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Chiswick to Westminster Bridge
Chiswick Bridge, opened in 1933, achieves a fleeting fame each spring as a crowded viewing place for the finish of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. It marks the start of a stretch that takes in some of the prettiest and most celebrated of London’s river views.
Once you've passed the cosy riverside pubs along Upper Mall look out for Hammersmith Bridge, Bazalgette’s luxurious green and gold 1887 suspension bridge. The river heads south here as you pass some of Fulham's smarter Victorian residential streets, as well as the home of Fulham FC, Craven Cottage, and the perennially fashionable River Café.
After Putney Bridge the architecture leaps with ever larger steps towards the 21t century. The redevelopment of Wandsworth and Battersea has led to heliports and apartment blocks dotting the river like glassy UFOs – starkly contrasting with the tired nobility of the recently disused Lots Road and Battersea Power Stations. Cheyne Walk, one of London's premier addresses and once home to writers such as Henry James and TS Eliot runs behind Albert Bridge, the city’s most ornate bridge and arguably its most romantic.
From here Westminster begins to peek around the curve of the river from where the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben make a reassuringly familiar but perpetually striking sight.
Blue Plaques – Blue plaques have decorated London’s building since 1867, when the Royal Society of Arts decided to mark the residences of the famous and notorious. The earliest surviving plaques from 1875, are in central London, but a few streets can boast as many as Chelsea’s Cheyne Walk. Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell was born at No. 93 in 1810. While she was growing up, her near-neighours were the Brunels at No. 98, Mark Isambard Brunel and his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
George Eliot died at the Queen Anne House at No. 4 in 1880, only three weeks after moving in. Sylvia Pankhurst campaigned for women’s rights from No. 120. Numerous visual artists also converged on the area in the 19th century: American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler resided at No. 96 in 1859, Walter Greaves lived at No. 104 from childhood under 1897, while No. 108 was home to the sculptor John Tweed. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne set up a poetic and painterly alliance at No. 16.
