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Interim findings from archive reviews of council reports, contemporaneous newspaper cuttings and community-sourced photography
8 November 2026: Marking the 125th anniversary of the first meeting of Ealing Town Council (9November 1901)
Charles Jones:
The Unsung Surveyor
of the“Queen of the Suburbs”
As Ealing marks 125 years since its first Town Council met, local history sleuths
say Charles Jones, the borough surveyor who helped win Walpole Park for the
public, deserves to be remembered alongside Victorian civil engineering
supremo Sir Joseph Bazalgette. And they say Jones’s visionary green legacy is
again very much at stake.
A group of amateur historians, including a former archivist on the BBC genealogy
series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, have spent the last month in the archives
piecing together the story of the man who stood in Ealing’s council chamber on
the day the borough’s first Council met under its new Royal Charter: borough
surveyor and engineer Charles Jones.
Their findings, which they will present at a public talk marking the 125th anniversary of that first meeting, suggest that Jones was one of the quiet
architects of what later became London’s defining civic idea — that ordinary people should have green, open, public space on their doorstep.
A flutter of excitement
at the Town Hall
The following is pieced together from local archives and press cuttings of the time: Ealing’s Town Council met for its inaugural meeting at noon on Saturday 9 November 1901, with Sir E. Montague Nelson presiding as acting mayor.
The West Middlesex Gazette reported. “a really perceptible flutter of excitement”, with “animated knots of civic patriots” gathering outside the Town Hall to watch the election of Ealing’s first Mayor and Aldermen.
Mr H. C. Green was duly chosen as the new Mayor; the Ealing Gazette observed hat he “thoroughly deserves the honour”, though the paper’s leader column, headed “Moderate Conceit”, was scathing about how the six aldermanic chairs had been divided between the parties.
During the Charter presentation, Sir Montague also reminded councillors, that Ealing was the first incorporated town in Middlesex, and the first to receive a charter from King Edward VII - he warned that it had “no particular virtue”unless residents took “sufficient interest to ensure that a good
Town Council was elected”.
"The most important part of it"
Jones appears in the newspaper reports only as a name at the foot of the attendance list. But the acting mayor’s speech, say the researchers, reads today like a tribute to him. Sir Montague told the new councillors that the good work of the past had been “supported by excellent and able officers (applause)”, and that:
“After all, the officers of a corporate body
were almost the most important part of
it.” — Sir E. Montague Nelson, acting mayor, 9 November
1901
Sir Montague concluded that “there was nothing more fatal to the best interests of a place than to lose a really good officer, who knew all the needs and wants of the place better than any individual Councillor or chairman could possibly know (hear, hear).” The researchers note that Jones was one of just three officers at that inaugural meeting singled out in this way, and the only one of the three later to be publicly hailed as having “made Ealing what it is”.
The Town of Beccles from the Bridge, Suffolk. Artist: John Sell Cotman (British, Norwich 1782–1842 London) Date: ca. 1818
Credit Line: Harry G. Sperling Fund, 2017 Public Domain
Jones was born in Beccles, Suffolk, in 1830, the son of a leather merchant. He trained as an architect and set up practice in Ealing in 1856, so by 1901 he had been shaping the town for more than four decades. In 1863 he became the first
surveyor to the new Ealing Local Board, and his first job in that role was to lay out the town’s proper sewerage system.
He went on to design Ealing Town Hall (1888), which The Times reported was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales that December.
Other works included the Victoria Hall, the fire station and the original council offices, as well as churches, chapels and schools. He even persuaded a landowner to sell the Town Hall site at well below market value. He kept the post through every change in the town’s status, from local board to urban district council, and then to borough, for fifty years. 1901 was also the year Ealing’s roads went electric.
“Decorated London United Tramways electric trams processed through the Town on 10 July 1901”, according to London Transport Museum records.
But unlike his contemporaries, Jones did not get the national recognition he deserved, say the researchers, and he died in office in August 1913. The comparison with Sir Joseph Bazalgette, architect of London’s main drainage, is deliberate. Bazalgette (1819–1891) was just eleven years older than Jones (1830–1913), and their careers ran in parallel: Jones set up practice in Ealing in 1856, the year Bazalgette became Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works. Jones laid out Ealing’s first proper sewerage system from 1863, while Bazalgette’s great intercepting sewers, begun in 1859, opened in 1865.
