Thames Ditton


Thames Ditton is a suburban village by and on the River Thames, in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Apart from a large inhabited island in the river, it lies on the southern bank, centred 12.2 miles southwest of Charing Cross in central London. Thames Ditton is just outside Greater London but within the Greater London Urban Area as defined by the Office for National Statistics. Its clustered village centre and shopping area on a winding High Street is surrounded by housing, schools and sports areas. Its riverside faces the Thames Path and Hampton Court Palace Gardens and golf course in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its most commercial area is spread throughout its conservation area and contains restaurants, cafés, shops and businesses.
Its railway station, one of two on the Hampton Court branch line, is from the riverside end of the village centre and the village of Weston Green that hived off from it in 1939. The two other breakaway villages are Claygate and Hinchley Wood and today the only named sub-locality or neighbourhood in the village is Winters Bridge, on the road that used to be the main Portsmouth Road from London, but is now a local route, bypassed by long-haul traffic by the A3 to the south and east of Claygate.
Thames Ditton joins Long Ditton and Weston Green in occupying the land between Surbiton, Esher and East Molesey. Although reduced to less than, it formerly covered more than.

History

Pre-1800

The first written record of Thames Ditton is in a charter dated 983 when King Æthelred the Unready granted to Æthelmær, his minister, nine hides at Thames Ditton, Surrey. In The Cartulary of the Abbey of Eynsham Transaction, King Æthelred sent to Eynsham Abbey confirmation of the foundation by Æthelmær, the endowment including 20 hides at Esher, Surrey ; and land at Thames Ditton, Surrey, among several other items.
Two Dittons appear in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Ditone and Ditune. Under the Normans, the one now identified with Thames Ditton was held by Wadard from the Bishop of Bayeux. Its Domesday assets were: 2½ hides; part of a mill worth 1s 3d, 1½ ploughs, of meadow, woodland worth 20 hogs. It rendered £4. There were four households. Other manors that came to form part of Thames Ditton were those of Weston, Imworth, and for a while, Claigate. From Domesday, the combined population of Thames Ditton, Long Ditton, Immeworth and Weston was some 26 households of villagers and smallholders.
Later, the manors of both Dittons were reunited when Anne Gould inherited the manor of Thames Ditton and married Thomas Evelyn, who had inherited the manor of Ditton. By that time the manor of Thames Ditton amounted to little by way of land and, to all effects, Thames Ditton comprised mainly the manors of Imworth and of Weston, with some lands from Claygate, Long Ditton and even Kingston extending into the present-day boundaries of Thames Ditton and Weston Green. Thus it remained still in 1848, comprising "about ".
Under Eynsham Abbey, Thames Ditton had been parcelled with Esher. It was in the Saxon's Elmbridge hundred, where its local aristocracy would convene for strategic and administrative purposes. Salter's introduction to the Cartulary notes that along with Esher, Eynsham appears to have lost Thames Ditton by the time of the Norman Conquest. The Domesday survey recorded that Ditton had been held by Earl Harald. In Domesday, Thames Ditton is listed within Kingston Hundred; in Speed's map of Surrey it is said to be in Kingston Hundred. Subsequent records assert not only Thames Ditton was in Kingston Hundred but remained part of its parish as a chapelry.
