Richmond Terrace Walk

The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit the The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):

www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

In the Middle Ages the whole area surrounding what became Richmond Terrace was common land in the royal manor. This part of Richmond Hill, which was known as Hill Common, was renowned for its commanding views over the Thames and as early as the mid 17th century a seat had been placed overlooking the view. A late 17th century poem by Durfey, set to music as an air by Purcell, referred to the site:

On the brow of Richmond Hill which Europe scarce can parallel,

Every Eye such Wonders fill, to view the Prospect round.

(Ode To Cynthia, T Durfey, late 17th/early 18th century)

From the early 17th century, brickworks, known as the Tile Kilns, and a wharf, together with workers' houses, occupied parts of the riverside, and clay digging occurred along the lower slopes of Richmond Hill. The Terrace Walk was laid out in about 1700 during a period of improvement of the area, with a double row of pleached trees overlooking the view at the top of the hill, and behind this, on the east side of the road, the construction of the substantial houses, 1 to 3 The Terrace. The scene is illustrated by both Tillemans and Knyff in the early 18th century. In Knyff's view of about 1720 the Terrace trees dominate the scene.

The Terrace Walk was the earliest place to excite writers to philosophise on beautiful prospects and to inspire the cult of landscape appreciation. Joseph Addison in his influential 'Pleasures of the Imagination' articles in The Spectator in 1712, was the first so to do. He dedicated the articles to his patron Henry Boyle, who lived at Douglas House at Petersham and knew the Richmond prospect very well. Addison himself sometimes took lodgings nearby and thus also knew the unconfined prospects of the Richmond scene well.

In the 1730s the Star and Garter Inn was built, and the great era of development at the top of the hill followed in the decade 1765-1775, when the area became a very fashionable place for London society to visit. This popularity continued through the 19th century. The Tile Kilns below the Terrace were closed down in 1767, and part of the area adjacent to the north-west of the Terrace was developed as Montagu (later Buccleuch) House.

In 1766 Richmond Vestry feared that with the closure of the Tile Kilns, Richmond Hill Common would be developed. They petitioned George III that 'if the said common was converted into a pasture for feeding sheep only (under Restriction that no Buildings should hereafter be erected thereon) it would become an Ornament to the Town' (Richmond Trustees' General Meeting Book, 1766-1777, quoted in Cloake 1996). The prohibition of building was confirmed by an Act of Parliament in 1785, when the land, 9 acres (about 4 hectares) of grazed meadow on the slope from the Terrace down to the Petersham Road, was given to the Vestry as part of the royal bounty. It became Richmond Parish Charity land and was known as the Terrace Field. Meanwhile the Terrace Walk had been reconstructed in 1774 and extended towards Richmond Park.

Many foreign tourists described the Terrace viewing point. In 1782 Carl Moritz wrote:

The terrace at Richmond does assuredly afford one of the finest prospects in the world. Whatever is charming in nature, or pleasing in art, is to be seen here. Nothing I have ever seen is to be compared to it ... Here it was that Thomson and Pope gleaned from nature all those beautiful passages, with which their inimitable writings abound.

In 1814 the Emperor of Russia and his entourage of nine open carriages were received at the Star and Garter Inn, and having partaken of refreshment 'the whole party then walked on the Terrace and the adjoining spots and pronounced it "the Frascati of England" and "worthy of the best prospects of Claude Lorraine"' (The Times). In 1811 the French American, Louis Simond admired the scene of elegant nature, 'so select and chaste and unmixed with offensive objects' (Simond 1815). He found the viewpoint much frequented and as an ardent admirer of Gilpin and the Picturesque, criticised the 'walkers on the Terrace who admire most what their glasses alone enable them to discover; the colours flying on the top of Windsor Castle, or the roofs and chimneys of London'.

In 1902 an Act was passed for preserving the view from Richmond Hill, the first example of a landscape view being legally protected.

The site remains (2001) a public open space managed by the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.

Type

Garden

Purpose

Recreational/sport

Principal Building

Parks, Gardens And Urban Spaces

Survival

Extant

Hectares

4

Open to the public

Yes