The two men also belonged to the same professional body. Bazalgette was President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1883–84, and Jones, who joined as an Associate in 1875 and became a full Member in 1891, was entitled to put
‘M.Inst.C.E.’ after his name, as his memorial in Walpole Park records.
The difference was the setting. Bazalgette was Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the regional body that governed the capital, a salaried post he held from 1856 until 1889. Jones worked outside that system: having built up his own practice, he was appointed Engineer and Surveyor to the Ealing Local Board on a commission basis in 1863. He did not become a salaried officer until 1882, and he also advised other local authorities as a consulting engineer.
Ealing's "Grand Old Man"
Jones’s contemporaries, say the researchers, had no doubt about his standing.
When he tendered his resignation at a special meeting of the Town Council in July 1913, after fifty years in service, the councillors resolved unanimously, “in recognition of his unique services”, to invite him to become Mayor of Ealing for
the following year.
The Surveyor and Municipal and County Engineer
journal, reporting the news on 25 July 1913, hailed him
as “Ealing’s Grand Old Man” and “the doyen of
municipal engineers”, and declared:
“There could be no better way
of doing honour to the man
who has made Ealing what it is
than to elect him mayor.”
Ealing Gazette, July 1913, quoted in The Surveyor and Municipal and County
Engineer, 25 July 1913
How a Manor became a People’s Park
The story of how Pitzhanger Manor and its grounds passed into public hands is, the researchers say, central to Jones’s legacy.
Earlier research by Dr Jonathan Oates, the long-serving Borough Archivist and Local History Librarian for the London Borough of Ealing, had established that Jones was instrumental in securing the park for the public in 1901 and in ensuring
that it came under the custodianship of the newly constituted Ealing Borough Council. The researchers’ contribution has been to piece together the contemporary newspaper reports, digitised only as recently as 2023, which show just how respected he was by those first councillors and aldermen.
The Urban District Council of Ealing agreed to buy the 28-acre estate from Sir Spencer Walpole for £40,000 in1899 - roughly £4.5 million in today’s money, by the group’s estimate - with Middlesex County Council contributing £10,000, a quarter of the cost. Jones is credited with negotiating the sale. The purchase came with a condition allowing the last remaining tenant,
Frederika Perceval, to live out her days in the Manor.
In 1900, when Frederika passed away, the Council formally took over the vacant site, officially naming it Walpole Park in October after final correspondence with the family.
Jones then redesigned the grounds, laid out the paths and avenues, and adapted the house as a public library, which opened in April 1902. Lord George Hamilton, the local MP, opened Walpole Park to the public on
1 May 1901.
The Hanwell Gazette’s report of the opening ceremony, published on 4 May 1901, adds a detail the researchers find striking: the concept of a public park for Ealing had been in circulation
for years. Sir Montague Nelson told the crowd that it was “nearly 20 years ago” that the idea of securing the park for the benefit of the people first entered his mind, “and when he discussed
that idea with Mr. Jones”.
The Victorian Web reports that Jones was a good friend of Sir Spencer Walpole, son of the former Home Secretary and family heir to the Pitzhanger estate. And in the 1901 reports Councillor Tyer recalled how Jones (and Nelson) “had interviews with the late Mr. Walpole” some fifteen years earlier, about 1886, and obtained “practically a promise of the refusal” of the place.
Jones himself spoke briefly. Under the sub-heading “Mr. Chas. Jones’ Dream”, the paper reports him recalling the families - Walpole, Perceval and Soane - associated with the estate.
Councillor A. T. Tyer had just described a nightmare version of Ealing, a “dream of red bricks, villas, smoking chimneys” in which “a beautiful park was handed over to the speculative builder”. Jones, the paper reports, confirmed that this was a concern he had long shared.
Jones, the paper says, “had also had a dream”: the dream was 18 years old, and that day he saw “the realisation of that dream in the beautiful park which had been acquired for Ealing”.
It was not a popular purchase with everyone.
Opening the park, Lord George Hamilton acknowledged that raising the rates had drawn hostile comment in the local press from some ratepayers.
