Thames

by Peter Ackroyd

  BRAY: A moist or muddy place, or perhaps the brow of a hill. It was best known for its vicar, who changed his religious affiliation so often, between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, that he became a by-word for the clerical turn-coat. A famous ballad was written on the subject, of which the chorus goes:

  And this is law I will maintain

  Until my dying day, sir,

  That whatsoever King shall reign,

  I’ll be Vicar of Bray, sir.

  DORNEY: Or Dornei in Domesday, the island or dry ground frequented by bumble-bees. Presumably once an eyot where honey was harvested. In the gardens of the Tudor mansion, Dorney Court, was grown the first pineapple in England. There is a painting at Ham House of the Dorney gardener, on bended knee, presenting the imposing fruit to Charles II. The king is pointing to it in a relaxed manner.

  BOVENEY: Above the island, or perhaps above island. The little church of St. Mary Boveney, from the twelfth century, stands alone by the river. It is unused, but is still illuminated by candles. The appeal for its restoration is conducted under the auspices of the “Friends of Friendless Churches.” Just downstream from Boveney Weir lies “Athens,” the place where the schoolboys from Eton used to plunge naked into the river; hence the Grecian name. The bank here has always been known as a bathing place. Karl Philipp Moritz, in 1782, recorded that “the bank here was rather steep, so they had built a flight of steps down into the water for the benefit of bathers who could not swim. A pair of red-cheeked young apprentices strolled down from the town, had their clothes off in a wink, and dived in.”

  ETON and WINDSOR: Towns united by the river, as well as by their history. Windsor originally Wyndelshora—or, in Leland, Windelsore—seems naturally enough to mean a winding shore, or it might conceivably allude to that part of the river-bank that has a windlass and some, therefore, have said that it is an abbreviation of “wind us over.” Others believe that it is a corruption of “wynd is sore,” referring to the gusty weather. Eton is derived from eyot-tun, or settlement on the island, and not tun by the eau. The castle, and the school, are too well known to detain a determined Thames traveller. The castle itself is of some interest geographically. It is built upon a knoll of chalk that rises precipitately from the thick clay. That is why William the Conqueror decided to site his castle here. It seems to be artificial, and may thus be prehistoric. William may have intuited, or been informed of, some ancient source of power. The castle was effectively rebuilt by Edward III from 1360 to 1374, using for that purpose what was essentially slave labour. Hundreds of men from the surrounding countryside were “impressed” and obliged to work on the castle against their wills. The Saxon palace was located in Old Windsor, 2 miles downstream. In Thames Field, now the site of the Eton Rowing Course, have been found prehistoric barrows, Anglo-Saxon graves, and medieval structures.

  DATCHET: Etymology very uncertain, but believed to be Celtic or British in origin. It seems to incorporate cet meaning wood, except for the fact that there were no woods in the vicinity. There is a riverine town in France called Dacetia, which is deemed to mean “best place” in Gaulish. In Domesday Datchet is known as Daceta. It was described as “a low and wat’ry place,” and in the 1800s was denounced as “Black Datchet.” It is perhaps most famous for the scene of Falstaff ’s disgrace in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when he was flung into “the muddy ditch at Datchet mead” by the river. The Thames shore here was said, in the same play, to be “shelvy and shallow.” It remains so.

  RUNNYMEDE: Of uncertain meaning, possibly a running mead. Or place for horse races; it was indeed a race-course at the end of the eighteenth century. Or a rune-mead or place of runes, a site for magical divination. Or it derives from the Saxon runieg (regular meeting) and mede (mead or meadow) and was thus a field of council, or it comes from rhine, meaning river or ditch. It is all beyond conjecture. We live in a landscape for which we have lost the original meanings. Best known for the famous encounter between King John and his barons. There is an island in the middle of the river, now known as Magna Carta Island, which declares that this was the place of agreement. There is even a great stone upon which the precious document was supposed to rest.

