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Dickens
and Richmond
Eel Pie Island (photograph
Susan Gane, 2001)
In the Richmond area
you can find the remains of Richmond Palace and the splendid houses that the aristocracy built
for themselves in the
neighbouring villages of Petersham, Ham and Twickenham. But in
Dickens' time the railway led to middle class suburbanisation, and Richmond
became a favourite destination for excursions. Eel
Pie Island was named after a tavern (now demolished) famous for its eel
pies, that attracted steamers full of day-trippers.
In Nicholas Nickleby Mrs Kenwigs came from ‘a very genteel
family, having an uncle who collected a water-rate; besides which
distinction, the two eldest of her little girls went twice a week to a
dancing school in the neighbourhood, and had flaxen hair tied with blue
ribands hanging in luxuriant pigtails down their backs, and wore little
white trousers with frills round the ankles’. The eldest Miss Kenwigs joined a party, catching a steamer
from Westminster Bridge to Eel Pie island to ‘dance in the open air to the
music of a locomotive band.’
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Richmond Palace Gatehouse (photo Susan Gane, 2002)
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Maids of Honour Row, Richmond Green
(photo Susan Gane, 2002)
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Richmond
Green was originally a common where villagers
pastured their sheep but later became a medieval jousting ground alongside
Richmond Palace. Only the gatehouse and parts of the old
wardrobe in the
courtyard survive from the Tudor palace. It
was a royal residence from 1125 until 1688. Henry
VII (1509-47) built the Tudor palace and his arms are on the gatehouse.
The second daughter of his son Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) died here. During the Civil War of
1642-51 Oliver Cromwell demolished
the most important buildings.
Very near to Richmond Palace is Maids of Honour Row (1724) ‘an excellent,
entirely uniform, terrace’ of three story houses. They were built for the maids of honour of Caroline of
Anspach, the wife of George II (1727-1760). In Great Expectations Estella
came to London to be introduced to
aristocratic society by a Mrs Brandley who lived here. Pip
met her coach and escorted her to her new home. ‘We
came to Richmond all too soon, and our destination there was a house
by the Green: a staid old house, where hoops and powder and patches,
embroidered coats, rolled stockings, ruffles, and swords, had had
their court days many a time. Some ancient trees before
the house were still cut in fashions as formal and unnatural as the
hoops and wigs and stiff skirts’.
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