River Ember: Summer Road footbridge

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 13 Aug 2008

It's extraordinary what old Ordnance Survey maps can tell us about the history of a location. Here we have the River Ember flowing in the concrete flood relief channel built in the 1970s. But go back to 1872 and the Ember would have looked much narrower, flowing and meandering like an ordinary river. However a footbridge crossing of the river already existed here at that time, linking East Molesey with Thames Ditton, and the track to and from the crossing followed the present-day alignment of Summer Road, even though there were no houses along it at that time. By 1898 a ford and a footbridge are shown on the mapping here, while most of the houses on the south side of Summer Road had been built. By 1920 most of the houses on the north side of Summer Road had been built along with Summer Gardens on the south side. Access across the river was still via the ford and footbridge. But by 1938 the ford is no longer marked on the map and the alignment of Molember Road and its first few houses are shown. Whether or not an actual road bridge was ever built across here I do not know.

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