Monday 11 April 2016
David Blomfield on A HOME FOR HEROES – the 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE STAR AND GARTER HOME IN RICHMOND
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The Star and Garter Hotel, in which the Home began
The Royal Star and Garter Home, built in the early 1920s. Photo by User:Carcharoth/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC-BY-SA-3.0
“Richmond’s ultimate penthouse apartments now available“. Yes, we have all seen the ads: the servicemen’s simple rooms at the Star and Garter are now open for offers, starting at £1.3 million per flat. Ironically this luxury development coincides with the centenary of the Star and Garter’s opening as a home for servicemen disabled in the First http://premier-pharmacy.com/product-category/anticonvulsant/ World War. David Blomfield’s illustrated talk will take us from its days as a grand hotel patronised by Dickens and Thackeray, through years of decline, and on to its presentation to the nation and its rebuilding as a home for heroes. It is more than an “iconic building”: it has played a major role in Richmond history, and one of which the nation can be proud.
David Blomfield, who died less than three months after giving this talk, was President, and a former Chairman, of the Richmond Local History Society. He was the author of Kew Past, The Story of Kew and The Story of Leyborne Park. With the late Christopher May he also co-wrote the Society’s book Kew at War 1939-1945.