Contacts

The Teddington Society
21 Teddington Park
Teddington TW11 8DB

Contact by e-mail:
secretary@teddingtonsociety.org.uk

The Summer 2007 issue of Tidings includes the following:

• Letter from the Chair
• From the Editor
• Annual General Meeting
• Visit to Lambeth Palace
• A Link with Wartime Teddington
• Climate Change: A view from David Attenborough
• Trading in Human Lives
• Diana the Huntress
• Monster of Chertsey Abbey
• Teddington in Flower 2007
• Diary and Events

Letter from the Chair
The Annual General Meeting on 17th April was a very enjoyable occasion with a fascinating talk by Michael Snodin about Strawberry Hill House, its strange history and plans for its future development. The meeting itself went smoothly with the current committee being re-elected as a whole.

Alas,we said goodbye to two stalwarts of the committee - Anne Johnson who has been an invaluable minutes secretary for ten years, and Ann Hustwit who has diligently kept our accounts in order for 13 years. We shall miss them both very much although we are fortunate to have Rosemary Connellan and Duncan Shuttleworth as their able replacements.

We now look forward to Teddington in Flower as our next major event and hope that the brilliant April weather will not have made our gardens peak too soon!

Jenny Hilton

From the Editor
It was good to see old friends and new at the Society’s AGM in April, and for those who enjoy the social side of the Teddington Society, there are several more Events to look forward to over the summer.

An innovation which should prove popular is a Society Picnic in Bushy Park.Details of all the Events can be found on the back page and we are most grateful to all those who work so hard to arrange them. Angela Carvill constantly comes up with new and interesting excursions for us, Sheena Harold and Pat Shuttleworth work tirelessly to organise Teddington in Flower each year and Ann Sayer is involved in organising the popular River Festival.

The important part the Society plays in Teddington’s life has been well illustrated recently by the invaluable contribution of Brian Holder and others in raising local awareness of the issues around the proposed Custody Suite and by the Society’s successful representation to the Council which prevented the statue of Diana the Huntress being moved from its position in Grove Gardens to a new location at York House.

More active volunteers are needed by all the Society’s interest groups if they are to be able to continue their invaluable work. Also, as I flagged up at the AGM,my stint as Editor of this newsletter comes to an end in December, and we urgently need to find a successor. It is a rewarding task, and there is an excellent editorial team to help, who, together with our marvellous designer George Foster and the Xpress printers, have kept me out of trouble time and again! Please contact me if you would like to consider taking on this worth-while job.

Margaret Chan

Diana the Huntress
Grove Gardens is in a Conservation area of houses built in the 1920s by Shell for their employees. The houses surround an area of grass, trees, and a bowling green. A statue of Diana the Huntress stands between the pavilions.

In 1760 a house called the Grove was built by Moses Franks on land leased from the Manor of Teddington. It was designed by Sir William Chambers (who designed Somerset House) and the plans for the gardens included a greenhouse and a temple. In 1796, the house was bought by John Walter, the founder of the Times newspaper, who lived there until 1812.

In 1880 the publication The Gardener’s World remarked on the large number of statues standing in the garden, and we feel sure that Diana was one of these. The Council has agreed to the Society’s request that the statue should stay in Grove Gardens and has allocated money for its restoration.

We hope to publish a fuller history of the statue in Tidings at a later date.

Mary Green and Paddy Ching