Hampton and Hampton Hill are particularly well-off for restaurants, with many cuisines from Caribbean to Italian to French, congregating mostly around the High Street that forms the eastern boundary of both these Hamptons.
The Hamptons are surrounded by a variety of public spaces. To the west is Kempton Park Racecourse, to the north is Hanworth Park, and between them all is the colossal Bushy Park/Hampton Court Park, 1,099 acres that boast deer and sheep grazing and any number of cricket, rugby and football clubs. Space precludes a listing of the activities that the park can offer, but junior ranger days, horse riding, fishing and the revived Victorian custom of Chestnut Sunday (in May) are just a few. Hampton Court Park is the more formal of the pair, with some impressive 17th and 18th century landscape gardening.
HousingLaing Homes bought the area off the NHS in 1999 and has got through many planning applications before Richmond Council saw one they thought they could approve. The three-year battle conducted by the residents for a smaller estate fully in sympathy with the hospital architecture has now been defeated. The council has said yes to a housing estate comprising 198 homes and a 49-bed hotel; it will also see the restoration of the hospital theatre and the construction of the Langdon Down Centre as a memorial to the medical pioneer.
Locals are not happy, predicting an insufferable pressure on GPs, schools and transport. The final say now falls on Ken Livingstone, who will be pushing for a degree of affordable housing, a phrase perhaps none too common in Hampton Wick.
With the Hamptons to the west, it is around the old parish church and the train station that the best housing can be found, based around Ormond Avenue, Crescent and Drive. This area has become known as the village, and as we move away from the river and north of Broad Lane the housing stock falls in quality, although the town's penchant for sizeable gardens remain. The cheapest housing is on the new estates either side of Oak Avenue. Hampton Hill is a more eclectic mix of late-Victorian, inter-war and post-war properties. Prices reflect the lack of a nearby train station, Fulwell to the north being the closest.
TransportThis is not a place for the underground. Train stations predominate, with Hampton and Fulwell stations being on the line from Shepperton to the west to Clapham Junction to the east. Hampton Court station, across the river from the palace, is a terminus also leading to Clapham Junction (via Surbiton and Wimbledon) and Hampton Wick is on another line that loops round from Richmond before recrossing the river to head into south London.
For buses, a new innovation has been the Hampton Enterprise, a flexible transport service provided by Hampton and Hampton Hill Voluntary Care Group to provide flexible and accessible door-to-door travel throughout the western Hamptons.
Steve Roberts.
HistoryWith the two Hamptons cleaved apart by the royal favour of 1,099 acres of hunting land - now Bushy Park and Hampton Court Park - the administrative friction between town and village grew until the Wick declared itself independent in 1831. The town expanded northwards in the early 19th century to create the settlement of New Hampton, becoming an its own parish in 1863. Shortly after, the inhabitants forced a name change to Hampton Hill. There is no hill here, so the reason for the change must be lost in the social mores of Victorian England.
Hampton Town surrendered its river front from 1855 to a series of waterworks, a valuable source of employment which has now disappeared to be redeveloped. The final section of the Hamptons was filled in from the late Victorian era, as an expansion to the north-west in the direction of Hanworth occurred. Attempts at building various estates in this corner of Hampton have happened from the 1860s to the present day, with varying degrees of success.
Hampton Court now, as a placename, barely exists (apart from the train station). As a palace it is one of the most famous buildings in Britain, hurriedly given by Wolsey to Henry VIII in 1526 in an attempt to save his rapidly crumbling political career. The gamble failed, and Wolsey, a treasonable entity in Henry's eyes since he failed to clear the king's path to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, died on his way to a treason trial in 1530.
Henry, nothing if not selfish, did love the palace. It began a long love affair between monarchy and the building that lasted down to Victoria whose reign saw the ascent of Buckingham Palace. She opened Hampton Court Palace to the public and the Government took over administration in the same year, 1851. Bushy Park and Hampton Court Park were enclosed as hunting grounds by Henry VIII in 1538 but upon his death in 1547 the fences were pulled down and the public have had access ever since.
Steve Roberts.
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