Local inhabitants and Richmond Council were incensed to find that the MOT had agreed without consulting them to redirect the road from the original route, which went through some disused land. Evidently the Board of Trade had sanctioned the erection of an experimental plant by the Gas Light & Coke Co. on this land. This meant that houses and shops on the Lower Richmond Road would have to be demolished. Questions were raised in Parliament, but it seems that national interest overruled local opinion. Eventually, over 300 families had to be rehoused in new blocks of flats or houses.
Maxwell Ayrton (1874–1960) was appointed architect for the project, and Alfred Dryland (1865–1946) was appointed head engineer. Ayrton originally designed an imposing structure with four 70-foot towers at the riverbanks and flanking walls 20 feet above road level. The Daily Telegraph conducted a campaign, with input from locals, against this proposal, on the grounds that the design was inappropriate for the quiet river setting of Richmond. The matter was referred to the Royal Fine Art Commission, which included, among other eminent people, Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944), who designed Hampton Court Bridge, and Sir Reginald Blomfield (1856–1942), who designed Lambeth Bridge. The commissioners agreed that the design was inappropriate for this reach of the river, however fine it might have looked in more dramatic scenery. ‘Its dramatic and fortified appearance seems so foreign to its quiet surroundings and presents so striking a contrast to the neighbourhood’ that they felt the architect should be asked to simplify his design. These opinions were more forcefully expressed by the locals. Mr M. William Jones wrote to the Daily Telegraph:
May I thank you for your invaluable support of those who are trying to save the scenery from the latest scheme to ruin its beauties? The old railway bridge is an abomination; the lock bridge close at hand is as bad; the proposed new bridge will be ten times worse than either. Its site is some 300 yards downstream from our old bridge, and its blatant ugliness will wreck all that is left of the beauty of this reach.
Another resident proposed that the new bridge should be built over and on each side of the railway bridge so as to minimise the number of bridge structures in the area. In the end, Ayrton agreed to change the design. At first, he omitted the towers on the Middlesex bank but kept shorter towers on the Surrey bank; the final design, however, has no towers and was highly praised at the time. Country Life published a photograph of the new bridge on 8 July 1933 with the caption ‘Twickenham Bridge. A beautiful concrete structure’.
The original name of the bridge as specified in the Act of Parliament was Richmond Bridge, but this was confusing, as the old bridge was also called Richmond Bridge. Some proposed that it should be called Queen Elizabeth’s Bridge to commemorate the fact that the great queen died at Richmond Palace, which fronted the river just by the Surrey end of the bridge. However, in the end, the more mundane name Twickenham Bridge was chosen.
Twickenham Road Bridge viewed through the Railway Bridge riverside arch
The contract for the construction of Twickenham Bridge, which stretched 2,500 feet including the approaches, was awarded on 1 June 1931 to Aubrey Wilson Ltd for the sum of £191,206. The 70-foot-wide bridge was built to cross the Thames 200 feet downstream of the railway bridge, where it crosses the 280-foot width of the river in three reinforced concrete spans. Between 175 and 200 men worked on the construction of the bridge, which was completed on time and opened on 3 July 1933 by HRH Edward, the Prince of Wales. The river arches have three permanent hinges, Twickenham Bridge being the first reinforced-concrete bridge in the UK to use this principle. This method leaves the arches free to adjust themselves to changes in temperature. The hinged arches of the river spans are emphasised by the provision of bronze hinge plates at the springings and centres. The distinctive shapes in pre-cast concrete placed within arches above the cutwaters give the design a definite art deco flavour.
The later history of Twickenham Bridge was uneventful until major repairs were undertaken in 1994. The Evening Standard of 28 October 1994 ran a banner headline, ‘Chaos ahead as bridges are fixed’. The work was planned to take five months and major disruption to London’s traffic was anticipated. The report commented that bridge closures are always a headache for London’s traffic, not least because so many different bodies are involved, including 11 borough councils and the Department of Transport. Today, we would have to add the Greater London Authority (GLA), although this is supposed to improve matters. With 750,000 vehicles crossing 23 bridges each working day, the closure of a single bridge is sure to cause chaos.
