Oliver's Island

Cambridge win men’s Oxford-Cambridge boat race 2023

Strand on the Green is looking good today 😊

Oliver's Island Oliver's Island is a small heavily wooded river island, or ait, in the River Thames in England. It is located in the London Borough of Hounslow on the Tideway near Kew, and is opposite Strand-on-the-Green in Chiswick.

The island derives its name from a story that Oliver Cromwell once took refuge on it, but there is almost certainly no truth in this story. It was called Strand Ayt until a century after the Civil War, by which time a myth had arisen that Cromwell had set up an intermittent headquarters at the Bull’s Head at Strand on the Green. The story was embellished with the suggestion that a secret tunnel connected the island to the inn, but no evidence of any tunnel has ever been found.

In 1777 the City of London's navigation committee installed a tollbooth on Oliver’s Island to levy charges on passing craft to fund improvements to the river’s navigability. This was a wooden structure in the shape of a small castle, and a barge was moored alongside, from which the tolls were taken. The “City Barge” gave its name to the inn at Strand on the Green. Successor barges were often stationed here to collect tolls until a dock was built on the Surrey shore. There was a smithy on the island by 1865 and it became a place where barges were built and repaired. In 1857 the Thames Conservancy took over navigation responsibilities from the City of London and in 1909 assigned Oliver’s Island to the Port of London Authority. The PLA used it as a storage depot and as a wharf for derelict vessels. When the PLA tried to sell the island in 1971, the Strand on the Green Association, an amenity group formed by residents for their locality, led the protests and the plan was quickly dropped. The smithy was demolished in 1990.

Somewhere over the Rainbow..... the pot of gold is in the National Archives Building at Kew.

In the picture below Strand on the Green is the diagonal path running from top left (NW) to bottom right (SE). It begins as a road from Kew Bridge, then divides into Thames Road, formerly known as Back Lane, which takes the traffic behind Strand on the Green. That leaves Strand itself as a quiet walk (cycles prohibited, feel free to shout at those you see) along the tidal river. In this image the tide is shown about half up and rising. A full spring tide will flood the footpath but quickly drain out to leave just a narrow channel of water between Strand on the Green and Oliver's Island in the middle of the river. Once a barge factory, the island and the river around it is now home to Canada geese, cormorants, grebes, herons, mallards, wagtails, coots, swans and, in season, seagulls.