Some local history – for a change
This is the first of a series of posts featuring the Arcadian Thames. Here at Kingston University we are located at the heart of the Arcadian Thames – an area offering unrivalled public open access and recreational opportunities and which collectively contains more listed buildings, conservation areas, wildlife sites and registered parks and gardens than in any other comparable location in the UK.
Up to the Tudor period, the Thames landscape between Hampton and Kew consisted largely of quiet riverside villages, orchards and market gardens supplying the capital with food. Following the construction of Richmond and Hampton Court Palaces the landscape began to evolve as successive royal and aristocratic families moved to the area. Up and down the river a series of great palaces, grand houses, magnificent gardens and hunting parks were constructed amid the water meadows and woodland, linked to one another by grand avenues of trees. By the mid eighteenth…
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