Twickenham

Pre-Norman

Excavations have revealed settlements in the area dating from the Early Neolithic, possibly Mesolithic periods. Occupation seems to have continued through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Roman occupation. The area was first mentioned (as "Tuican hom" and "Tuiccanham") in an 8th-century charter to cede the area to Waldhere, Bishop of London, "for the salvation of our souls". The charter, dated 13 June 704, is signed with 12 crosses. The signatories included Swaefred of Essex, Cenred of Mercia and Earl Paeogthath.

Norman

In Norman times Twickenham was part of the Manor of Isleworth – itself part of the Hundred of Hounslow, Middlesex (mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086). The manor had belonged to Ælfgār, Earl of Mercia in the time of Edward the Confessor, but was granted to Walter de Saint-Valery (Waleric) by William I of England after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The area was then farmed for several hundred years, while the river provided opportunities for fishing, boatbuilding and trade.

17th century

Bubonic plague spread to the town in 1665 and 67 deaths were recorded. It appears that Twickenham had a pest house in the 17th century, although the location is not known.

There was also a watch house in the middle of the town, with stocks, a pillory and a whipping post whose owner was charged to "ward within and about this Parish and to keep all Beggars and Vagabonds that shall lye abide or lurk about the Towne and to give correction to such...".

In 1633 construction began on York House. It was occupied by Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester in 1656 and later by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon.

1659 saw the first mention of the Twickenham Ferry, although ferrymen had already been operating in the area for many generations. Sometime before 1743 a "pirate" ferry appears to have been started by Twickenham inhabitants. There is speculation that it operated to serve "The Folly", a floating hostelry of some kind. Several residents wrote to the Lord Mayor of the City of London:

...Complaining that there is lately fixed near the Shore of Twickenham on the River Thames a Vessell made like a Barge and called the Folly wherein divers[e] loose and disorderly persons are frequently entertained who have behaved in a very indecent Manner and do frequently afront divers[e] persons of Fashion and Distinction who often in an Evening Walk near that place, and desired so great a Nuisance might be removed,....

18th century

In 1713 the nave of the ancient St Mary's Church collapsed, and the church was rebuilt in the Neo-classical style to designs by a local architect, John James.

In 1736, the noted pharmacist and quack doctor Joshua Ward set up the Great Vitriol Works to produce sulphuric acid, using a process discovered in the seventeenth century by Johann Glauber in which sulphur is burned together with saltpetre (potassium nitrate), in the presence of steam. The process generates an extremely unpleasant smell, which caused objections from local residents. The area was also soon home to the world's first industrial production facility for gunpowder, on a site between Twickenham and Whitton on the banks of the River Crane. There were frequent explosions and loss of life. On 11 March 1758, one of two explosions was felt in Reading, Berkshire, and in April 1774 another explosion terrified people at church in Isleworth.

In 1772 three mills blew up, shattering glass and buildings in the neighbourhood. Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, wrote complaining to his friend and relative Henry Seymour Conway, then Lieutenant General of the Ordnance, that all the decorative painted glass had been blown out of his windows at Strawberry Hill.

The powder mills remained in operation until 1927 when they were closed. Much of the site is now occupied by Crane Park, in which the old Shot Tower, mill sluices and blast embankments can still be seen. Much of the area along the river next to the Shot Tower is now a nature reserve.

Later

The 1818 Enclosure Award led to the development of 182 acres (0.74 km²) of land to the west of the town centre largely between the present day Staines and Hampton Roads, new roads – Workhouse Road, Middle Road, 3rd, 2nd and 1st Common Roads (now First to Fifth Cross Roads respectively) – being laid out. During the 18th and 19th centuries, a number of fine houses were built and Twickenham became a popular place of residence for people of "fashion and distinction". Further development was stimulated by the opening of Twickenham station in 1848.

Electricity was introduced to Twickenham in 1902 and the first trams arrived the following year.

In 1939, when All Hallows Lombard Street was demolished in the City of London, its distinctive stone tower designed by Christopher Wren, with its peal of ten bells and connecting stone cloister, and the interior furnishings, including a Renatus Harris organ and a pulpit used by John Wesley, were brought to Twickenham to be incorporated in the new All Hallows Church on Chertsey Road (A316) near Twickenham Stadium.

