ABSTRACT

Africa and Australia called Richmond. The residents of Richmond-on-Thames believe that theirs is the original town, but even that is named after Richmond in Yorkshire. However, even this is not the full story because Richmond in Yorkshire is named after Richemont in Normandy. This is because Richmond is a Norman town. Many of the towns in the book have Norman castles, often a threatening presence on the edge of the town built after the Conquest to keep an eye on the locals. Richmond by contrast is the castle. It was founded in 1068 by the Breton noble Alan Rufus, the first Comte de Richemont. He built the castle on a defensible bluff in a crook of the River Swale. Today’s marketplace was the original castle keep and the castle grew to become the town. The title Earl of Richmond brought with it great power and wealth. At one point the title was held by King Henry VII, who built his Royal Palace on the Thames in a place that he also named Richmond. Later Earls of Richmond were active colonisers and planters of towns that they also named after themselves. Nevertheless, Richmond in Yorkshire

is the mother town of this worldwide family. It is a town blessed with a spectacular setting above the Swale Valley, a gateway to the Yorkshire Dales. But its greatest charm is that, while it has retained much of its distinctive architecture and original character, it has remained a working market town. The layout of the town radiates from the castle and is characterised by wide streets interconnected by narrow wynds. In the Middle

Ages the town became an important ecclesiastical settlement and it received its market charter in 1441 when the town was home to 13 craft guilds. Richmond

developed as an early industrial town based on nearby lead workings and a wool industry supplied by the sheep on the surrounding hills. The craft guilds included knitters who produced caps and stockings. The character of the town was formed in the Georgian period when it reinvented itself as a regional social centre where wealthy wool traders built fashionable townhouses. This was based around the local racecourse, military musters at the Caterick Barracks, ‘assemblies and card parties’. It was this period that gave Richmond a well-to-do reputation, a bastion of Yorkshire Conservatives and until recently the seat of the former government minister William Hague. The genteel town huddles around its sloping marketplace surrounded by 18th-century buildings with the Gothic medieval Trinity Church at its centre, and the clock tower at its head. Richmond’s entire

historic core has Conservation area status with over 450 listed buildings. The large marketplace and many of the minor streets even have listed cobblestones. In the centre of the marketplace stands an obelisk, erected by the Georgians to replace the market cross. This was part of a programme of civic improvements and is built over a 12,000-gallon reservoir fed by nearby springs to provide the town

with a reliable water supply. A few years later the town would build one of the world’s first gasworks, using it to provide street lighting. This mix of heritage, gentility and technology sums up Richmond. It does not live in a heritage bubble but instead has a long history of innovation and civic partnership. This has continued in recent years through collaboration with the Countryside Agency and regional bodies through the Richmond Swale Valley Community Initiative. Indeed, perhaps the secret to Richmond’s success today

lies in the way that the local community, often working with public agencies, has faced threats and challenges to its livelihood and found very modern solutions. One of these challenges was the loss of its railway station, a victim of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. A community-led initiative has now seen the old station building reborn as an arts, business and leisure centre. The Grade II* listed building reopened in 2007 with a new extension and houses a two-screen cinema, an exhibition space, meeting rooms and conference facilities, as well as a bakery and a microbrewery. An earlier project saw the restoration of the beautiful Georgian Theatre Royal. This was originally opened in 1788 by the actor Samuel Butler when Richmond was at its most fashionable, but closed in 1840 and was for many years used as a warehouse. It was reopened as a theatre by a local group in 1963 and then in 2003 with Lottery money was restored and extended, with the addition of contemporary public space providing cafe-bars, meeting rooms and a second performance space alongside the original Grade I listed building. In 2001 the town faced one its gravest threats when it was virtually quarantined during the foot and mouth epidemic. It lost three quarters of its tourist income, leaving behind 18 empty shops.