IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Summer Gardens, EAST MOLESEY, KT8 9LT

Viewed from Summer Road on the south bank of the River Ember.

Looking south along Summer Gardens towards Summer Avenue.

Pedestrian bridge across the River Ember at East Molesey, linking two sections of Summer Road.

The River Ember at East Molesey, looking north from the bridge at Summer Road.

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.

The River Ember is a short section of the River Mole running through East Molesey. After the 1930's the River Mole distributary was re-routed into the River Ember. River Ember : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Ember Distributary : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributary More details relating to the bridge and are here : https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/939042 This photo was taken using the wide angle lens on the Huawei Mate20 X mobile.

The broad sweep of the River Ember is viewed here looking upstream from the Summer Road footbridge. The river clips across the north-western corner of this grid square, with Thames Ditton on the left and East Molesey on the right.

On the south bank of the River Ember.

A channel of the River Mole which splits in two south of Island Barn Reservoir.

The broad sweep of the River Ember is viewed here looking downstream from the Summer Road footbridge. The river clips across the north-western corner of this grid square, with East Molesey on the left and Thames Ditton on the right. The black line on the horizon is a crane being used for some domestic building work.