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Richmond History No 31
The Journal of Richmond Local History Society
The common man fights back
Most Thameside historians research the life and times of the rich and famous - they were the ones who left diaries, accounts and press cuttings to ensure that they would be remembered - but the articles in this year's Richmond History (the journal of the Richmond Local History Society) show just how much we can learn about the less privileged, if we dig a little deeper.Peter Flower, for instance, has not only rescued a First World War memorial from oblivion at the Vineyard Congregational Church, but also the stories of those recorded on it. Thanks to him we now know about their families and where they lived. 'We will remember them.'
John Cloake has done much the same for our ancient pubs, rescuing their histories and identifying their sites, many of them surely patronised by those WW1 heroes. A few are still where they were founded, though often with different names
in Richmond, the Prince's Head, the Old Ship, the Cricketers, the Roebuck, the Waterman's Arms, the White Hart; in Petersham, the Dysart Arms; in Ham, the New Inn. Others have been superseded by supermarkets, cinemas and offices, and restaurants - in Kew, the King's Arms; in Richmond, the Talbot and the old coaching inn of the Greyhound, its entrance still easily identified today.
Who would have thought, for instance, that genteel Richmond would have been a pioneer in the provision of council housing? But Manor Grove was one of the first estates in the country thanks to one determined councillor, William Thompson, as Roberta Turner shows. Perhaps it should be declared a Conservation Area?
Judith Church and Michael Lee have also sought out stories of men distinguished in their time and now in danger of oblivion - Evan Hopkins, the first vicar of Holy Trinity, and Douglas Sladen, a literary lion of his day.
Most unexpected of all is Edward Casaubon's discovery that 18th-century Richmond was home to one of the most unlikely riots, one orchestrated by a coalition of its richest and poorest residents, neither of whom could stomach the creation of the towpath. Their protest failed, but not for lack of vigour - and, unlike today, the riot was apparently conducted without the inflammatory effect of alcohol.
View of new towpath running alongside Richmond's fashionable footwalk
Richmond History No 30
The Journal of Richmond Local History Society
This year’s journal is remarkable for the number and rarity of the pictures that illustrate the articles.
This detail from Leigh’s Panorama of 1830 depicts a scene that has changed remarkably little in the intervening years. It shows Water Lane with the White Cross to the left and Collins Brewery (now the Slug and Lettuce) to the right. In the Journal’s leading article John Cloake traces the rise and decline of the immensely successful Collins family, their brewery and the pubs they owned.
These two architectural drawings of the Star & Garter Home – the first by the eminent architect, Giles Gilbert Scott, and the second by the less well-known Edwin Cooper – provide evidence of an unseemly battle that raged in the First World War over the building of Richmond’s most iconic building. Steven Spencer, the former archivist at the Home, tells the story of how Scott resigned under pressure from the management of the Home, and how his successor, Cooper, took over the original design and took the credit too.
This view of the entrance to Richmond Palace in 1726, very similar to the view today, is attributed to Augustin Heckel, and provides a vital clue to John Cloake’s solution to the mystery of Madame de la Tour du Pin, one of several members of the French nobility who took refuge in Richmond from the French Revolution.
The original of this Cruikshank drawing has recently been presented to the Museum of Richmond. Ron Berryman, who lives close by the house with the balcony, tells the story of how its owner, the eminent Professor Sir Erasmus Wilson, born just 200 years ago, inspired the creation of public baths throughout Victorian Britain.
Also in this issue of the Journal are articles on ‘The Arrival of Party Politics 1918-1928’ by Michael Lee, ‘A Spy in Richmond: the Adams Espionage case of 1939’ by Steven Woodbridge, ‘Roman Catholic Education and Worship in Ham and Petersham’ by Len Chave, and ‘Finny v. Govett – a disputed will’ by John Govett.
Richmond Local History Journal no 30 (2009), is available from all local bookshops, or by post (p & p £1.50) from Mrs R. Turner, 21 Woburn Court, Stanmore Road, Richmond TW9 2DD. The price is £4.95 (members £3.95).Richmond History No 29
The Journal of Richmond Local History Society
With the news that the Royal Star & Garter Home is off on its travels, Richmond History has seized the opportunity to celebrate its colourful life on the crest of Richmond Hill. The Star & Garter features in no fewer than three of the articles in the latest journal.
In the 19th century the Star & Garter was the most glamorous hotel in Britain, the haunt of royalty and the literary establishment. John Cloake’s article, ‘That Stupendous Hotel’, describes Dickens celebrating the publication of David Copperfield there, with Tennyson and Thackeray among his guests. Thackeray apparently found it a bit overwhelming: ‘where, if you go alone a sneering waiter with his hair curled frightens you off the premises; and where if ... you look out of the window you gaze on a view which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendour – a view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter.’ This picture by Edward Prentice includes the famous view, along with a group of Dickens’s carousing friends, in this case somewhat dismayed by the size of the bill.
