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The Boat Race

Sunday 6th April, 2014, at 17.55, is the occasion of the BNY Mellon Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. With the finishing line a mere 20-minute train ride from 20 The Barons, St Margarets, our resident and ghostly expert The Baron (who has seen all 160 races) offers a 20-stroke guide to charting the waters of one of our oldest and greatest sporting events.

1. The race began as a challenge between former Harrow schoolmates Charles Merrivale (St John’s College, Cambridge) and Charles Wordsworth (Christ Church College, Oxford, and nephew of the poet William Wordsworth).

2. The first Boat Race took place on 10 June 1829, in Henley-on-Thames, and Oxford’s winning boat is preserved in Henley’s River and Rowing Museum.

3. Prior to the 2014 race, Cambridge had won 81 races, Oxford 77.

4. The only dead-heat occurred in 1877 when judge ‘Honest’ John Phelps reputedly declared the race a ‘dead-heat to Oxford by five feet’!

5. The current Championship Course was established in 1845, with the Boat Race becoming an annual contest in 1856, interrupted only by the two World Wars.

6. The Championship Course is 4 miles 374 yards, or 6.8 km, long, navigating a northward loop of the Tideway between Putney Bridge and Chiswick Bridge.

7. Oxford are the Dark Blues, the colour of Christ Church College who had five oarsmen in the original race. In 2014, the Oxford crew average 26 years, 13 stone 13 lbs, and 6 ft 3 ins.

8. Cambridge are the Light Blues, the colour of an Eton ribbon tied to their boat in the second ever race. In 2014, the Cambridge crew average 24 years, 14 stone 7 lbs, and 6 ft 6 ins.

9. The Cambridge reserve crew are named Goldie after John Goldie, nineteenth-century Boat Club President. The Oxford reserve crew are named Isis after the stretch of the Thames that passes through Oxford.

10. Each boat has a crew of eight (the big ones) directed by a cox (the little one). Today’s boats have sliding seats, but until 1873 the same effect was achieved by oarsmen greasing the seats of their trousers.

11. The starting point is marked by a University Boat Race Stone set into the towpath on the southern bank just upstream from Putney Bridge.

12. The race is rowed upstream on the flood tide an hour before high tide, giving the crews the fastest possible water.

13. The Fulham / Chiswick bank is called the Middlesex side and its starting point the Middlesex station. The Putney / Barnes bank is the Surrey side and Surrey station. An 1829 gold sovereign is tossed to decide who chooses their starting station.

14. A starting pistol was introduced in 1884 after the crews in the previous year’s race failed to hear the starter shout: “Go!”

15. The Middlesex bank holds the shorter, inside line on the first bend.

16. The Surrey bank holds the shorter, inside line on the long Surrey Bend after Hammersmith Bridge, a crucial part of the race.

17. At the end of the Surrey Bend, the crews approach Chiswick Eyot, an island nature reserve which marks the halfway point.

18. After Chiswick Eyot, the Middlesex bank holds the shorter, inside line on the final bend, where both crews must pass through the middle span of Barnes Bridge.

19. Just downstream of Chiswick Bridge, the finishing point is marked by a University Boat Race Stone on the Surrey bank (next to The Ship pub at Mortlake).

