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Now in our sixteenth century!

Longford River

This page was last updated on 17 May 2007
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last updated on
17 May 2007

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Longford River

With thanks to Philip Sherwood.

The Longford River at the western end of the village, was dug on the orders of Charles 1 who, in 1638, commissioned an inquiry into “how the waters of the Colne could be brought over Hounslow Heath into the Park" so as to improve the water supply of Hampton Court. The name it was known by in the early 19th century “The Hampton Court Canal” made clear its purpose, but by 1834 it had been re-named the King’s River, and on the first large-scale edition of the Ordnance Survey map (published in 1868)) it was called “The Queen’s or Cardinal’s River". Before 1834 the road to Bath crossed the river on a stone bridge, which incorporated a wooden sluice gate on its south side. It was called, quite simply, the Stone Bridge and this is the name that appears on the Harmondsworth Inclosure Map of 1819.

In 1834 the Office of Woods and Forests, which was responsible for maintaining the bridges on the river, decided to re-build the bridge. The new bridge was to be slightly wider than the old one and to have a sluice gate on the north side. Two drawings of this re-building survive in the PRO archives (WORK 34/109-110). They make clear that the bridge as seen today is in all essentials the one completed in 1834.

The drawings carry the signatures Francis Read and Ainger and Handasyde. According the History of the King’s Works (Vol VI, p.139) there was a Francis Read employed as a master bricklayer at Buckingham Palace in 1825. Perhaps it was the same Francis Read who was responsible for the brick abutments of the Longford Bridge. The firm of Ainger and Handasyde was one of four ironwork contractors invited to tender for the ironwork. One name, which is not on the drawings, is that of the engineer responsible, James Simpson, he probably should be added to the list of those credited with this attractive design.

The cast iron parapets of the bridge, with their rectangular latticework panels, are its most conspicuous ironwork feature, and the sluice gate can also be quite easily seen. Hidden from view are the inverted T-girders, which carry the roadway, and the subsidiary cast-iron plates, which support the two footpaths. The middle of the bridge on three of its sides has a plaque with the monogram “W R 1834" underneath the royal crown. There was a fourth plaque on the remaining side until it was stolen in the 1970s but it has since been replaced with a replica.

The course of the river was changed in the 1947 as a result of the construction of Heathrow Airport so that at one point it went underground and shared a channel with the Duke of Northumberland’s River. The bridge and river are still Crown property.  

The course of the river has been altered once again during the period 2003/04 to allow for the construction of Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5.  In a project known as the 'Twin Rivers Diversion Scheme, both the Longford River and the Duke of Northumberland's River have been put in adjoining channels running around the western perimeter of the site at ground level, no longer having to pass under the airport.  The Longford River part of this project was completed in February 2004.
 

A specialist team captured fish from the river near the Terminal 5 site at Heathrow Airport. The fish were moved from the Longford River to allow them to colonise the new river channel before the water was diverted along its new path. Approved electro-fishing techniques which do not harm the fish were used to capture them. The same process was later carried out with the Duke of Northumberland's River which also ran directly under the T5 construction site, in west London.