The researchers take that as a hint that ratepayers, rather than wealthy donors, carried much of the cost; but who found the remaining £30,000 - the other three-quarters of the price - remains a question they are still checking against council
minutes. The researchers’ search for the formal paper trail has so far come up short: a search of the Local Archives for the “Bargain and Sale” records surfaced only a single page of a copy of the original agreement, which does not settle the matter.
Ealing Urban District Council minutes are still pending, and later this month the researchers have appointments to review the Middlesex Register of Deeds and Middlesex County Council minutes at London Archives.
Ealing Council itself has not yet confirmed whether the original 1901 conveyance and related deeds to the park have been retrieved: Julian Gallant, the Conservative councillor for Ealing Central, has asked the Council’s Democratic
Services team for the original documents, and officers have confirmed that enquiries are still ongoing. The Council has said that once searches are complete it will confirm what relevant information it holds and whether any documents can
be disclosed. At present, it says, it cannot confirm whether the original conveyance, any supplemental deeds or related documents have been located.
The deeds, the researchers say, should show the terms on which the park passed into public ownership - and, perhaps, who else contributed to the full price.
“The enquiries regarding the historic Walpole Park deeds and associated
documentation are still ongoing. Given the age of the records involved, it has been
necessary to make enquiries across a number of potential repositories and record
holders, and those enquiries have not yet concluded.”
James Ellis,
Director of Legal and Democratic Services and Monitoring Officer,
Ealing Borough Council, 30 October 2026
A shared understanding
Back in 1901, Councillor Tyer, opening the proceedings, put the case in terms that still resonate.
Ealing’s ratepayers, he told the crowd, had :
“secured the use and benefit of this beautiful place, not only for ourselves, but for our children and our children’s children, for their enjoyment for
ever”.
On hot summer days, he predicted, people would be glad to turn from “the glare of red brick” into the shade of the park’s old trees.
It is clear from these reports, the researchers say, that the acting mayor Sir Montague Nelson, Charles Jones and the councillors shared a common understanding: that the park should be secured as a community asset, for public
purposes, in perpetuity.
Nelson was reported in the Hanwell Gazette as recalling “the wish expressed by the late Mr. Walpole that on his death, it should, if possible, be preserved for the posterity of Ealing”, and Sir Spencer Walpole’s “admirable and generous spirit”
in the negotiations for the purchase. Lord George Hamilton confirmed that the council had acted “in order to obtain possession of an open space for the benefit of posterity”. Sir Spencer Walpole himself was reported as having previously
hoped that “the Park would long add to the salubrity, welfare and comfort of the people of Ealing”, and as being glad that the fields had been “devoted by the wise prescience of the local authority to a better purpose”.
A man ahead of his time
Jones, say the researchers, was ahead of his time. When he and Sir Montague Nelson first discussed securing the estate for the public - “nearly 20 years” before the 1901 opening, on Nelson’s account - the idea of public open space as essential civic infrastructure was still new. Victoria Park in Hackney, London’s first purpose-built public park, had been authorised only in 1842 (it opened in 1845), on the advice of the epidemiologist William Farr.
A parliamentary committee on public walks had found in 1833 that working people had almost no access to open space, commons campaigners were fighting enclosure on London’s edge from the 1860s, and the Acts of 1877 and 1881 and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, founded in 1882, were turning churchyards and scraps of land into public gardens.
The researchers believe Jones built on that movement: Ealing’s local board had bought Lammas Park in 1881, and he went further, seeing that a whole estate - house, gardens and old trees - could be saved for the public before the speculative builder arrived.
Councillor Tyer’s “dream of red bricks, villas, smoking chimneys” was exactly the fate Jones and his colleagues were racing against.
The century that followed vindicated him. London’s parks multiplied through the late Victorian and interwar years; wartime planners Abercrombie and Forshaw set an aspiration of four acres of open space for every 1,000 Londoners; and the historian Matti Hannikainen found that the 1950s and early 1960s were “the most intensive period in the provision of new public green space in London during the 20th century”, as councils chose the public interest over private property. Metropolitan Open Land protection and successive London Plans, the researchers say, are the modern descendants of the same idea.
The pressures that drove that movement have returned. Victorian reformers called parks the “lungs of London” against overcrowding, smoke and disease; today’s equivalents are high-density housing, summer heatwaves, surface
flooding, social isolation and a mental health crisis.
