IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Princes Close, TEDDINGTON, TW11 0RX

This tunnel is where the Shepperton Branch line passes under the A311 road just west of Fulwell station near Richmond.

Opened in 1864 as Fulwell & Hampton Hill by the London & South Western Railway on the line from Teddington to Shepperton. View south west towards Hampton and Shepperton.

View NNW, Shepperton left, right to London Waterloo via Twickenham or Kingston: ex-LSWR Shepperton branch. (Cf. Image]).

The Thames Valley Railway opened on 1st November 1864 between the Kingston Loop south of Twickenham to Shepperton. Within a year it was taken over by the London & South Western Railway. When it opened the branch was a meandering single line through small communities. It was described as "crossing a flat and somewhat dreary region of Middlesex to terminate in a potato field, as if weary of going further in such country". Fulwell (for Hampton Hill) was the first intermediate station and stood in open country. It took its name from the Fulwell Park seat of the Deputy Chairman of the Thames Valley Railway Company, which was half a mile to the north-west. A double track was provided as far as Fulwell in about 1867, and further doubling reached Sunbury in 1878 following the sale of the Kempton Manor estate for conversion to a racecourse. There was no really significant residential development along the line before 1914, although Teddington crept westwards towards Fulwell station, mostly in the form of low-cost housing. At Fulwell in the late 1920s and early 1930s large housing estates were built north-west, south and south-west of the station. This is the view of the station looking from the footpath entrance from Clonmel Road on the south side, across the footbridge to the up platform on the other side.