  STAINES: Or stones. What stones? Could it refer to standing stones, now demolished, or to a milestone or Roman milliarium? A group of “negen stanes” or nine stones is mentioned in a twelfth-century charter of Chertsey Abbey, and it is believed that these stones marked the boundaries of the abbey lands. Were they originally part of a megalithic monument? The site is now a roundabout beside Staines Bridge. Curiously enough, London Stone is sited here, to mark what was once the limit of London’s authority over the river. Staines is an ancient place, with the traces of Mesolithic settlement. A Roman town was also constructed here, called Ad Pontes, meaning By the Bridges. The Itinerary of Antoninus suggests that there was a bridge here before the coming of the Romans, however, which would make Staines a very ancient crossing place indeed. There is also evidence of a Roman bridge, and a Saxon bridge, and a Norman bridge, across the Thames, and even a theory that the settlement was called Stones because of the number of broken bridges.

  PENTON HOOK: A curious curve in the river, which means that the traveller must walk for half a mile in order to cover a hundred yards in distance. There must be something of impenetrable hardness that deters the river from taking the shortest course. There is now a cut through it.

  CHERTSEY: Cearta’s ey, or island. The Ceroti insula or island of Cerotus is mentioned in Bede. From the seventh century it was the home of the celebrated Benedictine abbey of St. Peter. It was savaged by the Danes in the ninth century, and rebuilt by King Edgar in 964. It became a great town, as large in extent as Windsor, and its position acted as a fulcrum for the development of the Thames Valley. Henry VIII made a more permanent impression than the Danes, however, and the abbey was razed at the time of the Reformation. Abraham Cowley came to Chertsey to avoid the noise and business of London; much to Samuel Johnson’s delight, however, he suffered a number of illnesses and misadventures, succumbing to an early death while gathering hay in the fields. For Johnson it was a lesson against solitude. At Chertsey are found the last of the Thames water-meadows.

  SHEPPERTON: The home of the shepherds; Scepertone in Domesday. Part of the bank is known as War Close in which, according to William Harrison, “have been dug up Spurs, Swords etc. with great numbers of Men’s bones; and at a little distance, to the west, part of a Roman Camp is still visible.” A site of ancient battles, therefore, probably between the Romans and the Catuvellauni. Most famous as the home of film and television studios, where there have no doubt been re-enactments of just such battles. There is a ferry service between the Shepperton shore and Weybridge. A foot ferry across the same stretch of water is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Here also is the “Desborough Cut,” a short waterway laid across an island, while the Thames itself continues its sinuous and meandering course. There is some confusion concerning the state of the river at this point. It seems, in the course of recorded history to have altered its course, signified by the fact that the old parishes own areas of land on both sides of the river. The river, in other words, has moved.

  SUNBURY: In ancient records known as Sunnabyri, Sunneberie, Suneberie. If we take it as the conflation of Saxon sunna and byri, we have the sun town or perhaps a town with a southern aspect. Others believe that it is named after the burgh of a chieftain Sunna.

  HAMPTON: The farmstead by the bend in the river. In Domesday it is known as Hamntone. Here is to be found Garrick Temple, a folly conceived by the actor, David Garrick, to contain a statue of William Shakespeare. The statue by Roubilliac, modelled on Garrick himself, has for some reason been placed in the British Museum. Capability Brown designed the temple. Samuel Johnson said of Hampton, “Ah, David, it is the leaving of such places that makes a death-bed terrible.” Just downstream is Tagg’s Island, a hotel and pleasure resort designed by the early twentieth-century impresario, Fred Karno. The area is perhaps best kno
wn for the propinquity of Hampton Court Palace.

  KINGSTON: There can be little doubt about the essential derivation of this place-name. It may be the stone of kings or the manor of kings, but the royal association is clear. It was here that many of the Saxon kings were crowned. In 838 Egbert summoned a meeting of nobles and ecclesiastics at “Kyningestun, famosa illa locus.” The King’s Stone, now in front of the guildhall, was originally sited near the church door and is generally regarded as the throne upon which the Saxon kings of Wessex were inaugurated. In a charter of Edred, in AD 946, Kingston is expressly mentioned as the place of coronation. Speed calculates that nine sovereigns were in fact crowned here. The Domesday Book records the presence of three salmon fisheries. The present emblem of Royal Kingston consists of three salmon on a blue background. The first wooden bridge connecting Kingston and Hampton Wick was erected in 1219. The water was once deemed very clear and pure.

  TEDDINGTON: The settlement of the people of Todda or Totty. In old records it is known as Todington or Totyngton. Some people believe the name to be a corruption of Tide-end Town, on the presumption that the tidal river does indeed come to an end here. The first lock on the river is situated at this point. The first lock-keeper was given a blunderbuss, with bayonet attached, to deter irate fishermen and boatmen. Noël Coward was born here, Thomas Traherne was rector here, and R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone, lived here.

