Cole Park, Richmond upon Thames

A privately built housing estate in north Twickenham, tucked into a loop of the River Crane (which separates it from St Margarets), where it nears the end of its circuitous journey to the Thames

Lancaster Place in spring

Thomas Cole founded a brewery on London Road early in the 17th century and his descendants provided refreshment to local people for nearly 300 years. In the mid-​​1890s George Cole sold the brewery, using part of the proceeds to clear the family’s debts. He planned to invest the balance in laying out an estate of 140 detached houses with all the latest conveniences, including electricity, which had just arrived in Twickenham. Cole and his agent drafted a scale of prices that rose to £1000, or £70 annual rent, for a property with six bedrooms. There were to be landscaped communal areas, with facilities for croquet and tennis, and fishing in the River Crane.

The first house on the Cole Park estate was completed in 1898 and twenty were occupied by the turn of the century. George Cole continued to direct the project until his death in 1910, when his brother took up the reins. The family trustees, now based in Cornwall, still own some property here.

Further house­building had plugged all of Cole Park’s remaining gaps by the early 1970s, notably in the form of the low-​​roofed terraces of Lancaster Place.

Postcode area: Twickenham, TW1
Further reading: GE Mercer, The Cole Papers, Twickenham Local History Society, 1985