Edition 30, in partnership with Banya No.1 Chiswick
🧖 Banya No.1 Chiswick
📍 404-406 Chiswick High Road, W4 5TF | Open daily, 9.30am to 10.30pm
November is banya weather. Banya No.1 is, in its own words, not your typical spa. The idea is the two extremes, hot and cold: a steam room kept at around 70°C, then the icy plunge pool or a bucket of cold water over the head, then back in to do it again. The treatment to have is parenie, a thermal massage given inside the steam room with venik, leafy bundles of branches.
The plunge pool. Photo: Banya No.1
Afterwards you retire to your own booth in the lounge, or a private room, for Eastern European food and drink: borsch at £10, beef pelmeni at £15, draught kvass at £5 and a 1.5-litre pot of Banya No.1 tea at £8. Allow about three hours for the lot.
The reward afterwards. Photo: Banya No.1
A 90-minute session starts at £40 and a three-hour session at £80, and packages with treatments start at £97 off-peak, which means weekdays before 5pm. Swimming costumes are required at mixed sessions, and it's over-16s only.
Reader offer: 10% off three-hour sessions with the code insidechiswick, until 31 January 2027. It isn't valid on 90-minute sessions, on discounted packages or with other offers.
🔗 gobanyachiswick.co.uk · t: 020 8189 9777
ig: @gobanya.chiswick
Welcome back.
The first proper frost of the autumn is due on Friday night, after a cold, bright day that looks like the best of the weekend. Sunday is milder but brings rain by the afternoon, so get the walk in early.
Inside: a reader's photos of Woodstock Road at dusk, Whistler at St Nicholas, a few yards from his grave, and 39 local artists under one church roof next weekend. Plus the cheese market on Sunday, a wine advent calendar, and a Strand on the Green ceramicist showing her endangered animals.
Here's the week.
🍂 Woodstock Road, after dark
We asked for W4 after dark, and Bori B. sent us Woodstock Road: the last of the leaves lit gold by a street lamp at dusk, and the same road on a bright morning for good measure.
Woodstock Road at dusk. Photo: Bori B.
And in the morning, Monday 2 November. Photo: Bori B.
This week's challenge: the first frost. Saturday morning should be the one, with -2°C forecast overnight. Frozen cobwebs, white lawns, mist on the river. Hit reply and send yours by Monday 16 November, and we'll run the best of them next week, with your name on it.
🖼️ Whistler, a few yards from his grave
📍 St Nicholas Church, Church Street, W4 2PH | Thu 19 Nov | 7pm
James McNeill Whistler is buried with his wife Beatrix in Old Chiswick Graveyard. Next Thursday, Professor Emeritus Daniel Sutherland of the University of Arkansas, whose new book is Whistler's Legacy, comes to St Nicholas to talk about him. The evening is hosted by the Friends of St Nicholas Church with the Old Chiswick Protection Society and the Whistler Society.
James McNeill Whistler. Image: Friends of St Nicholas Church
The bronze figures were stolen from the corners of his tomb some years ago. The plan now is to restore it, and the night includes an update on the proposals and details of the public appeal.
Tickets are £10 on the door, £5 for students, free for under-18s and for members of the Friends. There's a pay bar, and the ticket money goes towards the restoration.
🍷 Lea & Sandeman
📍 167 Chiswick High Road, W4 2DR
Twenty-four doors, twenty-four bottles. Lea & Sandeman's Wine Advent Calendar has arrived at the Chiswick shop, priced at £399.95. That works out at about £16.66 a door.
The shop suggests it as a gift for a wine lover or a way to stock the rack for the year ahead. Nobody will check who opens it.
Worth knowing: it's collected from the shop. Pop in, or call 020 8995 7355 to reserve one.
Source: Lea & Sandeman Chiswick, email to customers (5 November)
🎨 Thirty-nine artists, one church, and fizz on the Friday
📍 Christ Church, Acton Green (formerly St Alban's), South Parade, W4 5LG | Fri 20 Nov 6pm to 9pm, Sat 21 Nov 10.30am to 6pm | Free
The W4 Art & Design Winter Fair is back for its ninth year next weekend, with 39 local artists and makers showing painting, photography, ceramics, jewellery, sculpture and textiles. Everything is for sale at studio prices, and the people who made it are there to talk about it.
Painting by Pierre Fowell. Image: W4 Art & Design
Friday evening is the preview, with fizz and live jazz. Saturday is the full day. The church is on Acton Green Common, five minutes' walk from Turnham Green and Chiswick Park stations. A good place to find the Christmas present nobody else has bought.
📅 Everything in this edition is on our events calendar, with times, prices and booking links, plus plenty more between now and Christmas. Worth a bookmark.