Richmond Footbridge, Lock and Weir
The year 1894 saw the opening of the two most idiosyncratic bridges over the Thames in London: Tower Bridge and Richmond Footbridge, Lock and Weir. Tower Bridge is world renowned; few people know about Richmond Footbridge unless they live nearby. However, The Times of 16 May 1894, reporting on the opening ceremony, states:
The ceremony will complete one of the most memorable events in the history of the river, perhaps second only in importance to the demolition of Old London Bridge, for even the construction of Teddington Lock had not the same far-reaching influence as will be exercised by this newer structure.
It was the weir which excited this eulogy from The Times rather than the footbridge, which, as we will see, was really an afterthought, designed to improve the appearance of the structure.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, there was an increasing problem with the lack of water depth in the river between Teddington and Richmond. There were two major reasons for this. First, the water companies were removing more and more water from the Thames at Staines to fill the reservoirs which provided a clean water supply to Londoners. Second, the removal of Old London Bridge, with its 19 arches, had allowed the tide to ebb and flow much faster, as the replacement bridge built by John Rennie, with five much wider arches, no longer acted as a sort of dam. Consequently, the flood tide poured up the river in a great rush as far as Teddington and then, after a short period of slack, the tide would retreat equally quickly and carry nearly the whole volume of water back towards London and the sea. The result was that at low tide the stretch of the river around Richmond turned into a trickling ditch in the middle of a mudbank. In addition, according to The Times, ‘the scour of the tides brought up all the filth from the sewage outfalls below London, and this, deposited on the foreshore, produced huge banks of mud where it had been almost as clean as a beach’.
The effect on the local environment and economy was disastrous. Apart from the despoliation of the scenery, riverside house prices fell to such an extent that one house bought for £14,000 in 1877 was sold for only £10,000 in 1889. Fish stocks dwindled and large fish such as salmon and trout vanished altogether, to the dismay of the 30–40,000 local fishermen. The watermen who took passengers up and down the Thames also lost business, as their boats could operate only for a few hours a day. A group of them even tried to bring attention to their plight by playing a game of cricket on the river-bed at Twickenham at low tide.
The first protest was delivered as early as 1860 to the Thames Conservancy, which was responsible for the state of the Thames at that time. Many further protests led to the conservators agreeing to dredge the appropriate stretch of the river at a cost of £21,000. This turned out to be a waste of money. The solution proposed by the local authorities, the Richmond Vestry and Twickenham Local Board, was the construction of a weir and lock. However, this continued to be resisted by the conservators, so eventually the local authorities decided to lodge a Bill in Parliament and, despite further opposition, an Act was passed in 1890 ‘to authorise the construction of a footbridge with removable sluices and a lock and slipway on the River Thames in the parishes of Richmond and Isleworth’. The estimated cost was £61,000, of which £40,000 was raised by local rates and the remaining £21,000 from the resources of the Thames Conservancy, which was made responsible for the construction project. Tolls were also introduced for the footbridge, to offset the contribution of the Thames Conservancy an
d to cover maintenance. A strange anomaly arose when it was found that the toll of one penny to cross the footbridge meant that anyone wanting to go onto the bridge just for sightseeing would have to pay twopence as they had to pass the toll a second time to return to the riverside. The tolls were not abolished until after the Second World War.