20. The course record, set by Cambridge in 1998, is 16 minutes, 19 seconds.

Gravity

As the credits rolled on the Oscars for another year (and Gravity pulls us all back down to earth eventually), it was a joy for everyone at 20 The Barons to see so many golden statuettes migrating to the trophy cabinets of the West London region’s famous film studios. Gravity, which won 7 Oscars including Best Director for Alfonso Cuáron, was filmed nine miles down the road at Shepperton Studios. Operating as a film lot since 1932, Shepperton’s credits include The Third Man (1949), Dr Strangelove (1964) and previous space odyssey and Academy award winner Alien (1979), and it is now part of the thriving Pinewood group. Pinewood Studios, in Iver Heath, are themselves home to Glenn Freemantle of Sound 24, who won the Academy Award for Gravity’s Sound Editing. Developed as a film studio in 1935, by J Arthur Rank and Charles Boot, Pinewood’s credits include the James Bond movies and its studios feature the world famous 007 Stage. Closer to home, on our doorstep in fact, Twickenham Film Studios’ Foley Mixer Adam Fil Méndez was part of the Gravity Sound team that has also just won the Cinema Audio Society award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing. One need only see the bustle brought to St Margarets by recent productions at Twickenham Studios, such as Frankenstein (starring Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy) and Cuban Fury (starring Nick Frost) to realise the impact of a thriving film industry. Of course, it is not just London’s grand old studios that are in such rude health. The capital’s diverse young talent is breaking new ground in movie-making, with the work of Soho’s Framestore at the forefront. Tim Webber’s team won the Academy Award for Visual Effects for creating Gravity’s stunningly believable and panoramic spacescapes. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney were rigged up and filmed within Framestore’s innovative Lightbox, named one of the best inventions of 2013 by Time Magazine, while the 3D vastness of space, the Earth, 30 million stars, space shuttles, the International Space Station, and the devastating explosions and debris were generated through a combination of innovative filming techniques and cutting-edge CGI. Gravity also won Best Original Score for Steven Price, who recorded at London’s Abbey Road studios and attempted to replicate the sound of the strings on The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. The other notable Oscar success was, of course, 12 Years A Slave, winner of three Oscars including Best Picture. Its director Steve McQueen grew up in West London, attending Drayton Manor High School, while leading man, Chiwetel Ejiofor, was born in Forest Gate. Over £1 billion was spent on film production in the UK last year, and London has regained its rightful place at the centre of the movie world. A successful film industry, whether in the Sixties or today, is a key player in a vibrant London, and a vibrant London in turn attracts the best film-makers. As Amanda Nevill, chief executive of BFI, noted in the Financial Times: “If you ask the top actors and their families whether they’d like to shoot in London for three months, versus a desert somewhere, it’s not a difficult question to answer.” London has developed its own movie-making ‘gravity’, attracting the biggest stars into its glittering orbit.

Valentine's Day at 20 The Barons

It's Valentine's day at 20 The Barons and Cupid’s flight-path soars over London today. The great love god might be surprised to see some of the finest evening celebrations taking place in the city’s museums and galleries: a reminder of the cultural diversity on offer in our fine capital, even on a night more commonly associated with cheap chocolates and dinner for two.

Star-crossed Valentine's lovers may be spotted in the orbit of the Royal Observatory - What's On guide at Greenwich for a Valentine’s Evening With The Stars. They will be gazing not only into each other’s eyes but also at some heavenly bodies, through an 18-tonne, 28-inch Victorian refracting telescope, the largest in the UK, housed in the Onion Dome reminiscent of that temple to love the Taj Mahal. Couples can contemplate their place in time and space by sipping champagne on the prime meridian, Longitude 0º, with one lover in the eastern and one in the western hemisphere. Those who prefer more earthly pleasures are embarking upon an After Hours Valentine’s Night Safari at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. There is a tour of the most attractive specimens for those of a romantic nature, while the less enamoured can opt to pastiche past lovers among the predators and poisonous plants. If you prefer to say it with flowers, a late night visit to the Sunflowers exhibition, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, presents a pair of the most poignant bouquets. In a small but perfectly formed display, Vincent Van Gogh’s 1888 Sunflowers enjoys a romantic reunion with a matching partner painted five months later, by which time poor Vincent was ‘sans ear’: a reminder, perhaps, of the fragile and transient nature of love. Romantics who prefer the art of love poetry will be lending an ear at Late Night Keats, Keats House, Hampstead Heath. Home of English Romantic John Keats from 1818 to 1820, just before his untimely death at 25, the house was the scene of his courting Fanny Brawne. New Romantics can indulge in risqué Regency games and, for those carrying a torch, a torchlit tour. Pop-up readings of Keats will channel such yearning lines as Ode To A Nightingale’s: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.” Lovers of the pen with a more epistolary nature will find their heart’s content at Love in the Archives, The Queen’s House, Greenwich. Love letters written from the heart of the ocean, by Georgian sailors to their sweethearts back home, might inspire seas of sweet nothings, while thoughts of closer encounters might be stirred by a tour of the Queen’s Bedchamber. If music be the food of love, then those at City of Seduction, Museum of London, St Pauls, will play on. A dance psychologist will reveal the mating rituals of the dance-floor alongside Valentine’s muse and music from the Broken Hearts. The seductive arts are explored through life-drawing classes, erotic tiles and the make-up techniques of Georgian prostitutes, while those hoping for a ring on their finger could do worse than loudly admire the London’s Lost Jewels exhibit. If food, though, be the music of love, the British Library presents a Georgian banquet alongside their splendid Georgians Revealed exhibition. A historical feast is accompanied by musicians playing hard Baroque and the chance to dance quadrilles. Such diversity for such diverse lovers reveals London at her seductive best, and all just an Underground ride from 20TheBarons. No wonder we’re so in love with our city. Of course, guests at 20TheBarons might prefer to indulge in their home from home comforts, in which case they should just call and mention The Baron’s name to receive a complimentary bottle of champagne and enjoy it from the comfort of one of our beautiful and glamorous apartments. As Keats himself wrote: “O for a draught of vintage! that hath been / Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvéd earth.”