Following the Norman Conquest, part of the land was granted to the monks of Merton Priory by Gilbert the Norman. A chapel – now the church – was built, the first recorded incumbent being in 1179. The chapelry of Thames Ditton was subordinate to Kingston Rectory until the late 1700s. By Act of Parliament in 1769, Thames Ditton, which had from the early 1600s assumed the civilian vestry responsibilities of a parish, became a separate curacy and an ecclesiastical parish in its own right, subsuming Hinchley Wood, Claygate and Weston Green..
But, the advowson remained in the hands of the Hardinge family of Kingston until Nicholas Hardinge sold it, along with the advowson of Kingston and other subordinate chapelries, to Kings College, Cambridge in 1781, subject to a long lease otherwise disposed of. The Hardinges retained the right of presentation for a period. Rev Henry Hardinge, Rector of Kingston, was also the incumbent at St Nicholas for a brief and ill-starred time.
Isolated on marshy wetlands, the village seems to have avoided the travails of Kingston. It remained a relatively insignificant settlement of farming Manors. The Chancery Rolls of 1212 do note that King John was entertained at Ditton by Geoffrey Fitz Pierre, the Chief Justice. This was most likely on the site of Imber Court. Another substantial house was on the site close to the chapel of ease, now the Church.
Thames Ditton became more significant after Hampton Court Palace was built by Thomas Wolsey in the early 16th century. Once the palace was claimed by Henry VIII in 1525, palace officials and other workers took up residence in Thames Ditton. With Thames Ditton Island, it was a useful crossing point across the River Thames from Surrey to the palace in Middlesex, before the bridge at Hampton Court was built in 1752–1753.
Development in the village suffered greatly when Henry VIII acquired most of the lands and enclosed them within the deer Chase in the Honour of Hampton Court. Following his death, residents of the area successfully petitioned for it to be de-Chased, and normal activities resumed. From that time the convenience of Thames Ditton to London – two or three hours by horse or carriage; the cachet of nearby Hampton Court, Claremont and Esher Place, Royal Kingston with its market and coach service, and the still rural aspect of the village prompted many to make their main or second homes there. A richly diverse crop of residents both notable and less so resulted.
During the 18th century, lawlessness grew in the region, and the roads around the village were plagued with highwaymen, in particular the turnpike to Portsmouth. Influential men began to band together to deal with crime. Following a meeting at the Harrow Inn on 26 January 1792, a group of some 80 local men formed a group for "the protection of persons and property". They made a list of crimes, fines and rewards.
An Act of Parliament of 1769 enabled the parish to be formally established and to secede from the parish of All Saints', Kingston. Many significant residents of Thames Ditton were also senior figures in the administration of Kingston, and the courts of Kingston held jurisdiction over both Kingston and Elmbridge Hundreds. Thames Ditton came under the Metropolitan Police rather than the Surrey Police until the present millennium. Most other aspects of local administration in the Victorian era: roads, drains, gas, electricity, the Poor Union, were managed by Kingston until reform of local government led to the establishment of the Esher and the Dittons Urban District Council in 1894. But, Thames Ditton was always clearly outside the area governed by the Corporation of Kingston. In 1965 the government had difficulty drawing the boundaries of Greater London satisfactorily to please various interests.