Judith Church’s article, ‘The Royal Star & Garter Home’, describes how the hotel then became the home for disabled heroes of World War I. They ran their own magazine. This cartoon, drawn when they were waiting for the home to be rebuilt in the 1920s, typifies their extraordinary courage in the face of a lifetime of dependence. The last veteran of that war died in 1996. The home survived to become a pioneering centre of medical care and treatment for the disabled, generously supported by royalty and by national personalities such as Vera Lynn, Thora Hird, Bamber Gascoigne and Simon Weston.
VIPs were not always good news. In Steven Woodbridge’s article on ‘Fifth-column fears in Richmond’ we find that in World War Two another VIP, famous in his time and a governor of the Home, was imprisoned for his fascist views. Fascism, then as now, was still a force to be feared.
This picture of hire boats lined up by Kew Bridge is a reminder of the huge leisure trade run by the Williams family at the turn of the nineteenth century. In ‘Kew Riverside 1820-1920’, David Blomfield explores their fortunes along with those of Kew’s other leading boatmen, the Laytons and the Humphreys - all of them colourful examples of those families that clawed their way up into the burgeoning Victorian middle class. The Laytons lived almost next door the royal family’s holiday homes on Kew Green; the Humphreys were employed as toll keepers by the City in a house that backed on to the huge bargehouse that held the Lord Mayor’s barge; the Williams catered for the crowds that passed their wharf on the way to the Botanic Gardens. In each case apparently the key factor, then as now, was location, location, location.
For public authorities works of art can be embarrassing gifts. Too often they attract graffiti and derision rather than admiration. None more so than Richmond’s notorious ‘Bulbous Betty’. This statue by Alan Howes now presides over the calm waters of a pool at the top of the Terrace Gardens, eliciting little more then polite puzzlement among passing pedestrians – neatly caught in this painting by Ron Berryman. She seems wonderfully oblivious of the extraordinary furore she provoked on her arrival there in 1952.
The setting is appropriate, as her true title is ‘Aphrodite’, echoing perhaps Botticelli’s painting of her birth off the coast of Cyprus. The style, however, is that of the modernist idiom of the 1950s, and it excited outrage among some of the councillors and even more of the citizens of Richmond. Controversy raged in the letters columns of the Richmond and Twickenham Times, ‘Bulbous Betty’ being only one of a number of derisory nicknames suggested in a heated correspondence that the editor brought to a close after no fewer than 84 letters. She was described as being an insult to human form, and schoolchildren were forbidden to look at her. One letter declared the ‘the sculpture is as disturbing to gentlemen, as Father Thames is to maidens’. Ron Berryman’s article, ‘The Disgracing of Aphrodite’, wittily describes how she survived what eventually became a matter for national debate.
Other articles in the journal cover the development of Kew Road, the origins of a Richmond pressure group, pleasant Sunday afternoons at the Congregational Church and the odd case of a toddler lost and found on the towpath in 1902.
Richmond History No 28
The Journal of Richmond Local History Society
This year the society’s journal has turned detective, with its contributors pursuing answers to a number of historical mysteries.1. Who built these magnificent Tudor cellars?
The undercroft of Kew Palace, shown here in a photo by David Allen (© Historic Royal Palaces) is probably a century older than the palace itself. In magisterial style John Cloake reviews the extraordinary range of princes, dukes and power brokers who lived in Kew in Tudor times, traces the sites of their houses, and speculates on the most probable origin of the Tudor cellars.
2. Why do we not still have a Richmond Royal Horse Show?
Richmond Horse Show began unexpectedly with a chance encounter at a cricket match, flourished for 75 years and then equally unexpectedly closed at a few weeks’ notice. Why? Had it lost favour? Not so. It simply ran out of space. Val Roberts has taken a fresh look at the paradox of the rise and fall of what was once the most glamorous of the fashionable horse shows.
3. Who sank the Queen Elizabeth off Kew pier in 1904?
No, she was not the transatlantic liner, but the star paddle-steamer of the Edwardian age, seen here in her pomp. She held 700 passengers and two pianos. All passengers and – most importantly – the pianos were salvaged when she unexpectedly sank off Kew Pier. Philip Harper has unearthed the legal trail over what sank her and who was responsible.
4. Who hosted the royal family at a Working Men’s Club in Sandycombe Rd?
The future king and queen are easily identified in this rare picture. Less well known now is their bearded host, Alderman Szlumper, an engineer and major benefactor of Darell Road School. Roger Stearn writes on the contribution of such civic leaders to our state schools in the early 20th century.
5. What role did Petersham’s All Saints church play in World War Two?
This map indicates the extent of the old Bute House estate, and site of the unconsecrated All Saints, requisitioned by the Anti-Aircraft Command in 1940. Michael Lee has researched the history of the church and identified the scientists who worked there and the contribution they made to the development of Radar and the defence of Britain.
6. What happened to the almshouses below the Star and Garter?
Dr Nigel Hepper has made a botanical survey of Petersham Common, Richmond’s least visited stretch of woodland. In the journal we include the historical research with which he underpinned his survey, including the records of these ancient 18th-century almshouses, demolished in 1953.
The journal also includes an article on its own history along with, for the first time, reviews of two privately printed books, one on the development of cottages in Ham and the other on social life in Richmond between the wars.