The Twickenham Green area witnessed a high-profile murder on 19 August 2004, when French woman Amelie Delagrange (aged 22) died in hospital after being found with a serious head injury (caused by battery) in the area. Within 24 hours, police had established a link with the murder of Marsha McDonnell, who was killed in similar circumstances in nearby Hampton 18 months earlier. Levi Bellfield was found guilty of both murders on 25 February 2008 (as well as a further charge of attempted murder against 18-year-old Kate Sheedy) and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is also suspected of a series of other unsolved murders and attacks on women since 1990, most notably the murder of Amanda Dowler, a teenage girl who vanished from Walton-on-Thames in March 2002 and whose body was later found in Hampshire woodland.

Governance

From 1868 the area was administered jointly between the newly formed Middlesex County Council and the Twickenham Local Government District board, with the passing of the Local Government Act 1858. Then in 1894 The Local Government Act 1894 reconstituted the area as Twickenham Urban District. In 1926 Twickenham was granted a charter of incorporation to become a municipal borough. Eleven years later the urban district councils of Teddington, Hampton & Hampton Wick merged with Twickenham.

In 1965 Middlesex County Council was abolished and replaced with the Greater London Council and the boroughs of Twickenham, Richmond and Barnes were combined to form the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. In 1986 the Greater London Council was abolished and most powers devolved to local boroughs and others to the Government and joint boards. In 2000 the Greater London Authority was set up and two-tier administration returned, but with the top tier having a much more limited strategic role.

The borough council offices and chamber are located at York House, Twickenham and in the adjacent civic centre.

The Twickenham constituency in the UK Parliament includes the towns of Twickenham, St Margarets, Whitton, Teddington, Hampton, Fulwell, Hampton Hill and Hampton Wick. Since the 2015 UK General Election, the Member of Parliament has been a Conservative, Dr Tania Mathias.

Economy

Twickenham has the largest shopping centre on the Middlesex half of the borough, second only to Richmond. As a London suburb, many local residents commute to central London or work locally in retail, hospitality, education or for one of the many professional firms based in the area. London Heathrow Airport is important to the local economy both through direct employment and the cluster of international firms that have their European headquarters in the Thames Valley area. Unemployment in the area is very low, however there is a big difference in the salaries earned by residents who work inside the borough, compared to those whose employment is based outside.

The council has been making efforts to regenerate Twickenham town centre as it has been struggling due to strong competition from Richmond and Kingston upon Thames. It differs from most town centres as it has fewer retail shops, particularly chain stores, and more cafes, restaurants, banks and estate agents. There has been a comprehensive scheme of town centre improvements including repaving in Yorkstone, a new arts centre, and improved gardens and riverside walk. However, plans to build a barge house for the Gloriana (barge) at Orleans Gardens and to the youth centre out of Heatham House so it could be converted into a hotel proved controversial and were dropped.

Population and housing

Data for 1891–1961 is available for the Urban Sanitary District, that was then the Metropolitan Borough which always included Whitton. This area temporarily expanded for 31 years to include Hampton and Teddington from 1935, rising from 2,421 acres (9.80 km²) to 7,014 acres (28.38 km²). The 2001 and 2011 Censuses give detailed information about the town/district. The settlement's population in 2011 were living in 22,273 households.

Geography

Twickenham is bounded by the River Thames on the south and the land is relatively flat though it does rise gently to the West as it approaches Whitton. The land is fertile and was home to numerous market gardens before housing became the predominant land use with the coming on the railways in the mid nineteenth century.

The town is bordered on the south-eastern side by the River Thames and Eel Pie Island — which is connected to the Twickenham embankment by a narrow footbridge, the first of which was erected in 1957. Before this, access was by means of a hand-operated ferry that was hauled across using a chain on the riverbed. The land adjacent to the river, from Strawberry Hill in the south to Marble Hill Park in the north, is occupied by a mixture of luxury dwellings, formal gardens, public houses and a newly built park and leisure facility.

In the south, in Strawberry Hill, lies St Mary's University, Twickenham historically specialising in sports studies, teacher training, religious studies, the humanities, drama studies and English literature. Strawberry Hill was originally a small cottage in two or three acres (8,000 or 12,000 m²) of land by the River Thames. Horace Walpole, a son of the politician Robert Walpole, rented the cottage in 1747 and subsequently bought it and turned it into one of the incunabula of the Gothic revival. The college shares part of its campus with Walpole's Strawberry Hill. On adjacent land were the villa and garden of the poet Alexander Pope. The villa was demolished in 1808/09 following the orders of Lady Howe, who became irritated with the large number of tourists who visited the place. The grotto which formed the basement survived. A memorial plaque was placed on the site in remembrance in 1848.