Two Twickenham Floods in History

In this watery winter of drenched discontent The Baron is considering whether we should all commence on the Ark. Counting our lucky stars at The Barons and hoping the skies clear and ground drains for those suffering at the hands of the current flood waters, it is high tide and time to look back on two Twickenham floods in history that overwhelmed areas of Richmond around
St Margarets.

In 1774, the manmade lake at Virginia Water burst its banks, and there was flooding along the Thames to Richmond. Horace Walpole reported the discomforts of the deluge on 27 September:

“It has rained this whole month, and we have got another inundation. The Thames is as broad as your Danube, and all my meadows are under water. Lady Browne and I, coming last Sunday night from Lady Blandford’s, were in a piteous plight. The ferry-boat (from Richmond to Twickenham) was turned around by the current, and carried to Isleworth. Then we ran against the piers of our new bridge, and the horses were frightened.”

It is an interesting reference to the historic Richmond ferry, which ceased operating when the Richmond Bridge was completed three years later. You can track down a stone marking the historic flood level in the garden wall at St Mary’s Church, on Church Lane, across from Eel Pie Island, just above the aptly named Flood Lane.

More recently, St Margarets flooded on 7 January 1928, after a ‘perfect storm’ of combined events reminiscent of recent times. Heavy Christmas snows in the Cotswolds at the source of the Thames, combined with a sudden thaw and heavy rain at New Year to double the amount of water rushing down the river. Meantime, a high spring tide combined with a storm surge in the North Sea to funnel a wave of water up the river. Water levels reached their highest point on record, and overflowed the embankments. Fourteen people drowned in Lambeth, and thousands were made homeless. The House of Commons and the Tate Gallery were flooded and the Tower of London moat was filled for the first time in 80 years. Both the Thames and the Crane flooded in St Margarets, and the Richmond and Twickenham Times reported:

“The water… encroached upon the gardens of houses in St Margarets Grove and reached the bottom of South Western Road through the passage. In some places it was nearly three feet deep… and the water was only a few inches from the top of the arches of the bridge near Hill View Road.”

Looking at those streets on a map offers a sense of the flood, and you can track down markers recording the 1928 flood level at Richmond Lock and Footbridge and at the Slug and Lettuce pub in Water Lane, Richmond.

Despite global warming and rising sea levels, the Thames Barrier that began operating in 1982 today presents a powerful sea-wall. Spanning 520 metres across the Thames at Woolwich, it is one of the largest moveable flood barriers in the world, standing as high as a five-storey building. It has been raised over 100 times to defend London.

After the 1928 floods, Lord Desborough, chairman of the Thames Conservancy Board, wrote prophetically in the Richmond Herald: “Not even the Thames Conservancy, or the Port of London Authority, can stop the water coming in from the North Sea. The only way I can see is the one that was suggested, and which I recommended 21 years ago. That is, to put a barrage from Tilbury to Gravesend, with locks in it.”

