Richard Wilson
On Hounslow Heath (?exhibited 1770)
Tate
I grew up around the corner from Hounslow Heath. It’s a vast, open park – the last remaining patch of an ancient moorland that once stretched over much of South- west London. When I lived there, the Heath was the site of funfairs, picnics, after-school fights and fumbles in the bushes – a place of half-eaten McDonald’s burgers, empty beer cans and clouds of high-grade weed smoke. Walking across it, you’d hear Grime and UK Garage blasting from portable speakers, and the drones of aeroplanes on their descent to Heathrow, all mingling with birdsong. Oh, the planes! I’ll never forget that noise: lurching and groaning through the air, bellies full of cargo, like beasts after a feed.
It was a very different place to the Heath of 1770, or at least Richard Wilson’s depiction of it in On Hounslow Heath – a quintessential image of the English countryside, with waterlogged meadows, grazing donkeys and rustic folk basking in the sun under an open sky. It’s a lovely painting, but I find it hard to imagine that Hounslow was ever a rural idyll. Even in Wilson’s time, the Heath was notorious as a haven for highwaymen who would stalk the horse-drawn carriages of the well-to-do as they journeyed to and from the city – ancestors of the roadmen in hoodies who haunt the Heath today.
The mix I’ve put together tells the story of the Heath, encompassing Wilson’s vision of it as well as my own. I’ve included old English folk songs and fragmented electronic sounds that, to me, reflect the urbanised Heath of now. There are songs about communion with the natural world, and songs that lament our destruction of it. I’ve also added field recordings, a nod to the South Asian community that is at the heart of Hounslow today – and of course, the planes! No tale of the Heath would be complete without them.
Tracklist
Ivor Cutler – I’m Going in a Field
Felbm – spring v
Alfred Deller & The Deller Consort – Ah, Robin
Oliver – Orbit Your Factory
Robert Wyatt – Grass
David Cain – July
Erin – Good-bye Mother Nature
David Axelrod – The Warning Talk (Pt. 2)
Aisha Vaughan – Day Dreams
Gavsborg & Tóke – The Sun & The Moon
Beatrice Dillon – Clouds Strum
Steel An' Skin – Acid Rain
Mermaid Chunky– nature girl
Panjabi MC – Mundian To Bach Ke
On Hounslow Heath was presented by R.E.A. Wilson and M. Oliver in 1929 and is included in the free display Historic and Modern British Art: The Exhibition Age: 1760–1815, Tate Britain.
Zakia Sewell is a broadcaster, DJ and writer from London. Her forthcoming book, Finding Albion, will be published in 2026. You can listen to her radio show Dream Time on BBC Radio 6 every Sunday.
This mixtape is no.23 in the MixTate series.