  EEL PIE ISLAND: It should really be known as Twickenham Ait. But eel pies, naturally, were once sold here. In the summer seasons of the nineteenth century, large crowds came to partake of the eels; members of benefit societies and trade unions mingled with respectable citizens and decent artisans for a memorable “outing.” In the 1960s the hotel became the venue for acts such as the Rolling Stones and the Who, David Bowie and Rod Stewart. The island is now the insular home of a somewhat eccentric community.

  TWICKENHAM: Presumably meaning the settlement or enclosure of Twica or, perhaps, land by a river fork. Known previously as Twitnam, Twittanham, Twicenham. The first written reference, in a charter of AD 704, describes it as Tuican hom and Tuiccanham. There was a ferry between here and Richmond by the fifteenth century. It is perhaps most famous by association. Its residents have included Sir Francis Bacon, Godfrey Kneller, Mary Wortley Montague, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, John Donne, Horace Walpole, J. W. M. Turner, Alfred Tennyson, Alexander Herzen, the Duke of Orleans and the exiled King Manoel of Portugal. It was memorialised by Pope in a puzzling couplet:

  Which fairer scenes enrich,

  Grots, statues, urns, and Johnston’s dog and bitch.

  The dog and bitch were two statues flanking the lawn of Orleans House, then owned by Mr. Secretary Johnston. In the church there is a monument to Pope, with the epitaph written by the poet himself, “for one who would not be buried in Westminster Abbey” bitter to the last. Daniel Defoe described the neighbourhood as “so full of beautiful buildings, charming gardens, and rich habitations of gentlemen of quality, that nothing in the world can imitate it.” But then a Frenchman said once to Pope: “All this is very fine, but take away the river and it is good for nothing.” This is perhaps accurate. The river is everything here. In the nineteenth century the neighbourhood was described by Dickens in Little Dorrit as “lovely and placid.” Now well known for its rugby stadium.

  PETERSHAM: The ham or settlement of Peohtre. The church is also of St. Peter. A nineteenth-century resident of the village recorded a conversation with an old inhabitant: “I remember the time when the people as lived here was people. Now there’s nobody here worth a damn.”

  RICHMOND: The name has no local derivation, since it was first named by Henry VII after his Yorkshire earldom. An area much painted and much described. Thus in Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian (1818) we read that the Thames, “here turreted with villas and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and majestically, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to which all of its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on his bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole.” The riverscape from Richmond Hill has been a favourite of painters for three centuries. In 1902 it became the first view to be protected by an Act of Parliament. Some lines on the view, written by James Thomson, had even been written on a board and nailed to a nearby tree so that nobody could be in any doubt about the “enchanting vale” and the “smiling meads.” To quote from Defoe, “the whole country here shines with a lustre not to be described…at a distance they are all nature, near hand all art; but both in the extreamest beauty.” It is no exaggeration to state that this was the area that initiated and nourished the English art of the landscaped garden, and thus changed the topography of the European world. Karl Philipp Moritz, in his travels, exclaimed of Richmond that “in its way it was the purest revelation of Nature that I have ever seen in my life.” This was nature mediated through the picturesque, and is a token of the almost hysterical approbation that Richmond once received.

  SHEEN: The name probably derives from the Old English sceon, meaning shelters, perhaps a reference to shelters for the beasts of the field. An alternative suggestion derives the name from the Old English sceone, meaning beautiful. From that root comes “shine,” perhaps to be interpreted by Defoe’s description of “the beauty with which the banks of the Thames shine on either side of the river.” The castle of the Plantagenets, Shene Palace, once stood in the area now occupied by Richmond Green.

  ISLEWORTH: The village known to the compilers of the Domesday Book as Ghistelworde. Its name is also found as Yhistleworth, Istelworth, Ysselsworth and Thistleworth. The etymologists have run riot. The most likely derivation, however, is from Celtic uisc for water and the Saxon worth for village. The confluence of Celtic and Saxon names is rare but it is indeed a village by the water, lying beside the river Crane as well as the Thames. It once had a reputation for remoteness, and at the beginning of the twentieth century it was described as “an ancient and almost forgotten village” with a “somewhat squalid waterside picturesqueness.” It is no longer squalid but the dwellings by the waterside are still picturesque—not least among them the famous inn, the London Apprentice. The church beside it is a strange hybrid, a modern building fastened to a fourteenth-century tower. The eyots, or islands, in front of the town were once used to harvest osiers. There was a royal palace in Isleworth, owned by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother to Henry III and nominal King of Rome.