Ealing Council’s own climate and ecological emergency work says as much.
A Citizen Review panel, set up by Ealing Council in the summer of 2020 to scrutinise its draft Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy, listed the benefits of green space as:
- “increased mental health”
- “wellbeing of residents with access to nature”,
- “reducing loneliness and building communities”
The council’s 2025 progress report acknowledges that
- a third of people cannot reach green or natural space within 15
minutes of home,
and links
- regular access to green space leads to 28 per cent fewer GP visits
A 2019 review for the London Green Spaces Commission, by Dr Meredith Whitten with Parks for London, warned that councils under budget pressure risk taking a short-term view, a trap Jones’s generation avoided, driven by what one
interviewee called “an easy hit” on a spreadsheet and “the four-year election cycle”.
The same review cites the Mayor of London’s natural capital
account, which found that every £1 spent on public green
space returns at least £27 in value to Londoners and that parks
avoid £950 million a year in health costs.
Reducing funding for parks, it concluded, is “a false economy”.
A 125-year-old lesson and a live debate
The anniversary arrives as Ealing Council seeks to fast-track the disposal of a central part of Walpole Open Parkland, designated as Metropolitan Open Land (MOL), despite a residents’ petition carrying 5,250 signatures.
Under the London Plan, MOL is meant to be protected from inappropriate development in the same way asthe Green Belt.
However, the Ealing Cabinet is asserting that this new “temporary” three-year commercial development in the heart of the park is just an
experiment to help determine whether the Borough can generate
enough business interest as a “venue destination”.
Save Walpole Park Campaigners argue the case for protecting public green space is stronger now than in Jones’s day and must come first.
They highlight that, as well as the health dividend (Ealing Council’s own 2025 climate progress report says regular access to green space cuts GP visits by 28%), easy access to open green space is being squeezed, and the growing number of high-rise (affordable) flats means more and more children are growing up without gardens.
They point out that the same report records that the June–July 2025 heatwave caused around 260 heat-related deaths in London, “triple the amount expected without climate change”, and says a climate-resilient borough needs “fair access to green spaces”.
The economics point the same way. The Mayor of London’s natural capital account for the capital’s parks found that every £1 spent returns at least £27 in value, and that parks avoid £950 million a year in health costs. The account also warns that its valuation does not mean parks can be traded off against other uses, and that a 10%loss of park area or quality could
cause a “greater than 10%” loss in value
And the public is firmly on parks’ side:
A November 2025 poll of 3,000 people by the think tank More in Common found that parks and green spaces are Britons’ biggest source of local pride (32%), with mental health the benefit most often ranked first (40%), across
voters of every party.
Ealing Council leader Peter Mason has said the council’s plan for a temporary 1,200-seat theatre in Walpole Park is designed to “test whether Ealing can support a theatre of this scale while protecting Walpole Park for future generations” (7 September 2026).
Campaigners say that framing misses the point. Nobody is against a theatre, they stress; the Ealing Parks Foundation says it supports “quality green spaces and a vibrant arts and cultural economy, but not one at the expense of the other”.
The question, they argue, is where it goes.
Local Labour MP Dr Rupa Huq has told the council there is “no need to sacrifice scarce green space”, pointing to “numerous empty brick and mortar properties that could accommodate this, even our own sadly unused Town Hall”.
If the council were serious about preserving green space, the campaigners say a park should never have been considered at all; the search should have begun with brownfield land and empty buildings.
Left: close up of the marker ‘Alderman H.C. Green, J.P., Mayor, 1901-2
Right: The marker at the top of the avenue, looking across the parkland proposed for disposal.
Remember the first Council
At the head of the avenue of mature oaks overlooking the open parkland now proposed for “disposal”, a cast-iron tree marker records the town’s first Mayor: "Alderman H. C. Green, J.P., Mayor, 1901–2”.
Similar tributes line the avenue to the councillors and aldermen who helped shape the ‘Queen of the Suburbs’ through the first half of the 20th century, through both World Wars and the commuter-belt expansion that followed, when
the Park really came into its own as a place to relax, socialise and revitalise.
