IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
The Retreat, LONDON, SW14 8SS

Level crossings are relatively unusual in London, but the line from Clapham Junction to Richmond is characterised by a run of several. Plans to use this line for a fast link to Heathrow foundered repeatedly on this fact: increased use of the line would mean these gates were closed every few minutes, immobilising traffic, whilst replacing them with bridges in this low-lying terrain would mean many residents' view out of the front door would be of the side of a ramp carrying the road over the railway.

The privet hedge - with its arch over a gateway - is a feature which would have attracted little notice in these suburban streets half a century ago. Given the present-day emphasis on 'low maintenance' - and with many front gardens converted to parking spaces - it seemed worth recording for Geograph.

A road junction in Mortlake; White Hart Lane is the main road. Westfields Avenue, which runs parallel to Image, recalls one of the neighbourhood's names: Westfield was a rich market garden on this site. The pleasant, modest terraces now give rise to the name "Little Chelsea".

No. 1A Fitzgerald Avenue has an entry in the book Nairn's London by Ian Nairn where it is described as "a wonderful toy fort made up of genuine bits and genuine fantasy". He mentions the huge Wren-style door dated 1696, as well as the columns and battlements. It certainly seems to sit rather oddly here in suburbia.

The first of a series of streets parallel to and west of Image After this and Second Avenue, the names become more imaginative. Viewed from North Worple Way, which runs across the southern end of each of the streets.

No longer quite as close to the railway as the name might suggest. These days a roughly triangular plot of land (used as allotments) lies between Railway Side and the Waterloo-Windsor line. However, a railway line once passed much closer. West of Barnes station the line out of Waterloo forks - one branch running west to Windsor, the other north-west towards Hounslow (the Hounslow Loop). The Barnes Curve - which once ran parallel to Railway Side - completed a triangular layout, leaving the Windsor line near White Hart Lane, and joining the Hounslow line close to Barnes Bridge. All the lines involved were built by the London & South Western Railway. The Barnes Curve opened to traffic in 1862, but was lifted as early as 1881. I can find no reference to it in Dendy Marshall's 'History of the Southern Railway' - and my prime source of information is Ian Yarham's Geograph: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2237211

Some colourful shop canopies opposite the junction with Image, with gables above the facades.