What is Open House London?
Open House London is an annual festival celebrating London’s buildings, architecture and neighbourhoods. This year, the festival will take place from 6-17 September with a wide range of events and tours taking place across all 33 London boroughs, including Hounslow. All the festival events are free.
This is your perfect opportunity to get to know London and your local Hounslow area a little better.
With 365,000 visits in a single weekend, the Open House Festival is the largest celebration of urban landscape in the world, staged by the charity Open City with the aim of making London a more accessible, equitable, and open city for all. For the full details, visit the Open House website or view the calendar of events taking place across London.
We’re inviting our residents to explore the distinctive neighbourhoods that make up the borough of Hounslow on foot, by bike or on public transport.
How is Hounslow getting involved?
The London Borough of Hounslow is a vibrant, exciting place to visit, stay, and explore for local residents and visitors. We have historical houses, a growing arts scene, miles of rivers, canals, nature reserves, bustling town centres, a fantastic leisure offering, and much more.
With over 14 venues and over 30 events taking place in Hounslow alone, Open House is your opportunity to engage and explore!
What Open House events are happening in Hounslow?
With concentrations of venues in Brentford and Hounslow/Isleworth, these neighbourhoods are where you can start your Open House exploration for free.
From the newly-refurbished Boston Manor House – the fine Jacobean manor house built in 1623, situated in Boston Manor Park with lake and ancient cedar trees, to the heart of industrial Victorian London (Brentford Canal Toll House and Gauging Lock), Brentford has lots to offer. It’s home to the Butts Conservation Area, with beautifully proportioned 18th century houses including St. Mary’s Convent, and its name hinting at a history dating back even further to when Henry VIII commandeered the land for archery practice in the 16th century. Hear about the local history from passionate locals (Brentford Then and Now/Brentford through the Ages) and visit the 1785 Brentford & Isleworth Quaker Meeting House on Quaker’s Lane.
Our second ‘neighbourhood’ to explore is Hounslow/Isleworth celebrating diverse cultures and architecture. This includes a historic walking tour including the one time home to Sir Joseph Banks (Exploring Spring Grove), followed by a journey of civic structures from the Victorian (Isleworth Public Hall with an exhibition presented by the Hounslow & District History Society) to the contemporary (Hounslow House with a photo essay and conversation with architects Sheppard Robson and developers Link City). Other aspects of Hounslow’s rich cultural mix will be on display at the Hounslow Jamid Masjid and Islamic Centre and Hounslow’s Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara, and there is also architecture that responds to a unique Hounslow environment – an outside rammed earth play area for the children of the Hounslow Heath Infant and Nursery School that lowers the noise from aircraft landing at Heathrow.
We also invite you to explore Chiswick for free: Chiswick Town Hall with its rich Victorian/Edwardian interiors, Chiswick House and Gardens one of the most glorious examples of 18th-century British architecture and landscape and Hogarth’s House, the 18th century home of artist William Hogarth. Also, nearer the Western end of the borough, Kempton Steam Museum and its awe-inspiring industrial heritage is also opening its doors to Open House Festival visitors for free!
To see the full calendar of events, visit the Open House website calendar or explore a map of events where you can select Hounslow as the area of interest. You’ll need to create a free account on the Open House website to book visits; some of the venues are very small so have limited numbers.
