... on the Thames.
Not as ambitious a cycle ride as perhaps you first thought. Nonetheless, a gratefully received suggestion from friend Emma Hetherington, bringing to my attention yesterday the fact that such a thing ever existed in S.W. London (a bit embarrassed I was ignorant of it, but then I’ve learned quite a lot over the last two and a half months doing this Covid-19 bike ride and post stuff).

The memorial
Took me a while to find it. I cycled down what I thought looked a promising cul-de-sac, overshadowed by an enormous block of expensive looking flats that I took to be those situated on the footprint of the old ice rink. But I couldn’t find Warren Gardens, the centre of which was meant to be the location of the memorial. Eventually, after several false dawns, I stumbled upon an unpromising, overgrown short track to the river, which appeared in stark contrast to the trimmed and preened gardens decorating the gated flats. About twenty yards later I found myself on the track by the river bank where I have cycled a number of times. About to give up, I looked over my left shoulder and noticed a recess in the distance. And there it was.
And so to the story.
During WWI thousands of Belgian refugees ended up in the then village of East Twickenham, and worked in a munitions factory in the neighbouring town of Richmond. The area was transformed to such an extent that it was referred to as 'the Belgian village on the Thames'.
At the start of October 1914, Monsieur Charles Pelabon, who ran a mining equipment business in the Brussels region, and then in Antwerp, withdrew to England with some of his workers, just a few days before the arrival of the Germans in the port city. Very quickly he planned and built the "Pelabon Works" from scratch in Richmond, for the production of bombs. A modern factory with control laboratories, it started supplying from spring 1915. One of Pelabon’s last munitions factories built on the site was the red-brick riverside building of 1915, which in 1924 became Richmond Ice Rink. Back in the day John Curry skated there, as did Torvill and Dean. Not to mention thousands of less gifted members of the public, me included. Sadly it closed in 1992 when it was demolished to make way for luxury flats, a fact that still rankles as property developer John Beckwith slithered his way out of a deal with a weak council that originally included replacing the rink with a new one.
An estimated 2,000 Belgian refugees worked at the site, coming mainly from Wallonia initially, followed by Flemish from 1915 onwards, who had managed to cross the "wire of the death", an electrified fence the Germans had established between Belgium and the Netherlands. With their shops, schools, and "mussels and fries" restaurants they swiftly transformed the heart of East Twickenham and Richmond into a "Little Belgium".

Workers around 1914-17 gathered outside the munitions factory that would become Richmond ice skating rink
In 2017, the centenary of WWI, a memorial stone was laid to commemorate the Belgian presence in East Twickenham. The monument is carved out of ‘Belgian Blue’ stone and inscribed with the words ‘memories flow through me like a boat flows down the river’. It was created by stone-cutter Kristoffel Boudens in Belgium, and the words are shown in the three different languages spoken in the Richmond area at the time - English, French and Dutch/Flemish. The inscription was selected from the many outstanding poems taken from a poetry workshop at Orleans Primary School - where all the Twickenham Belgian children used to go. The memorial stands at the centre of Warren Gardens, on the spot where once an army sentry guarded the Pelabon Munitions Works located In East Twickenham, on the Middlesex bank of the Thames, from 1914 to 1918.

Evidence of Belgian influence in the East Twickenham and Richmond area around 1914-17

An early picture of Richmond ice skating rink

Information board on The Belgian Village, by the plinth

Information board on Richmond ice skating rink, by the plinth

Me and my drone

Red arrow: The Belgian Village Memorial
Blue arrow: Site of the old Richmond ice rink
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