This week
✂️ Make a zine at Hogarth's House | Fri 13 Nov | 2pm to 5pm | Hogarth's House, Hogarth Lane, W4 2QN
A free Being Human Festival workshop, In Search of William Hogarth in Contemporary London. There are only ten places, booked by email with the organiser. Details
🛋️ At the Tabard | Fri 13 to Mon 16 Nov | Tabard Theatre, 2 Bath Road, W4 1LW
Freud's Last Session runs Wednesday to Friday at 7.30pm and Saturday at 6pm until 28 November, £25.50; this Saturday is sold out. Cock and Bull, Gilbert and Sullivan falling out in song, has seats left only for Sunday at 6pm, £24.50. Freud · Cock and Bull
🏉 Chiswick Rugby v UCS | Sat 14 Nov | kick-off to be confirmed | Chiswick Rugby Club, Dan Mason Drive, W4 2SH
The first XV, top of Counties 1 Middlesex with six wins from six, are at home to ninth-placed UCS. Fixtures
🧀 Cheese, then yard sales | Sun 15 Nov | Cheese Market 9.30am to 3pm, Old Market Place, W4 2DR; Yard Sale Day 12pm to 4pm, across Chiswick
The third-Sunday cheese market, opposite M&S, then residents selling from their own front doors, organised through Loppa. Sign up on loppa.market for the addresses, and take a coat for the yard sales: rain is likely by the afternoon. Cheese Market · Yard Sale Day
🎷 Jazz at the George: Momentum | Sun 15 Nov | doors 7pm, show 7.30pm | George IV, 185 Chiswick High Road, W4 2DR
Six-piece jazz fusion for the EFG London Jazz Festival. £16, or £14 with a Club Card, plus booking fee. Book
🗿 London Sculpture Prize | Wed 18 to Sun 22 Nov | 10am to 4.30pm | Gunnersbury Park Museum, Popes Lane, W5 4NH
Contemporary sculpture in the mansion, with this year's finalists announced during the show. Free, no booking. Details
Further ahead
🎻 Bach to Baby Christmas concert | Fri 20 Nov | 11am to 11.45am | St Michael & All Angels, Bath Road, W4 1TT
A 45-minute Christmas family concert. Up to two children go free with every adult ticket. Book
🥣 Stir-up Sunday at Gunnersbury | Sun 22 Nov | hour-long sessions from 10.15am | Gunnersbury Park Museum, Popes Lane, W5 4NH
The traditional day for stirring the Christmas pudding, with family sessions for ages four and up. £8 a child, adults free. Book
🎼 Chiswick Chamber Orchestra | Sun 22 Nov | 3.30pm | St Michael & All Angels, Bath Road, W4 1TT
Mozart's Symphony No. 29 and his Violin Concerto in G, with leader Stephanie Waite as soloist, then Haydn's Farewell Symphony. Peter Robertson conducts. Tickets
🌷 In the Lady Garden | Sun 22 Nov 3pm and 6pm, Mon 23 and Tue 24 Nov 7.30pm | Tabard Theatre, 2 Bath Road, W4 1LW
Babs Horton's comedy about ageing, rebellion and the untold lives of older women. About an hour, no interval. £20, concessions £17. Book
🎁 Chiswick Creatives Pop-Up Christmas Market | Fri 27 Nov 7pm to 9pm, Sat 28 Nov 10am to 5.30pm, Sun 29 Nov 11.30am to 4pm | St Michael's Parish Hall, Priory Avenue, W4 1TX
Local makers selling Christmas gifts, upstairs in the parish hall. Details
🎄 Christmas at Kew | from Fri 13 Nov | 4.20pm to 10pm, selected dates to 3 Jan | Kew Gardens, TW9 3AE
The light trail is open from tomorrow. From £25.50, timed entry, book ahead. Book
🏺 A Strand on the Green ceramicist and her vanishing animals
Susie Lonie, who works from a studio and kiln shed at her home in Strand on the Green, graduated this summer with a BA in ceramics. This weekend she is one of the new graduates showing at Green Grads, an exhibition of work with sustainability at its heart. Her collection is called Disappearance: each animal celebrates an endangered or vulnerable species.
Green Grads was founded in 2021 by Barbara Chandler, who was awarded an MBE in June for services to the design industry. The show is at Yorkton Workshops, 1-3 Yorkton Street, E2 8NH, on Saturday from 11am to 7pm and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Free, no booking. It's a trip east, but for a neighbour.
Sources: The Chiswick Calendar, Green Grads
🎭 A Chiswick playwright up for two awards
Gareth Armstrong, who has lived in Chiswick for nearly 30 years, has been nominated for the New Writing Award at the Standing Ovation awards for London's pub theatres. His play Round About Hogarth, staged at the Tabard in February, is also up for the two-hander acting award.
The Tabard, last year's Pub Theatre of the Year, has seven productions nominated this time. The ceremony is on 29 November, and Armstrong is already writing a sequel, Hogarth's Progress.
Source: The Chiswick Calendar
⚽ Comebacks, penalties and 504 pupils at Chiswick School
Chiswick School's review of the first half of term reads like a good cup run. The Year 8 boys came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 in the Middlesex Cup, the Year 8 girls won their tie on penalties after a 3-3 draw, the Year 9 boys went through 1-0, and the Year 11 boys finished third in the Hounslow senior five-a-side tournament.
The number that matters most: 504 pupils in Years 7 to 11 went to at least one sports club. Badminton, basketball and futsal were all oversubscribed, and there's a new bouldering club, led by Miss Whitaker.
Source: Chiswick School
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