The Thames from Hampton Court to Sunbury Lock

molesey reservoirs

The reservoirs on the Surrey bank were built by the Lambeth, Chelsea and Southwark & Vauxhall Water Companies.

 

They are no longer in service, and have been used for gravel extraction since 1999—this will finish in 2009.

 

The reservoirs start about 150 metres above the upstream end of Platts Eyot. At this point you can see a set of wide steps going down the bank to the water, opposite the Aquarius Sailing Club on the Middlesex bank. At this point there used to be a ferry for water company workers between Hampton and Molesey water works. The ferry was still in operation in the 1960s.

 

It was here that eight employees of the Lambeth Water Company were drowned in a punt on 24 December 1873. One of the victims had been one of the few survivors of the sinking of the Northfleet in January of that year. Northfleet had been at anchor off Dungeness when it was run down by a Spanish steamer. 320 out of 379 crew and passengers—emigrants to Australia—were killed.

 

The ferry steps are on the site of an island once called Ashmeade Ayte—it was on a 1770 map as Peggy’s Ait and an 1854 map as Pecker’s Ait. In 1856 the channel between the island and the Surrey bank was filled in, and the island ceased to exist.

 

Further away from the riverbank, south of these reservoirs, is another pair of reservoirs (Knight Reservoir and Bessborough Reservoir) built by The Southwark & Vauxhall Water Company in 1898-1903.

 

Between the reservoirs and the towpath, just downstream of Grand Junction Island, is an interesting survival from the Second World War—a prepared road block, consisting of some concrete blocks and a steel rail. Not quite sure why they spent money putting it here, but it obviously frightened the Wehrmacht, because they decided not to invade.