BRENTFORD, a town of England, in the county of Middlesex, 8 miles west of London, on a loop line of the South-Western Railway, in 51° 28' N. lat. aud 0° 20' W. long. It is divided by the River Brent into two parts, known as Old and New Brentford (the former the larger of the two), and is separated from Kew by the Thames. The Grand Junction Canal joins the Brent some miles further up, so that the town has extensive water communication, and is enabled to maintain a considerable trade. Among its manufacturing establishments are gindistilleries, a brewery, malt-kilns, soap-works, saw-mills, and colour-works. The Grand Junction Water-works, which supply the west end of London, are stationed here, the great stand-pipe, 226 feet high, forming a striking tower-like structure. Market-gardening is largely carried on in the neighbourhood, and there is a weekly market which dates from the time of Edward I. The elections for the county of Middlesex are held in the town. Its population in 1871 was 11,091....
In 1016 Brentford, or, as it was often called, Braynford, was the scene of a great defeat inflicted on the Danes by Edmund Ironside. In 1280 a toll was granted by Edward I. for the construction of a bridge across the river, and in the reign of Henry VI. a hospital of the Nine Orders of Angels was founded near its Western side. In 1642 a battle was fought here between the royalists and the parliamentary forces, for his services in which the Scotsman Ruthven was made earl of Brentford, a title afterwards conferred on Marshal Schomberg. Brentford was during the 16th and 17th centuries a favourite resort of the London citizens; and its inn of the Three Pigeons, which was kept for a time by John Lowin, one of the first actors of Shakespeare’s plays, has been frequently alluded to by the dramatists of the period. We have also Shakespeare’s “Fat Woman of Brentford” in the Merry Wives of Windsor, “Gillian of Brentford” in Westward Ho, and various other references in old plays. Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence, refers to the pigs for which the town was formerly famous—
“E’en so through Brentford town, a town of mud,
An herd of bristly swine is pricked along.”
The two kings of Brentford, so well known from Cowper’s allusion, seem to owe their mythical existence to Buckingham’s Rehearsal, where Bayes prides himself on the skill of his plot, in which he supposes “two kings to be of the same place, as for example at Brentford.” See Athenoeum, 1847, p. 1196; and Notesand Queries, 2d ser. vol. viii.
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