Post-1800

In 1801, the population of Thames Ditton parish, which at that stage included Weston Green, Hinchley Wood and Claygate, was still small: 1,288 people living in 265 houses; 167 of the workers were occupied in agriculture and 87 in trade, manufacture and handicraft. Due to the large number of mansions and estates in the area, there would have been many domestic and ancillary employees living in the village, some working at Hampton Court Palace.
During the 19th century, the village continued to grow, with the arrival of the London and South Western Railway in 1849 and the building of the first school. Market gardens were established in the fields around the Church to supply the metropolis. By the end of the century, the population had almost doubled but was still fairly sparse. In 1913 a booklet of 'The Suburban and Provincial Development Association' noted: "the population of the district is only about two to the acre" and "some of the trains perform the journey to Waterloo in as little as 24 minutes." And another local booklet of that period commented that "Thames Ditton.....may be said generally to abound in pretty villas whose inhabitants seem to vie with each other in friendly rivugalry to beautify them." Either side of 1900 the convenience to London and boating attractions of the Thames helped to make Thames Ditton a destination of choice for weekenders including a sizeable community from the world of popular entertainment in London. Local life was utterly changed by the expansion of London's suburbs, and in the period between the World Wars most of the farming fields were sold off for housing development, and the big landowners, now richer, decamped.
Around 1812, a school for girls was started thanks to wealthy people such as Baroness de Ros. Some form of National School for girls operated from September 1812, and boys were taught from 1818. At least 60 girls were being educated in 1816–17, some coming from Molesey and Tolworth.
In the 1840s, there was a National School housed near St Nicholas' churchyard. In 1860, the Rev EH Rogers laid the first stone of the schools at the end of Church Walk where generations of Thames Ditton children were educated. It was expanded in 1877.
There had long been a wharf near the Swan Inn on the river and this became a site for local industry. A 'Melting House' between the churchyard and the river became the Thames Ditton Foundry, a skilled bronze foundry in 1874, and successively as Cox & Son, Drew & Sons, Moore & Co, Hollinshead & Burton and A.B. Burton ; the foundry was supreme in its field. It produced fine bronze statues exported worldwide, including the statue commonly known as Eros Piccadilly Circus, Victoria Memorial and the giant Quadriga at Hyde Park Corner. and the Captain James Cook statue in Hyde Park, Sydney. Nearby, at Ferry Works on the river bank, was the factory of Willans & Robinson who in the late 19th century made a high-speed steam engine used for early generation of electric power in places such as the Vienna State Opera. The works is preserved and in use by a number of commercial companies including a broadcast software developer, an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets, a company specialising in numerically controlled machines and a leading architectural practice..
During 1901 and 1908, John Ernest Hutton of J. E. Hutton Ltd the Northampton makers of the Hutton light car and agents for Panhard, Panhard-Levassor and Mercedes produced a motorcycle called Princeps.
Between 1911 and 1984, the village was home to the AC Cars factory, first at Ferry Works and later in the High Street at a site since developed into a residential and office complex.
Celestion manufactured for some years at Ferry Works and adjacent buildings, producing the "Ditton" range of loudspeakers. British Rola bought Celestion in 1947 and moved production to Thames Ditton a year later. The name of the company changed to Rola Celestion; with its products sold under the brand name "Celestion".
From its creation in 1933 to its dissolution in 1994 the Milk Marketing Board, a government agency to support milk production and distribution in the United Kingdom was headquartered at Giggs Hill Green in Thames Ditton where it played a significant role in providing local employment and in supporting the Cricket Club and other aspects of village life. Its large site, already licensed for commercial use, was targeted by Tesco for a supermarket and garage in the early 1990s but local action secured it for a housing development with public tennis courts, a recreational area and two acres for community health purposes.

Historical figures

links Thames Ditton to London Waterloo, serving the large commuter population, local workforce and Esher college student population.
Its High Street is a conservation area that has a mixture of residential housing, office and retail shops in about equal proportion. The village High Street retains a pharmacy, greengrocery, florist, coffee/delicatessen shop, four restaurants, sandwich/coffee shops, a photographers and a post-office/convenience store. There are also a hairdressers, estate agents, two gift shops, a silversmith and jewellers, tennis and hockey equipment shop, a small modern art gallery, two beauty salons and an undertaker. In nearby Summer Road there is a newsagents, convenience store, dry cleaners and a high end interior designer. There are six pubs in the village, two with riverside frontages. The George and Dragon on the corner of High Street and Station Road hosts Thames Ditton Farmers' Market every 4 th Saturday of the month from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
At Winters Bridge on the Portsmouth Road there is a small parade of shops that includes a nationally recognised patisserie and chocolatier. There is another off-licence, a pharmacy and newsagent on Thorkhill Road, formerly Workhouse Lane.
The village has a , which was formed in 1934. The Residents' Association as at 2012 holds all three seats for the ward on Elmbridge Borough Council, and the Surrey County Council seat for the Dittons.
A small United Reformed Church was added in the 19th century. Giggs Hill Green, and the Vera Fletcher Hall. The Vera Fletcher Hall "The Theatre in Thames Ditton" is on Embercourt Road, near Thames Ditton railway station. The old Victorian Village Hall was built in 1887 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee as a gift to the community from local benefactor Hannibal Speer Lord of the Manor of Weston. Over the years the village hall has been able to attract stars such as Petula Clark, Dorothy Tutin, Denis Quilley, Janet Suzman, John Julius Norwich, Susannah York, the English National Opera and the Royal Shakespeare Company with their "Shakespeare Revue". Local drama and music groups present performances at the hall on a regular basis.
The Rythe is a small river that bisected the southwest of the old parish in running almost along the Portsmouth Road and turns north near Ferry Road to drain into the Thames at which point it formed the old border with Long Ditton, which had a narrow riverside.
Ye Olde Harrow, an historic inn was a base for the local militia in the days of highwaymen and subsequently hosted one of the oldest bowling greens in the county. It is to be demolished and several houses are to be built on the site.

