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Corporation Island

Geography of the London Borough of Richmond upon ThamesIslands of LondonIslands of the River ThamesLondon geography stubsRichmond, London
Use British English from December 2017
CorporationIsland01
CorporationIsland01

Corporation Island is a small island on the River Thames in London. The island is between Richmond Bridge and Richmond Railway Bridge, where it forms part of the celebrated view from the Richmond waterfront. Its name seems to derive from its owners, the Corporation of Richmond, now the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It is uninhabited and heavily wooded, and was formerly known as Richmond Ait.The unpopulated Corporation Island is densely wooded with white willow, crack willow and weeping willow as well as hybrid black poplar. These were planted in the 1960s after Richmond Borough Council felled the London plane trees which had grown there. The island may have changed its shape due to alterations of the tidal flows in the Thames following the construction of the New London Bridge in 1829 followed by that of the Richmond half-tide lock.Corporation Island is home to a heronry, a nesting colony of grey heron, which had 12 active nests in 2016. Just downstream from Corporation Island are the last islands on the Surrey stretch of the Thames, the Flowerpot Islands, which are two nearly circular islands covered in willows which were a single island until they were divided into two on the orders of the Duke of Queensbury in 1796. Subsequently, tidal erosion has reduced them to the two tiny islets, or eyots, currently visible.One of the last photographs of The Beatles together was taken in 1969 of the band sitting on Corporation Island. There now is no public access to the island.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Corporation Island (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Corporation Island
The Moorings, London St Margarets (London Borough of Richmond upon Thames)

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.458055555556 ° E -0.30888888888889 °
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Address

The Moorings 2
TW1 2QG London, St Margarets (London Borough of Richmond upon Thames)
England, United Kingdom
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Richmond Palace
Richmond Palace

Richmond Palace was a royal residence on the River Thames in England which stood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Situated in what was then rural Surrey, it lay upstream and on the opposite bank from the Palace of Westminster, which was located nine miles (14 km) to the north-east. It was erected in about 1501 by Henry VII of England, formerly known as the Earl of Richmond, in honour of which the manor of Sheen had recently been renamed "Richmond". Richmond Palace therefore replaced Shene Palace, the latter palace being itself built on the site of an earlier manor house which had been appropriated by Edward I in 1299 and which was subsequently used by his next three direct descendants before it fell into disrepair. In 1500, a year before the construction of the new Richmond Palace began, the name of the town of Sheen, which had grown up around the royal manor, was changed to "Richmond" by command of Henry VII. However, both names, Sheen and Richmond, continue to be used, not without scope for confusion. Curiously, today's districts of East Sheen and North Sheen, now under the administrative control of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, were never in ancient times within the manor of Sheen, but were rather developed during the 19th and 20th centuries in parts of the adjoining manor and parish of Mortlake. Richmond remained part of the County of Surrey until the mid-1960s, when it was absorbed by the expansion of Greater London. Richmond Palace was a favourite home of Queen Elizabeth I, who died there in 1603. It remained a residence of the kings and queens of England until the death of Charles I of England in 1649. Within months of his execution, the Palace was surveyed by order of the Parliament of England and was sold for £13,000. Over the following ten years it was largely demolished, the stones and timbers being re-used as building materials elsewhere. Only vestigial traces now survive, notably the Gate House. (51°27'41"N 0°18'33"W). The site of the former palace is the area between Richmond Green and the River Thames, and some local street names provide clues to existence of the former Palace, including Old Palace Lane and Old Palace Yard.