Thames Ditton is a large suburban village on the River Thames, in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Apart from a large inhabited island in the river, it lies on the southern bank, centred south-west of Charing Cross in central London. Thames Ditton is just outside Greater London but within the Greater London Urban Area, as defined by the Office for National Statistics. Its clustered village centre and shopping area on a winding High Street is surrounded by housing, schools and sports areas. Its riverside faces the Thames Path and Hampton Court Palace Gardens and golf course in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its most commercial area is spread throughout its conservation area and contains restaurants, cafés, shops and businesses.
Thames Ditton joins Long Ditton and Weston Green in occupying the land between Surbiton, Esher and East Molesey. Although reduced to less than , it formerly covered more than .
History
Before 1800 The first written record of Thames Ditton is in a charter dated 983 when King Æthelred the Unready granted to Æthelmær, his minister, nine hides (cassati) at Thames Ditton, Surrey. In The Cartulary of the Abbey of Eynsham Transaction, King Æthelred sent to Eynsham Abbey confirmation of the foundation (in 1005) by Æthelmær, the endowment including 20 hides at Esher, Surrey (granted by Beorhthelm, bishop, to Æthelweard, and bequeathed by Æthelweard to his son, Æthelmær); and land at Thames Ditton, Surrey, among several other items.
Two Dittons appear in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Ditone and Ditune. Under the Normans, the one now identified with Thames Ditton was held by Wadard from the Bishop of Bayeux. Its Domesday assets were: hides; part of a mill worth 1s 3d, ploughs, of meadow, woodland worth 20 hogs. It rendered £4. There were four households. Other manors that came to form part of Thames Ditton were those of Weston, Imworth (or Imber), and for a while, Claigate (Claygate). From Domesday, the combined population of Thames Ditton (4), Long Ditton (11), Immeworth (2) and Weston (9) was some 26 households of villagers and smallholders.
Later, the manors of both Dittons were reunited when Anne Gould inherited the manor of Thames Ditton and married Thomas Evelyn, who had inherited the manor of (Long) Ditton. By that time the manor of Thames Ditton amounted to little by way of land and, to all effects, Thames Ditton comprised mainly the manors of Imworth and of Weston, with some lands from Claygate, Long Ditton and even Kingston extending into the present-day boundaries of Thames Ditton and Weston Green. Thus it remained still in 1848, comprising "about ".
Under Eynsham Abbey, Thames Ditton had been parcelled with Esher. It was in the Saxon's Elmbridge hundred, where its local aristocracy would convene for strategic and administrative purposes. Salter's introduction to the Cartulary notes that along with Esher, Eynsham appears to have lost Thames Ditton by the time of the Norman Conquest. The Domesday survey recorded that (before the Conquest) Ditton had been held by Earl Harald (subsequently King until 1066). In Domesday, Thames Ditton (as well as adjacent Long Ditton and 'Ember' or Immeworth, later Imber Court) is listed within Kingston Hundred; in Speed's map of Surrey (1611) it is said to be in Kingston Hundred. Subsequent records assert not only Thames Ditton was in Kingston Hundred but remained part of its parish as a chapelry.
Following the Normon Conquest, part of the land was granted to the monks of Merton Priory by Gilbert the Norman. A chapel – now the church – was built, the first recorded incumbent being in 1179. The chapelry of Thames Ditton was subordinate to Kingston Rectory until the late 1700s. By Act of Parliament in 1769, Thames Ditton, which had from the early 1600s assumed the civilian vestry responsibilities of a parish, became a separate curacy and an ecclesiastical parish in its own right, subsuming Hinchley Wood, Claygate and Weston Green. (Long Ditton remained a separate parish, not within the Kingston Rectory, despite attempts during Cromwell's time to fuse the two).
But, the advowson remained in the hands of the Hardinge family of Kingston until Nicholas Hardinge sold it, along with the advowson of Kingston and other subordinate chapelries, to King's College, Cambridge in 1781, subject to a long lease otherwise disposed of. The Hardinges retained the right of presentation for a period (then subsequently leased that too). Rev Henry Hardinge, Rector of Kingston, was also the incumbent at St Nicholas for a brief and ill-starred time.
Isolated on marshy wetlands, the village seems to have avoided the travails of Kingston (a strategic garrison town often pillaged). It remained a relatively insignificant settlement of farming Manors. The Chancery Rolls of 1212 do note that King John was entertained at Ditton by Geoffrey Fitz Pierre, the Chief Justice. This was most likely on the site of Imber Court. Another substantial house was on the site close to the chapel of ease, now the Church.
Thames Ditton became more significant after Hampton Court Palace was built by Thomas Wolsey in the early 16th century. Once the palace was claimed by Henry VIII in 1525, palace officials and other workers took up residence in Thames Ditton. With Thames Ditton Island, it was a useful crossing point across the River Thames from Surrey to the palace in Middlesex, before the bridge at Hampton Court was built in 1752–1753.
