We are not Teddington

The council’s own study into Hampton Wick in 1997 (referred to elsewhere on this website) states:

“Hampton Wick is a fine example of one of the many ‘urban’ villages which exist in Greater London. Despite the encroachment of London it has stubbornly retained its own identity and sense of place.”

Too right! The HWA was formed in 1962 to defend our village from a planned flyover. We later organised the famous campaign against being subsumed into Kingston with drivers and pedestrians crossing the bridge being stopped and asked for their “Hampton Wick Passports”.

We won both those campaigns. Furthermore the very nature of Hampton Wick, contained on three sides by the river and the parks, has created and sustained a defined community with a real sense of its own identity.

However we are concerned that we may end up being ‘merged by stealth’ with Teddington, in large part by the lazy lumping-together of our two communities by the council.

We like Teddington. We admire the work of the Teddington Society and the very wonderful Teddington Pram Race – in which a team of Hampton Wick Tudors has taken part on more than one occasion! We enthusiastically support charities which work across both our areas such as the Teddington and Hampton Wick Voluntary Care Group.

But we are emphatically not the same place.

We have repeatedly asked the council to consult with our two communities separately over the Village Planning process and they have repeatedly ignored us. We are told that we must have a combined strategic planning document (the part of the process that has teeth) with presumably a single ‘vision’ for the two quite different areas.

Be watchful, or one day people will say: “Did you know that once upon a time part of South Teddington used to be called Hampton Wick?”

A good opportunity to make this point is the Village Planning Question Time on 1st February. Remember: Decisions are made by those who show up!