The Thames, Fair River

The Thames, Fair River

“Glide gently, thus forever glide,
O Thames! That other bards may see,
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river, come to me.”

‘Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening’
—William Wordsworth, 1798

What would St Margarets, Twickenham and Richmond be without the seductive curves of the River Thames to shape them? Water carrier, flowing transport, drain and floodplain, bringer of food and goods, home to birds, beasts and fishes, playground to sailors and anglers, the bearded god Old Father Thames is rightly worshipped by Londoners as the patriarch of the settlements on its fertile banks. It is the artery that feeds London’s heart, with millennia of what politician John Burns in 1929 called “liquid history” in its wake. To Londoners, it is simply ‘The River’.

Starting as a trickle in the Cotswolds, at Thames Head, near Cirencester, the Thames travels for 215 miles, east into the heart of London, on through the North Kent Marshes, and out into the North Sea. The Thames Path follows it for 184 miles from its source to Greenwich, the longest riverside walk in Europe. Downriver from Teddington Lock, the river is tidal as it passes Twickenham, part of the Tideway that has a rise and fall of 7 metres. Its majestic sweep through Richmond-upon-Thames inspired Wordsworth and beguiled Turner.

The river has ebbed and flowed over the centuries. Old maps show many more islands or ‘aits’, than today, in what was a wider, shallower, slower river. There was a settlement at Twickenham, alongside Twickenham Ait (today’s Eel Pie Island), in 704. By medieval times, the river was dotted with water-mills, eel traps, and fish-weirs constructed from stakes and brushwood. There also began a dirtier tale from the riverside. In 1357, Edward III wrote: “Dung and other filth had accumulated in diverse places upon the banks of the river with… fumes and other abominable stenches.”

Before turnpike roads and railways, the river was the main highway. Stood on the Richmond riverbank in the sixteenth century, you might have seen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) making her royal “progresses” along the river between palaces at Greenwich, Westminster, Whitehall, Richmond and Hampton Court, each with its own wharf. Records show the relevant expenses: “To Louis Walter, bargeman, for conveying the Queen’s Grace from Richmond to Greenwich… in her barge with twenty-one rowers, every rower taking eightpence, fourteen shillings.” Over the centuries, those who wished to ride the river were frequently hampered by the weirs of those who wished to harvest its trout, salmon and eels. The river slowed to a dawdle with the completion of Old London Bridge (1209), and froze over completely in 1607 when the first Frost Fair was held. A tented city rose up on the ice, people played ice-bowling, and an elephant was walked across the river! In less severe times, commercial barges carried timber, wool, food and livestock from Oxford past Richmond to London. They used sails, but had to be hauled upstream by men and horses. Moses Glover’s 1635 map depicts two horses pulling a barge past Twickenham Ait. In Peter Tillemans’ ‘A Prospect of Twickenham’ (1725), which you can view in Orleans House, a barge is hauled by five labourers known as ‘scufflehunters’. It was not until the Thames Commissioners were established in 1770 that work began removing obstructions and adding locks, creating a deeper, more clearly defined river. The towpath at Richmond was established in 1789.

Tempted by the views that so inspired Wordsworth, the great and the good built their houses along Twickenham’s riverside. Twickenham Park (1609), Cambridge House (1610), York House (1635), Orleans House (1710), Marble Hill (1728) and Richmond House (1816) combined to present “an idea of luxury which the utmost labours of the pen would vainly endeavour to impart.” Word of the splendid views also travelled abroad. In 1737, William Byrd, gazing along the James River in Virginia, USA, and recalling similar vistas along the Thames, gave his new city the name of Richmond.