A road just north of the campus is named Pope's Grove, and a local landmark next to the main road is the Alexander Pope Hotel (previously known as Pope's Grotto), a public house and hotel where Pope's landmark informal garden used to be. Near this hostelry lie St Catherine's school for girls and Radnor House School, in a building on the site of Pope's white stucco villa and the location of Pope's original — surviving — grotto.

There are a large number of fine houses in the area, many of them Victorian. The open space known as Radnor Gardens lies opposite Pope's Grotto.

Not far from Pope's Grotto is the Roman Catholic Church of Saint James, which has a memorial window in the form of the Royal Arms of Portugal and memorials to Manuel II, Portugal's last king, who worshipped here and died in nearby Fulwell Park in 1932.

Twickenham proper begins in the vicinity of Pope's Grotto, with generally large period houses to the west, the traditional definition of which is Twickenham Green, and similar housing in the east all the distance to Richmond Bridge typically largest near the Thames. Further to the north and west lies the town of Whitton, an area once of allotments and farm land but as with much of the nearest part of Twickenham (separated by the A316) 1930s–1960s housing.

The districts of East Twickenham and St Margarets lie to the north-east of central Twickenham on the west side of Richmond Bridge, the shortest bridge on the Tideway. These are popular for their attractive tree-lined residential roads and an eclectic range of shops and cafés. St Margarets is the location of Twickenham Studios, one of London's major film studios.

East Twickenham abuts the River Thames at Richmond Bridge and St Margarets has its river frontage immediately to the north. The great estate of Cambridge Park, home of Richard Owen Cambridge, the 18th-century satirical poet, was located here.

Nearest places

Education

Richmond upon Thames College, a College of General Further and Higher Education, is on Egerton Road in Twickenham.

Transport

Until 1971 London Transport operated a bus depot known as "Twickenham Garage" (coded AB) which was located in Cambridge Road, East Twickenham. The relevant destination blind for garage journeys always referred to this location as Richmond Bridge, which was close by. On closure, all its routes and vehicles were transferred to Fulwell bus garage, but the building remained under the ownership of London Transport until the mid-1990s when it was demolished to make way for a housing development.

Fulwell Garage was previously known as Fulwell Depot and was originally the base for London United Tramways in south west London. The trams were replaced by trolleybuses that started operating from Fulwell Depot in the 1930s. The trolleybuses were later replaced by AEC Routemaster buses and London's last trolleybus terminated here on the night of 8 May 1962, following a commemorative circuit of the Fulwell routes by London's first trolleybus, No.1 of the A1 class Felthams, known as "Diddlers". This vehicle is preserved in working order.

Originally Twickenham station was situated on the western side of the A310 London Road bridge before the new station was opened on the eastern side. This accounts for roads named Railway Approach and Station Road, which now give no access to the station.

Nearest railway stations

The main railway station in the town is Twickenham itself, although St Margarets, Fulwell and Strawberry Hill stations are also in Twickenham. Stations in nearby towns (all, except for Richmond, once part of the former Borough of Twickenham) are:

Buses

London Buses serving Twickenham are:

Sport

Twickenham is home to the headquarters of the Rugby Football Union and Twickenham Stadium. The England National Rugby Union Team play all their home matches at Twickenham Stadium, which is one of England’s largest stadiums and the world’s largest rugby stadium. Harlequins, a rugby union club, play at the Twickenham Stoop.

Brothers Arthur Anderson and Gerard Anderson were born in Twickenham and competed in track and field events in the 1912 Summer Olympics. Gerard was also the world record holder in the 440 metres hurdles. In 1914 he was killed in combat in World War I.

Twickenham Stadium hosted Rugby World Cup fixtures in 1991, 1999 and 2015, including semi-final matches in 1999 and the final matches in 1999 and 2015.

Arts and culture

The Twickenham Museum is a volunteer-run museum opposite St Mary's parish church. It is open every day except Mondays. The Cabbage Patch pub on London Road has, since 1983, been a regular venue for live music on Sunday nights, organised by TwickFolk.