IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Villiers Avenue, TWICKENHAM, TW2 6BL

These back on to Crane Park and the river Crane

A typical street for this area, mixed semis and bungalows. Typical sky too with all those cloud trails. Heathrow Airport is just west of here. Glasbrook is a place near Swansea.

Just a bit of nameboard trivia here. Painted out but still obvious on this street name sign is the insignia of the former local authority for this area, the borough of Twickenham. This ceased as a separate body in 1965, merging into the London borough of Richmond. Facts and figures on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_Borough_of_Twickenham Glasbrook is a place near Swansea.

This was where the main concentration of buildings for Hounslow Powder Mills were. In the foreground is a wooden sculpture blending a pig and an oak leaf sitting on two acorns - all to different scales.

This apparently rural scene is in Crane Park, just 100 metres wide with the river, a path, and bushy woodland.

Crane Park Island is an area between the river Crane and a mill stream cut to power gunpowder mills which operated here until 1926. The main flow goes down the channel on the left in this picture. The right hand channel is the mill leat, which although it looks wider here is now silted up and overgrown and carries only a small flow. Remains of the powder mills can still be seen on the island. There are some foundations, water channels and mill wheel bays still visible in the undergrowth. The island is now a nature reserve run by the London Wildlife Trust.

This is the channel that once took the River Crane to the wheels of the old gunpowder mills which operated here until 1927. http://www.oldindustry.org/ShotTowers/local_history_river_crane.pdf The wheels are long gone, but the sluices are still visible. The millstream is now silted and overgrown as you see, but is no doubt a very good habitat. It's part of Crane Park Island nature reserve. Most of the river flow now goes down the channel to the south of the island.

A high level mill stream returns to join the natural course of the River Crane. This is on the site of the old Hounslow Powder Mills, long gone, but leaving an intriguing network of waterways, humps and hollows.