In the last 10 years there has been a resurgence of this civic pride. Ealing Council, working in partnership with local community groups, secured a £2.4m Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant to complete the final stage of the Park’s
restoration, designed to recover its historic Regency landscape and walled kitchen garden, which had suffered the ravages of time.
“But you have to ask yourself why a council with such a record of preserving and protecting this precious public space would now trade it away for short-term revenue”, challenges Karl Woolley, Save Walpole Park campaigner.
Honours, Works, and Publications
Charles Jones remained Ealing’s Borough Surveyor and Engineer well into his
eighties, continuing to pioneer civic developments throughout the first decade of
the 20th century. During this productive post-1901 period, his primary
infrastructure achievements included:
• redeveloping Pitzhanger Manor as a free public lending library, which opened in April 1902
• designing new primary schools for the borough, including Little Ealing and Northfields (1905), Drayton Green (1908), Lammas (1910) and North
Ealing (1911)
• further modernising urban utilities by designing and implementing extensive local electrical lighting schemes
• pioneering sustainable civic technology through the deployment of modern waste-to-energy solutions using his new inventions for municipal
refuse destructors
• writing Ealing: From Village to Corporate Town (1904), the first of two books
on his adopted town
Jones’s work was followed closely in the contemporary technical press, including The Surveyor and Municipal and County Engineer, which reported that his fume cremator “has been extensively adopted in refuse destructor practice”. In 1911 Ealing Borough published a 56-page report under his name, entitled Ealing 1901-10: A Decade of Progress, recording just how much the town achieved in its first decade as a borough.
The honours had also accumulated over many years. As well as the professional accolades (Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, M.Inst.CE and Fellow of the Surveyors’ Institution, FSI (now the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors),
the corporation and citizens of Ealing presented Jones with a portrait of himself in May 1910. At the unveiling, it was said that his work had been of such a character that it had “made” the town of Ealing.
Postscript: Charles Jones, 1820 - 1913
When Jones tendered his resignation in July 1913 at the age of 83, after fifty years in post, the councillors resolved “in recognition of his unique services” to make him Mayor for the following year. The Ealing Gazette said there could be no
better way of honouring “the man who has made Ealing what it is”.
He never wore the mayoral chain. Jones died on Sunday 24 August 1913, after what The Surveyor journal called “a few hours’ illness”, barely a month after the council’s invitation.
The obituary announced his “unexpected demise” as “a shock to a wide circle of friends” and recalled that he had been “first surveyor under the Ealing Local Board” and had “retained his office during the successive changes of the local authority”. He was buried at the City of Westminster Cemetery, Hanwell, after a service at St Mary’s Church, Ealing, and a move was soon made to raise a memorial to him. The bronze, by the sculptor Frank Bowcher, can still be seen inWalpole Park. Yet today, Save Walpole campaigners say few Ealing residents know his name.
But behind the avenues of oaks, mayoral plaques and decorative lawns is a park ideal that carries his values to the present day. Ealing’s visionary Borough Surveyor and Engineer was fundamental in shaping the urban spaces we can see today. His final decade of service left a profound mark on our local landscape through pioneering infrastructure and timeless commitment to the importance of green recreational access for all.
Look back, look forward, look around
At the top north-east corner of Walpole Park, tucked against the brick wall that backs onto Mattock Lane, you can still find the bronze memorial bearing Jones’s portrait. It records his service in the words: “Fifty Yrs Surveyor and Engineer &c to
the Ealing Local Authority, from 25 May 1863 until his decease 24 Aug 1913 — Lamented, Regretted.” Cast into it are two Latin mottoes: Respice Prospice, “look back, look forward”, and, below them, one more word, Circumspice, “look
around you”.
For the campaign supporters, those words are seen as an enduring message to
today’s public servants and decision-makers:
“Jones’s motto should be a reminder to the current council administration to
concentrate on the long-term future of our urban green spaces, rather than favour an
opportunistic revenue-earner that could damage the park’s viability for generations.
Look back, look forward, and look around. The legacy of your councillor predecessors is
evident on this plaque. Do you want yours to read: ‘Here was once a great park, but it
was let go by the Ealing Cabinet class of 2026’?” — Nick Lane – Save Walpole Park e-petitioner 2026
Look back. Look forward. Look around you.
Image Credits