Through the nineteenth century, the Thames glided beneath a coat of filth into the industrial world. In 1811, the lock was built at Teddington, to improve navigability upstream. The new London Bridge of 1825, with fewer piers, increased the flow of water, and the building of the new Thames embankments between 1864 and 1870 created today’s narrower, deeper, faster river. But pollution from industrial waste and raw sewage from cesspits, flush toilets and drains overwhelmed the river and all but obliterated fish stocks. In the hot summer of 1858, London’s infamous Great Stink saw Parliament suspended because its members could bear the stench no longer. Old Father Thames began to clean up his act thereafter with Joseph Bazalgette’s massive sewage system. Twickenham’s drainage was complete in 1882, and in 1894 Richmond Lock and Footbridge was unveiled.

Today, a far cleaner Thames is home to abundant wildlife, from mute swans to kingfishers, from salmon to seahorses. Dolphins and porpoises progress up the river, and gray seals have been seen as far as Richmond. Setting out from 20 The Barons, you can trace the ‘S’ of the Thames as it winds around St Margarets, from Eel Pie Island up to the south-west corner of Kew Gardens, following the Thames Path on either side of the river. You might prefer to catch the historic Hammertons Ferry from below Orleans House across to Ham House. Or you can cross the river at Richmond Bridge and stroll to Richmond Landing Stage, where a river bus will carry you along the Thames upriver to Hampton Court, or all the way down to Westminster. What better way to gently glide!

St Margarets and The Beatles

The story of St Margarets and the Beatles can be told in three movies with St Margarets at their heart. Filmed at Twickenham Studios, a minute’s walk from 20 The Barons, they also featured location shoots that stamped the area with the Fab Four’s historic boot-prints.

In March 1964, the fresh-faced, mop-topped Beatles returned from a triumphant US tour, with ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ topping the charts, to film A Hard Day’s Night in Twickenham Studios. With Beatlemania in full, screaming frenzy, fans stormed the gates, broke into the studios and hid out in workshops. On 10 March, Ringo filmed at The Turk’s Head pub, one of our best local pubs which you can visit on the corner of Winchester Road and St Margarets Grove. In the scene, he buys a limp sandwich, spills his change on a game of shove ha’penny, breaks a glass and throws some darts that nearly skewer the pub parrot before being ejected. For the ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ section, all four Beatles ran around Thornbury Playing Fields in nearby Isleworth. A Hard Day’s Night is a fictionalized portrayal of a day in the life (two, in fact) of a Beatle, and captures their youthful exuberance and sardonic humour, as well as satirising the constricting noose of fame. Filmed by Richard Lester in black and white with handheld cameras and machine-gun editing, it was a pioneering movie and remains one of the great music films.

Four very different young men had a ticket to ride back to Twickenham a year later. So tired from their tour schedule, and often stoned, they said that making Help! with Richard Lester was like being extras in their own film. On 14 April 1965, they completed filming at Ailsa Avenue, west of St Margaret’s Road. The Beatles arrive in a black Rolls-Royce and enter four terraced houses, numbers 5, 7, 9 and 11, through separate blue, red, white and green front doors. In the movie, these converge on a single interior, a fictional Beatles mansion that was in fact a set at Twickenham Studios, where a grass carpet is cut by a gardener using toy false teeth and Paul plays a Wurlitzer organ. Fans gathered at The Barons once more to witness such seminal Sixties scenes as Paul arriving in his Mini with girlfriend Jane Asher. The Goon-inspired plot, in which a religious cult pursues Ringo in a madcap chase, offered the Beatles greater acting opportunities, while the kaleidoscopic imagery set the template for the Monkees’ television shows and led to Lester being dubbed the father of the pop video.

The long and winding road wound back to Twickenham Studios on 2 January 1969, when internal tensions were pulling the band apart. The Beatles had dominated the second half of the decade, leaving Sergeant Pepper, the Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album in their considerable wake. But the filming at Twickenham of intensive rehearsal sessions for a proposed one-hour television special pointed an unhelpful lens at the band’s internal discord. George walked out and eventually called a halt to the rehearsals, later referring to the “winter of discontent in Twickenham”. In April 1970 the band broke up, but locals still remember the Beatles at The Barons as if it were yesterday, and Let It Be (1970) presents the best of the sessions and a fascinating glimpse into the world of the Beatles at Twickenham Film Studios.