The design of the combined weir, lock and footbridge required remarkable ingenuity. The main problem was how to construct a moveable barrage which had to operate twice a day to control the great volumes of water flowing up and down such a major river as the Thames. Such barrages had been built on several rivers in Europe but they were designed to control the flow of the river only twice a year at the start and end of the rainy season and were far too cumbersome to be opened and closed twice daily. For the recently constructed Manchester Ship Canal, Mr F.G.M. Stoney (1837–97) had built over 100 moveable sluice gates which could be raised and lowered in minutes to control the level of the waters of the rivers feeding the canal. The problem with Stoney’s sluices was that the sight of the massive iron gates raised above the Thames at Richmond would ruin the beautiful riverside scenery. The solution was to build a double footbridge above the sluice gates and to provide a mechanism which turned the gates from vertical to horizontal so that they were hidden underneath the footbridge when raised to full height.
Richmond Footbridge, Lock and Weir
The structure as built consisted of a lock, weir, slipway and double footbridge. The lock was the largest on the Thames, capable of accommodating a tug and six barges. This was designed to provide a bypass of the weir so as to allow continuous passage for the 30 to 40 barges that were towed each day to and from Brunel’s Brentford Dock at the time. The weir consisted of sluice gates which were raised out of the river to allow the free flow of water until, on the ebb tide, the water had fallen to the half-tide level. At this point, the gates were lowered into the water to ensure it was maintained at the half-tide level until they could be raised again when the water level had been restored by the incoming tide. This solved the problem of the emptying of the river between Richmond and Teddington during low tide and allowed unimpeded passage of shipping underneath the gates at high tide. The sluices could be raised by a hand winch in seven minutes. Today, the operation has been mechanised. The slipway consisted of a set of rollers, allowing pleasure boats to pass without needing to use the locks when the sluices were in operation. The bridge itself was designed to conceal the ungainly sight of the raised sluice gates and to match the look of the relatively decorative Victorian iron railway bridge situated 200 yards upstream.
After a three-year construction project, the combined structure was opened on 19 May 1894 by Prince George, then Duke of York and later King George V. The ceremony consisted of the royal procession accompanied by military bands and aquatic sports, and followed by an evening illuminated river fête and fireworks. In 1908, the Port of London Authority (PLA) took over all responsibility for the tidal Thames, including the Richmond Footbridge, Lock and Weir, from the Thames Conservancy. By 1970, the PLA was virtually bankrupt following the closure of the London Docks and even tried to hand over the structure, which had fallen into disrepair, to the local authorities who were responsible for the other bridges in the area. Eventually, following years of local campaigning, the PLA agreed to renovate it at a total cost of £4,000,000. In 1994, centenary celebrations were held, attended by the present Duke of York. The crowds enjoyed a vintage boat rally and traditional refreshments were provided by a beer tent and the roasting of an ox. The centenary programme describing the structure stated that ‘the method by which it operates is ingenious Victorian engineering which has stood the test of time’ and added that the process of renovation would ensure its survival for another 100 years.
CHAPTER 2
Kew
Kew today has two bridges, the road bridge of 1903 and the railway bridge of 1869. The road bridge is the third to be built on this site, and it replaced a much admired stone structure by James Paine, the architect of Richmond Bridge. The current bridges cater for the thousands of road and rail passengers who cross the river here each day. Although, unlike Richmond Bridge, neither can claim to be an aesthetic masterpiece, attempts have been made to add a degree of ornamentation to what are basically functional designs.
Kew Bridge
The original Kew Bridge of 1759 was the fourth bridge to be built over the tidal Thames, predating Richmond Bridge by 17 years. The village of Kew grew more or less in parallel with Richmond from medieval times, as it was conveniently near Richmond Palace and so attracted royal and aristocratic members of the court. In fact, Kew’s royal connection lasted longer than Richmond’s, and resulted in the creation of the Royal Botanic Gardens, which had an immense effect on the development of the village and the consequent demand for a permanent river crossing. The name Kew comes from a Saxon word meaning ‘quay’, which indicates the village’s early origins and the primary local industry of fishing. On the other side of Kew Bridge is Brentford, which is at least as old as Kew. The name suggests that the river was fordable here at one time, and many historians believe this was where Julius Caesar crossed the Thames during his invasion of 55 BC. Unlike Kew, Brentford has had hardly any connections with royalty, although once, noticing its dirty, ill-paved streets, George II is said to have remarked, ‘I like to ride through Brentford, it is so like Hanover.’