Development in the village suffered greatly when Henry VIII acquired most of the lands and enclosed them within the deer Chase in the Honour of Hampton Court. Following his death, residents of the area successfully petitioned for it to be de-Chased, and normal activities resumed. From that time the convenience of Thames Ditton to London – two or three hours by horse or carriage; the cachet of nearby Hampton Court, Claremont and Esher Place, Royal Kingston with its market and coach service, and the still rural aspect of the village prompted many to make their main or second homes there. A richly diverse crop of residents both notable and less so resulted.
During the 18th century, lawlessness grew in the region, and the roads around the village were plagued with highwaymen, in particular the turnpike to Portsmouth. Influential men began to band together to deal with crime. Following a meeting at the Harrow Inn on 26 January 1792, a group of some 80 local men (a significant percentage of the sparse population) formed a group for "the protection of persons and property". They made a list of crimes, fines and rewards (transcript of document in the T. S. Mercer Collection of parish records, Dittons Library).
An Act of Parliament of 1769 enabled the parish to be formally established and to secede from the parish of All Saints', Kingston. Many significant residents of Thames Ditton were also senior figures in the administration of Kingston, and the courts of Kingston held jurisdiction over both Kingston and Elmbridge Hundreds. Thames Ditton came under the Metropolitan Police rather than the Surrey Police until the present millennium. Most other aspects of local administration in the Victorian era: roads, drains, gas, electricity, the Poor Union, were managed by Kingston until reform of local government led to the establishment of the Esher and the Dittons Urban District Council in 1894. But, Thames Ditton was always clearly outside the area governed by the Corporation of Kingston. In 1965 the government had difficulty drawing the boundaries of Greater London satisfactorily to please various interests.
Post–1800 In 1801, the population of Thames Ditton parish, which at that stage included Weston Green, Hinchley Wood and Claygate, was still small: 1,288 people living in 265 houses; 167 of the workers were occupied in agriculture and 87 in trade, manufacture and handicraft. Due to the large number of mansions and estates in the area, there would have been many domestic and ancillary employees living in the village, some working at Hampton Court Palace.
During the 19th century, the village continued to grow, with the arrival of the London and South Western Railway in 1849 and the building of the first school. Market gardens were established in the fields around the Church to supply the metropolis. By the end of the century, the population had almost doubled but was still fairly sparse. In 1913 a booklet of 'The Suburban and Provincial Development Association' noted: "the population of the district is only about two to the acre" and "some of the trains perform the journey to Waterloo in as little as 24 minutes."
Either side of 1900 the convenience to London and boating attractions of the Thames helped to make Thames Ditton a destination of choice for weekenders including a sizeable community from the world of popular entertainment in London. Local life was completely changed by the expansion of London's suburbs, and in the period between the World Wars most of the farming fields were sold off for housing development, and the big landowners, now richer, decamped.
Around 1812, a school for girls was started thanks to wealthy people such as Baroness de Ros. Some form of National School for girls operated from September 1812, and boys were taught from 1818. At least 60 girls were being educated in 1816–17, some coming from Molesey and Tolworth.
In the 1840s, there was a National School housed near St Nicholas' churchyard. In 1860, the Rev EH Rogers laid the first stone of the schools at the end of Church Walk where generations of Thames Ditton children were educated. It was expanded in 1877.
There had long been a wharf near the Swan Inn on the river and this became a site for local industry. A 'Melting House' between the churchyard and the river became the Thames Ditton Foundry, a skilled bronze foundry in 1874, and successively as Cox & Son (1874–1880), Drew & Sons (1880–1883), Moore & Co (1883–1897), Hollinshead & Burton (1897–1902) and A.B. Burton (1902–1939); the foundry was supreme in its field. It produced fine bronze statues exported worldwide, including the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, Victoria Memorial (London) and the giant Quadriga (Wellington Arch) at Hyde Park Corner.
Nearby, at Ferry Works on the river bank, was the factory of Willans & Robinson who in the late 19th century made a high-speed steam engine (the Willans engine) used for early generation of electric power in places such as the Vienna State Opera. The works is preserved and in use by a number of commercial companies including a broadcast software developer, an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets, a company specialising in numerically controlled machines and a leading architectural practice.
During 1901 and 1908, John Ernest Hutton produced a motorcycle called Princeps at Thames Ditton.J E Hutton Cybermotorcycle.com
Between 1911 and 1984, the village was home to the AC Cars factory, first at Ferry Works and later in the High Street at a site since developed into a residential and office complex.
Celestion manufactured for some years at Ferry Works and adjacent buildings, producing the "Ditton" range of loudspeakers. British Rola bought Celestion in 1947 and moved production to Thames Ditton a year later. The name of the company changed to Rola Celestion; with its products sold under the brand name "Celestion". (MPP, later a camera maker, was formed as a subsidiary during the war.)
From its creation in 1933 to its dissolution in 1994, the Milk Marketing Board, a government agency to support milk production and distribution in the United Kingdom, was headquartered at Giggs Hill Green in Thames Ditton. Its large site, already licensed for commercial use, was targeted by Tesco for a supermarket and garage in the early 1990s but local action secured it for a housing development with public tennis courts, a recreational area and two acres for community health purposes.