Meadows, Mansions and Munitions: Stories and Lives of Cambridge Park (Paperback)

PUBLICATION DATE: 8 MARCH 2021

Bringing together existing and new research, this is the story of the people, architecture and development of Cambridge House and Park in East Twickenham, by Richmond Bridge on the Thames, told in words and pictures.

From rural meadows to playground of the London wealthy with their grand houses, the original Cambridge Park estate progressed into an affluent riverside suburb with periods including ‘Belgium-on-Thames’, with its Belgian-staffed WWI munitions factory, later the site of the world-ranking Richmond Ice Rink. Country mansions are still built here today.

Cambridge Park lies on the seventeenth-century Twickenham Meadows, renamed after Richard Owen Cambridge, who was described by Horace Walpole as ‘Cambridge the Everything’ due to his diverse talents and society connections.

Tales of nobility and merchants, men and women of letters, the arts and entertainment, developers and benefactors, as well as bombs, refugees and shopkeepers, combine to show the evolution of a most distinctive area of modern London.

Written and Compiled by Jonathan Crofts
Foreword by Sir Vince Cable

Paperback : 204 pages
Illustrations: approx. 200
ISBN-10 : 1838251006
ISBN-13 : 978-1838251000
Publisher : Richmond Bridge Media (publication 8 Mar. 2021)
Language : English

Contents
FOREWORD by Sir Vince Cable
INTRODUCTION
1. ARTISTS AND PERSPECTIVES
2. ARISTOCRATS AND ENCLOSURES
3. MERCHANTS AND MORTGAGES
4. THE FELBRIGG, NORFOLK CONNECTION
5. THE MYSTERY OF THE GLASS HOUSE
6. ‘CAMBRIDGE THE EVERYTHING’
7. BUILDING RICHMOND BRIDGE
8. ARCHDEACON CAMBRIDGE THE BENEFACTOR
9. DIVIDING THE ESTATE
10. MEADOWBANK AND MEADOWSIDE
11. BISHOP’S OBSERVATORY & HAVERSHAM GRANGE
12. THE EXILES CLUB AND BEYOND
13. THE 19th-CENTURY DEVELOPERS
14. CHURCH AND CHAPEL
15. EARLY 20th-CENTURY EXPANSION
16. SAVING THE VIEW FROM RICHMOND HILL
17. ‘BELGIUM-ON-THAMES’
18. THE RICHMOND BRIDGE AND BEAUFORT WORKS
19. ‘THE MOST FAMOUS ICE RINK IN THE WORLD’
20. PICTURE PALACE TO BILLIARD HALL
21. BUSES, TRAMS AND AUTOMOBILES
22. LIFE UNDER ATTACK
23. POST-WAR LIVING
24. THE NEW OLD GARDEN
25. INTO THE 21st CENTURY AND THE PANDEMIC
AFTERWORD
APPENDICES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & SOURCES
INDEX
THE AUTHOR