves is available in the church, these include the last resting place of Henry Joy, the trumpeter who sounded the 'Charge of the Light Brigade', who died in 1893; the actor Charles Holland; and Lord Burlington's bricklayer, Richard Wright. To the west of the churchyard is a small mausoleum, designed by Sir John Soane for the landscape painter P.J. de Loutherbourg who died in 1812.