  BRENTFORD: There was indeed a ford across the river Brent here, and also one across the Thames. There is a legend of “Two Kings of Brentford,” but their identity is now unknown. Brentford itself once had a reputation for dirt and squalor. John Gay, in his epistle to the Earl of Burlington (1712), described it as

  Brentford, tedious town,

  For dirty streets and white-legged chickens known.

  Thomson continued the abuse in his Castle of Indolence (1748) with “Brentford town, a town of mud.” George II admired the place because, in its dirty and ill-paved state, it reminded him of his native country. “I like to ride dro’ Brentford,” his majesty is claimed to have remarked, “it ish so like Hanoversh!” It used to be said of a man with a very red face that “he is like the Red Lion of Brentford,” alluding to the sign of the principal inn here. In the eighteenth century it became a great brewing town and in 1805 it joined the Grand Junction Canal, adding to the general noise, dirt and squalor. It is now much improved.

  KEW: Known variously as Kayhough, Kayhoo, Keyhowe, Keye, Kayo and Kewe. The name would seem to be a reference to a key or quay by the riverside, or it may mean a place upon a promontory. Erasmus Darwin celebrated the gardens in his couplet:

  So sits enthroned, in vegetable pride,

  Imperial Kew, by Thames’s glittering side.

  The vegetable pride is still very much in evidence. The Botanic Gardens are most famous for the palm house and the pagoda.

  CHISWICK: The meaning may be cheese farm, as in Keswick. Hogarth and Whistler were
both buried in the local churchyard. Chiswick House is close by. It was for a period in use as a lunatic asylum. Now it is open to the public. Once known for its nursery gardens and its market gardens, the neighbourhood was called “the great garden of London.” Chiswick was also celebrated for its brewing industries, of which there are records from the thirteenth century. Now best known for the Chiswick roundabout.

  MORTLAKE: In Domesday it becomes Mortelage. The name does not mean lake of the dead. Leland and others believed that it conveyed the Latin mortuus lacus, or the dead channel of a river that has changed its course. Yet that hardly seems appropriate to this stretch of the Thames. It may mean the stream owned by Morta, with lacu as stream. Or it may be related to the Old English mort, the name for a young salmon. The great Elizabethan magus, John Dee, lived in a house by the river. It was here that the angel Uriel appeared to him, and gave him a translucent stone by means of which he might summon the spirits. The first English tapestry factory was established here in 1619. There was also a famous pottery manufactory.

  PUTNEY: One of the twin towns beside the Thames, Putney on the Surrey shore and Fulham on the Middlesex shore. The churches that stand on opposite sides of the bridge, All Saints and St. Mary’s, were said to have been built by two giant sisters; they possessed only one hammer, and would throw it to each other across the water with the words “Put it nigh!” or “Heave it full home!” hence Putnigh and Fulhome. This is of course mere conjecture. Putney is in Domesday called Putelei, but in subsequent accounts it is spelled Puttenheth or Pottenheth. It may mean the landing place of Putta. The neighbourhood was famous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for its fishery. Fishing has once again become a popular sport here. There used to be a ferry, but a bridge replaced that service in the early eighteenth century. A London MP declared that “the erection of a bridge over the river Thames at Putney will not only injure the great and important city which I have the honour to represent, not only destroy its correspondence and commerce, but actually annihilate it altogether.” It used to be the custom for travellers to proceed by water to Putney, and from there take a coach. It is still well known for its rowing clubs, and has in fact become the centre for Thames rowing. Once a village, famous as the birthplace of Thomas Cromwell and Edward Gibbon, it spread along the banks until in the nineteenth century it was known for “a succession of factories and small cottage houses, which serve to shelter labourers and artisans” as well as “unwholesome looking swamps” which divide the space with “yards and quays and wagon sheds.” It became known as the manufactory of gin, starch, candles, beer and vitriol.