Description:

Richmond's Mayor,Cllr David Marlow met with the Chilean Chargé d’ Affaires, Rodrigo Espinosa to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of one of the key figures in Chile's independence movement and head of the country’s first national government,  Bernardo O’Higgins.  2010 also marks 200 years of Chilean Independence.

 

Bernardo O'Higgens was the illegitimate son of a young daughter of an aristocratic, Chilean family and an Irish engineer named Ambrose O'Higgins, who was in the service of the Spanish crown.

 

He was baptized and educated, first in Chile and Peru and then in England. He lived in Richmond between the ages of 16 to 18 and studied at Clarence House in The Vineyard, which used to be a private school where he studied what would now be called a liberal arts course, with history, geography, music, French, painting and other subjects.

There is a blue plaque on the wall beside the house and a bust of O’Higgins in the square.

 

It was in London that  Bernardo met Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez, a young Venezuelan who became his mentor in revolutionary thinking.

 

Chilean Chargé d’ Affaires, Rodrigo Espinosa, and the Mayor of Richmond upon Thames, Cllr David Marlow, led the event at O’Higgins Square near Richmond Bridge.

Señor Espinosa said: 'I am very grateful to the Mayor and Richmond upon Thames for keeping alive the memory of our founding father, Bernardo O’Higgins, who lived some of his formative years in this part of London. This year the occasion is even more special, for our country is celebrating her 200 years of independence and one could say that, to certain extent, the whole story could have started here, in leafy Richmond.'