Chiswick Statue Planned To Honour WB Yeats

Campaign launched for memorial to mark the poet's links with Bedford Park

A campaign has been launched to have a statue in Chiswick to honour Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet and playwright W.B. Yeats, a former resident of Bedford Park.

Local poet, musician, and BBC broadcaster Cahal Dallat is spearheading the move to have links between Yeats and Chiswick given greater recognition. W.B. Yeats wrote one of his most famous poems, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, while living in Bedford Park.

Cahal Dallat

The proposal, which could put Chiswick on the tourist map in the same way as Sligo gained worldwide fame as the burial place of the poet, has the backing of the Vicar of St Michael & All Angels, Fr Kevin Morris. The Bedford Park Society has also expressed interest in supporting the plan, as has the W.B. Yeats Society of New York.

A meeting with the Irish Ambassador to Britain, Mr. Dan Mulhall is planned shortly to discuss the potential of funding from the Irish Government.

It is hoped the statue could be located close to St Michael & All Angels Church as the focal point of the literary and cultural heart of Bedford Park.

Books about WB Yeats as seen in Fosters' bookshop

Cahal Dallat said, "Chiswick can claim WB Yeats, who not only lived in Woodstock Road as a boy but returned with his family as a young man to live in Blenheim Road. It was there that he not merely wrote his great poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree, inspired by Chiswick Eyot, but wrote his first play The Land of Hearts Desire as a favour for some Blenheim Road neighbours and the theatrical friends he’d come to know through the Bedford Park Club on The Avenue."

You can read more about the Yeats link with Chiswick in this article by Cahal Dallat written for chiswickw4.com

Celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.B. Yeats are currently taking place around the world. It is hoped that a Chiswick statue could be ready for January 2019, to mark the 80th anniversary of the death of Yeats.

A statue to another famous Chiswick resident, William Hogarth, was erected some years ago on Chiswick High Road.

The next stage is to form a committee and seek out patrons, sponsors, and volunteers for the Yeats project.

Anyone interested is invited to contact Cahal Dallat .

June 26, 2015