My very first night of a year-long research trip to the UK National Archives in Kew was spent next to a Richmond alley. By chance, my hotel was adjacent to Vineyard Passage. All night long, one could hear local rowdies making their way home along this time-honored short cut.
The next day I checked out the Vineyard Burial Ground, consecrated in 1790, and now maintained by the Environment Trust of Richmond upon Thames. It was a shock to discover ‘real bodies’ buried so close to my hotel. Intrigued, I wandered up and down Richmond’s Vineyard Passage, Patten Alley, and the almost mile-long Albany Passage. Janine, the librarian at the Local Studies Library in Richmond, helped me determine that all three were originally footpaths leading up from the Charterhouse of Sheen, founded in 1414 by Henry V, which was the largest Carthusian monastery in England at the time.
The friars would walk daily uphill from the monastery (across from Syon House on the south bank of the Thames River) to tend their vineyards (thus Vineyard Passage). They cared for domesticated animals up near Richmond Park, as indicated by old maps marking Friar Stile.
In later years, churches were located along the passageways, for example, St. Matthias Church at the top of Albany Passage and St. Elizabeth of Portugal Church on Patten Alley, ensuring that many of these alleys escaped the development of nearby roads.
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I quickly determined a general rule: the ‘M&S rule’. All the alleyways and passages going up and down Richmond Hill were originally established by the monks, whilst all similar pathways that paralleled the Thames, like the infamous Aynscombe Path in Mortlake right behind The Ship pub, were used by smugglers.
My research was greatly aided by a chance meeting with Helen Deaton. She and her husband David sponsor the Mortlake History Website (mortlake-history.org.uk). She explained how smugglers would offload goods near The Ship pub and then carry them in the dead of night along the secretive alleyways like Aynscombe Path—which used to run all the way up to Kew—to avoid customs agents.
There are alleys everywhere if you look for them. In Twickenham, I rambled the seemingly endless Budd’s Alley to visit Twickenham Sound Studios, home to such famous British films as the Beatle’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Alfie (1966) and The Italian Job (1969). Roman Polanski’s groundbreaking film Repulsion (1965) was filmed here and, more recently, a Fish Called Wanda (1988).
The alleys became a conduit to discover more about local history. In Richmond cemetery, for example, I found the headstone of the infamous Chung Ling Soo (aka William Ellsworth Robinson), an American magician made famous by dying during a disastrous “catch a bullet in his mouth” trick (replayed most recently in an episode of Good Omens, season 2).
I learnt more about another noteworthy former resident – fledgling vicar, 23-year-old Vincent van Gogh, who gave his first—and last—sermon at the church on Kew Road in October 1876, where Carna Court is now located.
In fact, van Gogh’s decision to forsake spiritual pursuits for more earthly ones fits the M&S rule perfectly.
