Dickens and
London
|
|
Dickens
and Richmond
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.’
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. His second daughter 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’.
Fleet Street Walk | Victorian City Walk | Dickens Holborn Walk | Dickens and Richmond | Dickens and Covent Garden | Dickens and Fleet Street | Dickens and Docklands | Dickens and Camden Town | Dickens and Women | The Lady of Shalott | East End | Bethnal Green Churches | Whitechapel Pubs | Modern City Architecture | Salvation Army HQ | Modernism and the City | Sources | |||||