Until the eighteenth century, neither Kew nor Brentford had large populations, except during the intermittent residence of the court at Kew. The two main local industries were fishing and the ferry. Fishing lasted until the river became polluted in the nineteenth century. The industry is commemorated by names of roads near Kew Bridge, such as Westerly Ware, which refers to a weir installed to trap fish, and Old Dock Close, where the fishermen kept their boats. The ferry, as at Richmond, belonged to the monarch, who granted the monopoly lease to royal favourites. Known as the King’s Ferry, it ran between the present riverside car park of Kew Gardens and a point just downstream of where the Grand Union Canal enters the Thames at Brentford.
Only in the eighteenth century did Kew grow from a collection of royal mansions and fishermen’s cottages into a typical English village. The main impetus was the creation and growing popularity of Kew Gardens. In 1731 occurred possibly the most significant event in Kew’s history when Prince Frederick, the elder son of George II, acquired a mansion known as the White House, situated near Kew Palace inside today’s Royal Botanical Gardens. Prince Frederick is known now, if at all, as ‘poor Fred’, from the rather cruel Jacobite poem which starts:
Here lies poor Fred,
Who was alive and is dead.
However, it is likely that Kew would never have had the world-famous Royal Botanic Gardens without him, and the whole history of Kew, including the bridge, would have been different. Frederick was a man of many enthusiasms including, strangely for a man brought up in Hanover, the game of cricket. He once captained a team playing a match against a side captained by the Duke of Marlborough on Kew Green. His greatest enthusiasm was for gardening. This he shared with his wife, Augusta. Sadly, he died in 1751 before his plans for the Botanic Gardens reached fruition, but Augusta was determined to carry on the work. It is possible that she was the driving force behind the project, as, according to E.B. Chancellor, ‘from her proceeded the scientific impress which has given it its unique place among national possessions, and its supreme rank among the botanical institutions of the world’.4
Meanwhile, wealthy people started to build the attractive Georgian houses around Kew Green which characterise the area today. St Anne’s Church, built as a small chapel in 1710, was extended. Writers and artists were also attracted to the village, including Thomas Gainsborough, Johan Zoffany and Jeremiah Meyer.
The result was increased use of the ferry. The records show that Prince Frederick himself was one of the most frequent users of the service. The receipts book for 1732 to 1737 shows that the total income from tolls for the five years was £3,6
28 5 s. 6 d. Prince Frederick himself took 116 horses over the river by the ferry in 1736 and paid a total of £2 2 s. 10 d. However, as was the case at Richmond, the ferry was not without danger. It seems likely that the ferrymen were not always entirely sober, as there was a public house on the Brentford side, and people and horses ended up in the river on several occasions. The inn was also frequented by highwaymen, who could escape across the river after robbing people on the streets of Brentford.
In fact, by the eighteenth century, there were two ferries between Kew and Brentford: one was the above-mentioned King’s Ferry and the other was a foot ferry which crossed the river along the line of the present bridge. A Brentford businessman, Robert Tunstall, had bought up both ferries and in 1757 saw an opportunity to profit from building a permanent river crossing without having to compensate any ferry owners. This may not have been the first attempt at a dry crossing if local rumours are to be believed. It is said that Oliver Cromwell escaped a party of Cavaliers after enjoying the hospitality of the Bull’s Head, which is on the Middlesex bank near today’s railway bridge, by means of a tunnel which led to the island in the middle of the river known as Oliver’s Ait. However, even if this is true, there is no record that the tunnel continued on to the Surrey bank.
Crossing the River: The History of London's Thames River Bridges From Richmond to the Tower Page 4
