Goo now thy wey, this penaunce ys but lyte,
And whan this book ys maad, yive it the quene,
On my byhalf, at Eltham or at Sheene.....
So says
Alceste, the queen of love (modelled on Anne of Bohemia) to the poet,
Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women,
in 1386, referring to two preferred royal retreats.
In
the year 1500, King Henry VII, Earl of Richmond (in Yorkshire) renamed the
quiet royal manor of Sheen as Richmond - Richmond upon Thames .
Not for
nothing are there pubs here named The Duke of York, and The Prince's Head.
It wasn't far away, in Richmond
Park St Paul 's, ten
miles away across the city haze (telescope provided by my uncle's firm).
In the
town itself, at the end of King Street (or Duke Street, or Old Palace Row),
lies Richmond Green, where jousts were held in the 15th and 16th centuries -
though nowadays any game involving more than ten players needs
special permission.
The
Gate House, Wardrobe and Old Palace Yard of the Tudor Palace
At
least one other royal connection can be traced around this bend of the river.
Ham House, just beyond the village of Petersham, owned by the
National Trust since 1948, is 17th century baroque and was gifted by Charles I to his
whipping boy, William Murray, later 1st Earl of Dysart. Apparently, the house
was also where King Charles II secretly met with his Cabal (his policy-making
committee, named after the initials of its five members).
The
river flows..... Central to England and its history. The
bridge here, 91 metres long, opened in 1780, is the eighth bridge to span the Thames in Greater London, and the oldest surviving, and
it connects the two parts of the Borough of Richmond, the only London Borough
to exist on both sides of the river.
The river flows..... For centuries the Thames was the preferred means of transport from west to east, and vice versa. The railway arrived in
And as
it flows, it floods too, with spring tides still causing difficulties for local
residents and patrons of certain hostelries.....
And as
it floods it washes the pastures, with Petersham meadows being the nearest true
farmland to London .....
And
rising above the meadows, with the only view in London protected by Act of
Parliament, is the Grade II listed Royal Star and Garter Home, built by Sir
Edwin Cooper, based on a 1915 plan by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of the St
Pancras Hotel and Bankside Power Station - Tate Modern - amongst
other things). This great building, which occupies the site of the
popular Star and Garter Hotel on Richmond
Hill , was built to care for servicemen who had
been severely disabled during the First World War. Queen Mary, with
George V at her side, inaugurated the home in 1924.
 |
The Royal Star and Garter Home, Richmond Hill; sold for £50m in 2014 |
The Royal Star & Garter Homes is a charity that provides nursing and therapeutic care to the ex-Service community. Having sold their property on Richmond Hill, they now have two homes, one in Solihull and the other in Surbiton, though they plan to open one more in High Wycombe.
The London Square Company (founded in 2010, the company has already created a development pipeline worth over £1 billion) is now working closely with the Borough of Richmond upon Thames, English Heritage and the local community to create a residential scheme which respects and complements the wonderful heritage of this Grade II listed building.
It is a relief to know this: some people might have worried that the edifice would just be converted into flats.....
For house hunters who are not into makeovers, Richmond has a range of properties, from this five bedroom Terraced house (valued at about £3m) ....
Or
for a similar price, but with one less bedroom, there is Wick House, built
in 1772 for the painter Joshua Reynolds, who died here twenty years later....
Though for
a two bedroom cottage in Old
Palace Lane the price would be a much more
affordable one million....
And almost exactly one hundred years ago an earnest, slightly stressy couple moved, initially, into a flat above the delivery entrance to Boots, escaping the intensity of Bloomsbury.
Virginia Woolf had attempted suicide in 1913, and her husband Leonard fancied that Richmond would be more relaxing. The lady soon settled in and was often to be seen walking her dog, Grizzle, near the river, which she referred to as my river.....
Unfortunately her recovery was short lived, and just as the couple was about to move into Hogarth House in March 1915 she had a breakdown and was admitted to a nursing home. Leonard moved in himself, and then Virginia joined him in April, attended by four nurses.
They founded the Hogarth Press in March 1917, using a small, hand-operated press, and began by publishing some of their own short stories.
Then, in November 1918 they were visited by an American who had just turned thirty-one. Within a couple of years, with a little help from Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot produced The Waste Land, first published in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Virginia had noted that this was a very strange young man. On June 18th, 1922, he recited the poem to the Woolfs (Woolves?) in their home. Mrs Woolf noted in her diary that He sang it and chanted it, rhymed it. It has a great beauty and force..... What connects it together, I'm not so sure.
In September 1923 the Hogarth press published 450 copies of the first UK book edition of the 434 line poem. The type was set by Virginia herself.
Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.
My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?
The world is what it
is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place
in it.
A Bend in the River
V S Naipaul
(NB: Naipaul's river was an unspecified African one, probably the Congo, but through gossamer threads I linked his bend and his river to Conrad, and Eliot, colonialism and nothingness - though I realise I am probably stretching all this beyond acceptable limits!)
 |
St Mary Magdalene, Richmond Town Ministry |
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
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