In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Kempton Park, one stop beyond Hampton on the Shepperton line, a station which exists solely because of the racecourse alongside. Originally trains only stopped on race days, in which case one stop beyond was Sunbury, but in 2006 the station got a spruce up and became a regular part of the rail network. It's still not terribly busy.
None of Britain's 59 racecourses are in London but Kempton Park very nearly is, by a matter of 100m or so. It opened in 1878 after a businessman bought up the grounds of Kempton's ancient manor and turned 200 acres over to jockeying. It has two concentric courses, a larger triangular circuit with jumps used for National Hunt racing and an inner loop used for flat racing, so is a very flexible site. Its biggest race is the King George VI Stakes on Boxing Day, plus several other extravaganzas between September and April, but Monday evening racing seems to be how it ticks over across the year. I dodged that, not least to avoid the dress code which officially says to come “dressed to feel your best” but appears alongside photos of ladies with fascinators and tweedy men in baker boy caps.
On a Wednesday the place is almost deserted, but you can walk into the enormous car park if you want to have a chat with a bloke in a cabin about selling your vehicle. Elsewhere course staff were taking advantage of the inactivity by painting the ticket gates, strimming the topiary and nipping up the floodlights to check the CCTV. As you'd expect you can see very little of the course without paying, only the back of the grandstand and a welcoming lobby, but squint through the gates and a couple of equine statues are visible in the parade ring (one's Desert Orchid and one's Kauto Star) and also a slim distant curve of white rail. I understand things are very different here on Thursdays when "the largest weekday market in the South of England" turns up, so if you fancy fashion, flowers, footwear and food, including cut price deals from the team at Bracknell Meats, that's today.
Kempton Park station is only accessible through the racecourse car park, and from the far end. Passengers arriving from London get to walk straight out, whereas those heading back into town have to hike over a broad lattice footbridge, which can't be easy in high heels after an afternoon on the fizz. This platform is substantially covered by a wooden canopy, all the better to protect a grandstandful of racegoers when the next train could be up to half an hour away. The big news, according to a poster, is that contactless payments are coming to Kempton Park in 10 days time, which might make the ticket machine almost redundant.
It's so quiet here that this would be London's fourth least used station if only it were in the capital, so I wasn't surprised to have the place entirely to myself. I was surprised when I saw what looked like Harry Potter walking over the bridge, but it turned out to be a young cleaner in an SWR tabard carrying a broom. A few genuine London-bound passengers ambled across a short time before the next train was due to leave, but generally Sunbury station is much more convenient so the vast majority of locals head there instead. It's only 600m away and has an identical service, but it gets six times the footfall.
Nobody lives to the north of the station - a land of waterworks and reservoirs and also a rumbly Highways Department depot. The dual carriageway which carves through is the A316, but after barely any distance this is the precise point where the M3 begins and launches itself over the Sunbury Cross roundabout. A footbridge leads across the maelstrom to a giant Costco and a Land Rover showroom, although quite frankly everyone drives, and these are further reasons why the station is so quiet. London begins halfway down the first layby, which is the location (you may remember) of the capital's only addressable location in the TW16 postcode, a painted shipping container with a greasy spoon cafe inside.
For anything vaguely interesting you have to head south into the streets of Lower Sunbury. The interest is admittedly only vague to start with, a slew of attractively anonymous avenues dotted with occasional recreational opportunities. Kempton Cricket Club has a thriving colts section, apparently, and the Sunbury Adult Learning Centre offers tai chi and lipreading for beginners on Tuesdays. Some people own a big pile and look like they've visited the aforementioned Land Rover dealer, others appear to have decorated the front of their homes via a catalogue that fell out of a magazine, but most live somewhere pleasantly normal by Surrey standards, i.e. one rung up from nearby Hounslow.
Houses generally get older the nearer you get to the Thames as befits a riverside settlement with ancient roots. French Street is named after Huguenot refugees who once settled here, and also once housed Gary Wilmot so is patently historic. Alas I can't tell you about the lovely church, the Millennium Embroidery cafe, the Walled Garden or The Three Fishes pub because they're all marginally closer to Sunbury station than to Kempton Park. But I did explore some of the newer properties by the riverside, places where boatlovers who don't mind their gardens being submerged occasionally still want to live. At one point the motley houses break to leave space for a narrow footbridge across to three dozen properties on Sunbury Court Island, and I hate to think how its residents cope on house removals day.
But one of the islands is undeveloped and accessible, that's Rivermead Island, and the locals use it like you'd use a local park. Access is over a low bow-shaped footbridge past signs warning no BBQs, no tents, no marquees, no bivouacs, no dog fouling and no fishing without a licence. On the far bank the Thames drifts languidly by, relatively narrowly for those used to Central London widths, with views across to a giant weir fed by a water treatment works. But what's weird is that halfway along this minor island the local authority suddenly switches from Spelthorne to Elmbridge, indeed it used to switch from Middlesex to Surrey, indeed there used to be a coal tax post by the waterside. Whatever's going on?
It turns out this one island used to be two islands but the channel between them silted up. On the far side was Swans Rest Island whose fishing rights were linked to the southern side, hence the administrative disconnect, but today you simply step across through the trees without ever realising. Follow the clearing to the wooded tip, three minutes max, and you emerge opposite a landing stage facing the minor navigation channel behind Sunbury Court Island. I suspect this is a favourite drinking spot for local youth and perhaps not for the very faint hearted, but I think I'd rather be here than at the racing in tweed and a baker boy cap.