Localities

Further churches and facilities in the arguably independent, and inchoate locality of Weston Green which is termed by its residents association a 'village' but retains a strong association with Thames Ditton, with three residential roads indistinct as to at which point along them the boundary between the two lies, while other parts of the former parish of Thames Ditton, such as Hinchley Wood and Claygate, have taken on separate identities, and have become part of the Esher post town. The Giggs Hill area takes its name from Giggs Hill Green.

Landmarks

Boyle Farm

Boyle Farm was the earlier name of the Home of Compassion, a wide range mansion care home by the River Thames formerly set among fields rather than private houses. The country house replaced the farmhouse of Forde's Farm in 1786 when built by the Honourable Charlotte Boyle Walsingham. Although the estate has been sold and divided into expensive building plots over the past century, some of the farm buildings and outhouses remain. It has river frontage and used to own a small island in the Thames, which the frontage overlooks, called Boyle Farm Island. The building is currently a nursing home run by a board of trustees.

St Nicholas Church

The ecclesiastical parish church was built almost wholly in the early medieval period demonstrates fine architecture and is listed in the highest category of building.

Giggs Hill Green

This triangular village green adjoins Portsmouth Road and gives its name to a locality of the village marked on some maps, but within any official status such as wards, the main secondary parade of shops of the village is here, which also serves that part of Long Ditton on the riverside part of the Portsmouth Road. There is no hill here and its were purchased in 1901 by the Esher and Dittons Urban District Council for its cricket green and remaining area to put benches as well as to allow picnics and informal sport.

Transport links

Rail

is on the Hampton Court branch line from London Waterloo to Hampton Court is within a ten-minute walk. Rail services are provided by South Western Railway. Journey time to London Waterloo is 33 minutes. Trains run every half hour from 05:56 to 23:26 to London Waterloo.

Bus

Various buses run through Thames Ditton, including the 515, 513, 514 and services 458 and 715 which run via the Pourtsmouth Road to serve Walton, Staines, Cobham and Guildford. The 715 is diverted via Thames Ditton village on Sundays.

Road

From Thames Ditton, it is approximately five minutes by road to the A3 or ten minutes to A3. It is some 15 minutes to the M3 and M25 and some 35 minutes to Heathrow – these times can be severely affected by racing at Kempton Park Racecourse and/or Sandown Park.

Education

For senior education this is outside of the boundaries but nearby, at Secondary School and Sixth Form College and Esher College.
Preparatory and independent schools are outside of the boundaries but relatively nearby, including one in Weston Green.

Flooding

The village was partly hit by the Great Flood of 1968 when the rivers Ember and Mole burst their banks. The extent of the flooding reached from the western points of the Portsmouth Road to the River Thames and caused flood damage to many homes including some in the west of Weston Green, the floodwaters did not subside for a number of days.
On 30 November 2006 a diameter water pipe, said to be over 150 years old, in a garden near the rail station burst causing flooding, mainly in two suburban streets. The floods reached the Infants' School grounds and high street such as shops and two houses close to the Thames.

