IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Hale Street, STAINES-UPON-THAMES, TW18 4UW

The footbridge from Two Rivers Pub, over the Wraysbury River, to the beer garden. The River Colne flows past the opposite side of the beer garden. Both rivers join just to the right of the beer garden.

This is the old footbridge from the Two Rivers Pub, on Church Street, which links it to its beer garden on the other side of the Wraysbury River. The opposite side of the beer garden overlooks the River Colne.

With Image looming in the distance and the Pound Mill sculpture in the left foreground, the building is currently occupied by Cygnet Orthodontics.

The pub - at the corner of Bridge Street - was once 'The Cock'. It is certainly a handsome building, perhaps dating from about 1825. The tall building beyond it - now residential - is said to have been the old Ashby's brewery. The Staines firm was acquired by Simonds in about 1930, the estate subsequently passing into the hands of Courage. http://ashbybugbrooke.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/ashby-breweries-history.html

Ashby's Brewery functioned in Staines up until about 1930 and this building in Church Street with its distinctive crown shaped metal cap is, I think, one of the brewery's buildings. Records of the building on the internet are sparse as it surprisingly does not appear to be a Listed Building. After it ceased being a brewery it may have been used as an office by Courage, but has since been converted into flats.

The Cock is a Jack Beard's managed pub in Church Street.

Just east of the footbridge which joins Two Rivers Shopping Centre to Church Street, and where the Colne and Wraysbury rivers meet is a small section of a dried up water channel. This was from where the River Colne originally fed Sweeps Ditch. Sweeps Ditch was an ancient man-made mill stream or defence ditch which flowed through Staines. In Roman & Medieval Times it formed the western and northern boundary of Town Island (sometimes referred to as High Street Island). However, with the building of the Elmsleigh Shopping Centre and the redevelopment of the town centre in the 1970s, the water source was cut. A new water source was provided by Thames Water in 1982, when it installed a pump house in the Riverside car park and this takes water from the Thames. However, the stream no longer goes through the centre of the town, instead it goes underground in a pipe across Thames Street and South Street and re-emerges to the south-east of the town centre, before flowing east and south to rejoin the Thames over a mile downstream near Penton Hook Lock.

This large town centre tower brewery ceased production as long ago as 1936, but the building has survived and is now apartments. Brewery history on http://www.thamessidebrewery.co.uk/history.html which is from the Thames Side Brewery, a new company now brewing nearby.