Twickenham Green

The Duke of Northumberland's River is an artificial waterway, originally cut in the late 1530s to bring water to power a mill at Isleworth owned by the Bridgettine Convent at Syon. After the convent was dissolved, the land went to Lord Protector Somerset in 1547. The estate later passed to the Duke of Northumberland who used the watercourse to supply ornamental ponds in his gardens. The Isleworth or eastern section diverts water from the Crane River as it runs through today's Kneller Gardens, eventually reaching the Thames at Isleworth, where the mill was situated. A public footpath runs along much of its route and passes a number of interesting sites that illustrate Isleworth's rich history. The western section of the Duke of Northumberland's River diverted water from the Colne River at Harmondsworth in Hillingdon to the Crane, running for part of its course alongside the Longford River, another artificial waterway constructed in the C17th. The Duke of Northumberland's River was purchased from the Duke in 1931 and today its maintenance rests with a number of agencies.

Kneller Gardens are named after German-born portrait painter Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was appointed Court Painter in 1680, knighted in 1691, later made a baronet in 1715. By then he had built his villa, Whitton House, on a site to the north-west of Kneller Gardens. The house was replaced by Kneller Hall in 1848, which until 2021 was the Royal Military School of Music, the site now awaiting development. Maps of 1915 show the site of Kneller Gardens as a bathing place surrounded by farmland; in 1930 Twickenham Borough Council developed 12 acres here as a new recreation ground for Whitton's growing population. The park was officially opened in 1931 providing sports pitches and pavilions, a children's play area, and riverside walk with new trees and shrubs planted.

* on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens

In 1719 poet and satirist Alexander Pope took a lease on 2 or 3 cottages at Cross Deep, built a new villa here and developed classically-styled gardens until his death in 1744. Pope's Villa was demolished in 1808 and his gardens have now gone, altered and built over in the C19th and C20th. All that remains is the grotto-tunnel he built in c.1722 to link the villa with the gardens, albeit much barer than in Pope’s time and longer due to early C20th road widening. In 1740-43 he had extended the grotto-tunnel with flanking caves and ‘rough stonework and encrustations of shells, minerals, coral and stalactites, intended to epitomise the subterranean riches of the world’, using supplies sent from Cornwall and elsewhere by friends. The grotto was a visitor attraction after his death. Sir William Stanhope later owned the villa until 1772, making alterations to house and garden. The current house on the site was a convent, then a school, now owned by Radnor House School.