Twickenham after dark - # 08/113

In the evening Church Lane, Twickenham, is closed to cars. Restaurants are allowed to put out tables . The street becomes free for wanderers. Live R&B music flows from the Fox Inn and Eel Pie customers overflow onto the street.

ISO 800. 1/25sec @ f2.8. 100mm. Red filter. Olympus E3

Traditional fare - # 08/110

Continuing our little walk through the heart of old Twickenham beside the river we pass "the Eel Pie" inn.

I contemplated B&W because of the pleasant tones in this picture, but the colour hues are also very gentle and easy on the eye: so I went for colour, especially in honour of the floral display in the hanging flower baskets that matches the yellowish tones of sign boards so well. A good design consultant seems to have been at work here. The slight dampness of a recent rain shower makes the pavement shine, and has laid a slight misty puff over the trees in the background. B&W would have wiped that out.

Eel Pie also refers to the river island opposite Twickenham - a community of artists, eccentrics, philosophers and inventors that is so discrete and hidden away that it is hard to photograph.

Church Lane on the afternoon of the F.A. Cup Final - # 08/108

Church Lane, Twickenham, is normally full. But last Saturday no-one was on the street and loud roars came from the pubs. The F.A. Cup Final (Soccer for the Americans among you) was played between Cardiff and Portsmouth.

Church Lane is at the tiny core of 17th - 18th century Twickenham, where houses of "town scape merit" cluster around the Georgian church. Before the coming of the railways Richmond and Twickenham were very tiny riverside communities relying on the trades of barge traffic loading and carrying agricultural products, milling grain, brewing beer, and the employment provided by a number of royal palaces and the houses of the first, second and third rate gentry who wanted to be close to royal influence.

After 1845 (beginning of the railway age) the population of these towns exploded, agricultural land was swallowed up and the scenery became definitely "urban".