Syon House and Gardens
Syon House and Gardens

BOOK BRENTFORD HOTELS

Rather interesting Brentford facts

Click for places to stay in Brentford | Send in your views of Brentford | Read visitor reports

Did you know that the floodlights at Brentford Football Club were donated by Chelsea Football Club ? A further link between the two clubs is that Chelsea reserves play at Griffin Park. The ground is named after an old local brewery which owned the land thereabouts – perhaps explaining the fact that uniquely in English football there is a pub at every corner of the place.

Did you know that the first drawing of the moon made with a telescope, and the first telescopic observations of sunspots, were made at Syon House in Brentford? Thomas Harriot , who had surveyed Virginia with Walter Raleigh , obtained one of the early ‘Dutch trunk’ telescopes and set about making astronomical observations with it, seemingly before Galileo. He was at the time in the pay of the Earl of Northumberland, and lived at the latter’s Syon House by the Thames .

If you like this, Share it

Brit Quote:
But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live. - Damien Hirst
More Quotes

On this day:
Rebel Army Lands in Furness - 1487, The First Ryder Cup - 1927, Stockport Air Disaster - 1967, Tiananmen Square Massacre - 1989, Shane Warne bowls 'Ball of the Century' - 1993
More dates from British history

click here to view all the British counties

County Pages