Sports activities

Thames Ditton Cricket Club is the oldest sports club in Thames Ditton. The first recorded match on Giggs Hill Green was in 1833, and the club remains with hundreds of members and a recently built brand new pavilion. They have three Saturday XI's, and one Sunday team. The club celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2008, and in 2009 contracted former West Indies cricket captain Richie Richardson to coach and play for the team for the following four years.
The cricket club has enjoyed great success in recent seasons, and in 2019 completed a “treble” of promotions, with the 1st XI, the 2nd XI and the 3rd XI all achieving promotion for their relevant divisions.
Weston Green Road is the location of Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club. The club was ravaged in the 1990s by a protracted legal battle with the owner of the site freehold, who wished to build executive homes on the site. Though TDLTC eventually won the case, it lost the rights to use three courts on the adjoining Esher College site, which were themselves subsequently sold to developers. However, the club still owns six grass and four hard courts, along with one short tennis court. It also has access to a three new hard courts at Esher College, and a weekend arrangement with Kingston Grammar School to use its courts as an overflow for the junior section.
The Thames Ditton Squash Club is now housed at Colets' Health and Fitness Club. It is the strongest club in England, with several national club championships to its name as well as a strong record in the European championships. The same fitness club is also the headquarters of a number of rugby and football teams of the Old Paulines who own the grounds.
In Weston Green there is the Old Cranleighan Rugby Football Club, as well as the Old Cranleighan Hockey Club. Having been formed in 1919 and 1921 respectively, the OCRFC and the OCHC moved to their new clubhouse in a secluded position off Portsmouth Road in 1928. The clubhouse was substantially renovated and enlarged in 1993 and the club now has some of the best facilities for rugby and hockey in Surrey. OC Rugby started a Mini Rugby section in September 2011, which has been very successful in providing a fun and controlled introduction to rugby for local children on Sunday mornings.
Metropolitan Police F.C. of the Southern Football League are based in Thames Ditton.
Thames Ditton Regatta, founded in 1948, is a rowing regatta which takes place in May on a course which finishes just below the River Mole, opposite Hampton Court Palace.
The traditional river sports of skiffing and punting are possible at Dittons Skiff and Punting Club at the end of Queen's Road. The club was formed in 1923 and is involved in various water-based activities including the Great River Race and Thames meanders. It hosts the Hampton Court and Dittons Regatta and has its own annual regatta on the river opposite Hampton Court Palace.

Cultural references

;Literature - non-fiction
Charles Lamb in his letter to William Wordsworth of 19 October 1810 writes about the place:
;Literature - fiction and verse
In 1834, well after the lock below was built, Theodore Hook composed an ode or tribute, fishing from a punt here:

Here, in a placid waking dream
I'm free from worldly troubles,
Calm as the rippling silver stream
That in the sunshine baubles;
And when sweet Eden's blissful bowers
Some abler bard has writ on,
Despairing to transcend his powers,
I'll ditto say for Ditton

He also wrote verse about The Swan Inn that year.
Eric Wilson Barker, poet, spent his childhood in the village, attended the old church school in Church Walk, then his family emigrated to California for health reasons. Barker became a celebrate and was offered the laureateship of California, which he declined. He revisited his birthplace in 1959 and wrote to a friend: 'I visited an ancient pub, The Old Harrow near Weston Green. I always remember the lines on the signboard of that inn when I was a kid.... There it was too and the old weatherworn sign with the letters a bit dim but still legible!' Barker wrote a poem "IN THAMES DITTON" under Looking for Water, published 1964: "In Thames Ditton I remembered a clock....."
Ernest William Hornung penned a very brief local stay of the narrator-protagonist in The Amateur Cracksman :
;Literature - biographic main references
Thomas Babington Macaulay rented lodgings a year near Esher railway station while writing some of his History of England. His nephew and biographer Otto Trevelyan wrote in 1876: "His brother-in-law had taken a house in the village of Esher; and Macaulay accordingly settled himself, with infinite content, exactly in the middle of the only ugly square mile of country which can be found in that delightful neighbourhood. 'I am pretty well pleased,' he says, 'with my... pleasant, small dwelling, surrounded by geraniums and roses... The only complaint I have to make is that the view from my front windows is blocked by a railway embankment.' Macaulay's cottage, which stood in Ditton Marsh, by the side of the high-road from Kingston to Esher, was called Greenwood Lodge."
;Television
Monty Python, regularly poking jibes at adjoining Esher, in the sketch, 'Blackmail' has a scene in "Thames Ditton" filmed in a west London residential road.
Exterior scenes for the 1980s sitcom After Henry were shot on the village High Street.
The place has a mention in the safari park scene of episode two of Reginald Perrin, series one.
BBC TV series Little Britain'' featured sketches shot in and around its library. A prop of a lifelike postbox is used in one shot.

Notable residents

The average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average that was apartments was 22.6%.
Output areaPopulationHouseholds% Owned outright% Owned with a loanHectares
6,307
2,451
34
46
188

The proportion of households in the settlement who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings.