Barnes, Surrey

Description
Barnes, a parish in Surrey, on the L. & S.W.E., 7 miles from London, on the river Thames. It contains the village of Barnes and the hamlet of Barnes-Elms or Barn-Elms. There is a post, money order, and telegraph office at Barnes Green. The area is 909 acres of land and 119 of water; population, 8445. The manor was given by King Athelstane to the canons of St Paul's, London, and was then and afterwards called Berne. A tract in the N, 1 1/4 mile long, is engirt by a semicircular sweep of the Thames. Barnes Common, contiguous to this on the S, comprises about 500 acres, and lies lower than thc level of the Thames' spring tide. Barn-Elms House was the residence of Sir Francis Walsingham, visited by Queen Elizabeth; afterwards the residence of Hcydeggur, George II.'s master of the revels, visited by the king; afterwards the property of Sir K. C. Hoare the antiquary. It is now a modem mansion. A house in the vicinity, the " Queen's Dairy," was the residence of the celebrated bookseller Jacob Tonson, and the meeting-place of the Kitcat Club, adorned with portraits of the members painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. This house has gone to ruin, but the portraits have been preserved. Cowley the poet, Fielding the novelist, and Handel the composer, were residents of Barnes; Bishop Wilson was for some time rector; and Sir William Bliyard the surgeon was a native. the duel between the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Shrewsbury in January 1667-68, was fought near Barn-Elms; and the assassination of the Count and the Countess D'Antraigucs, in 1812, was done in the parish. A suspension bridge, 750 feet long, takes a thoroughfare hence across the Thames to Hammersmith; and a three-arched iron bridge, each arch 100 feet in span, takes across a loop-line of railway from the Barnes station toward the Windsor railway near Hounslow. The West Middlesex Waterworks Company have reservoirs in tins parish covering an area of about 16 acres. The living is a rectory in the diocese of London; net value, £350 with residence. Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's. The church was built in 1189, and is mainly Early English. A recess, with rose bushes on its S exterior, marks the grave of Edward Rose, a citizen of London who died in 1653, leaving a bequest of £20 to the poor of the parish, on condition that his monumental tablet should be kept in repair, and have rose bushes trained around it. Holy Trinity Church, situated in Cas-telnau, was erected in 1868; it is a building of stone and flint, and has about 300 sittings. The living is a vicarage; net value, £380 with residence, in the gift of the Rector of Barnes. There are chapels for Baptists and Wesleyans, and a mission church. At Elm Bank Barues there is a handsome modem churcli called St Michael and Angels, which was consecrated in 1893 as a chapel of ease to the parish church.