This is a large park next to the Thames in Strawberry Hill that was once mostly an island in the Thames. It also offers one of the few riverside paths open to the public between Twickenham and Kingston Bridge.
About half of the public garden is made up of several private gardens that used to back onto the Thames from grand houses, but at the turn of the 20th century, Twickenham Urban District started buying some of the houses to open up the land for the public.
However, the private gardens only comprised part of the park, as the rest was an island in the Thames. If you stand in the middle of the park, roughly the half closest to the Thames was the island, and you’re standing where the creek that separated the island from the land would have run.
Modern park overlay on OS Map from 1869
To create the park, first the council needed to buy up the private houses.
The first to be bought was Radnor House in 1902, which sat in the middle of the modern day park. The island was raised in height using gravel excavated from the construction of Teddington Lock, and the new park opened in 1903.
The southern half of the gardens came from Cross Deep Hall, which was demolished in 1906.
The park was extended again, this time northwards, when WWII bombs destroyed two houses there, and also destroyed Radnor House, which was still standing at the time.
The bowling green was created in 1920 and has been the home of Strawberry Hill Bowling Club since then.
A First World War memorial, designed by the sculptor Mortimer Brown was erected in 1921. Apparently, it was sited to be visible from the Royal Star and Garter Home for disabled soldiers and sailors on Richmond Hill. However, even if the trees weren’t in the way, you’d have needed a good telescope to see the monument from the home, as it’s a couple of miles to the west.
The river between the island and the shoreline silted up in the 1960s — probably due to the island height being raised in the 1900s. The channel was filled in completely in 1965, joining the gardens to the island for the first time and creating a wide open lawn that’s there today. The path of the old river channel can still be seen, though — it’s the pavement that runs along the side of the bowling green, then runs across the lawn, which shows up in dry weather as a noticeable broad mark crossing the lawn.
Part of Radnor House still remains, as the raised seating area. One remarkable survivor, though, is the flood height marker from March 1774, showing just how deep the flood must have been.
The park still floods at times, although never to that scale now.
Elsewhere, the the Grade II listed gazebo and summer house are also left-overs from the old house.
A curious twist is that in 1924, there was an argument about the cost of putting up a fence between the park and the road or maybe growing a hedge to protect children from accidentally falling down the slope. It seems they must have agreed on the hedge because, in 1965, motorists complained that the hedge meant they couldn’t admire the park when driving past.
Shouldn’t they be looking at the road?
Today, the park feels like a very large open lawn space, mainly occupied on my visit by dog walkers, and then lots of trees, mainly on the former island side of the park. A cafe sits next to the bowling green looking out over the war memorial.
A treat though is the riverside walk, nicely unfenced or hedged, but with lots of plants along the bankside which is going to be good for the wildlife and probably prevents the riverbank from being filled people people feeding the birds.
There’s also a local Friends group that liaises with the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames on issues affecting the park.
Nice open park right by the river. The cafe unfortunately is currently closed.