Teddington

Teddington is a suburban area in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south west London, on the north bank of the River Thames, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham. It is located 10.4 miles (16.7 km) south west of Charing Cross. It stretches inland from the River Thames to Bushy Park. Formerly it was in the county of Middlesex, which still remains its postal county.

Teddington is mostly residential but is bisected by an almost continuous road of shops, offices and other facilities running from the river to Bushy Park. There are three clusters of offices on this route: on the river Teddington Studios and Haymarket Group form a media hub whilst on the edge of Bushy Park the NPL, NMO and LGC form a scientific centre. Around Teddington Station and the town centre are a number of offices in industries such as Direct Marketing and IT, and offices outside this axis include Tearfund. Several riverside businesses and houses were redeveloped in the last quarter of the 20th century as blocks of riverside flats. The area has been described in the national press as "leafy".

Teddington gives its name to Teddington Lock, which is across the river at Ham and is accessible via the Teddington Lock Footbridges. This marks the upstream limit of the Tideway and is a complex of three locks of which the barge lock at 650 feet (nearly 200 metres) is the longest on the River Thames.

In 2001 the RNLI opened the Teddington Lifeboat Station, one of the four Thames lifeboat stations, below the lock on the Teddington side. The station became operational in January 2002 and is the only volunteer station on the river.