Thorney Island (London)
Encyclopedia
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
and the Palace of Westminster
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
(commonly known today as the Houses of Parliament) were built. It was formed by rivulets of the River Tyburn
Tyburn (stream)
The Tyburn is a stream in London, which runs underground from South Hampstead through St. James's Park to meet the River Thames at Pimlico near Vauxhall Bridge. It is not to be confused with the Tyburn Brook which is a tributary of the River Westbourne....
, which entered the Thames near the lowest point where it could be forded from the north bank at low tide.
Thorney, or the Eyot of Thorns, is described in a purported charter of King Offa, which is kept in the Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
muniments, as a "terrible place" — to the delight of generations of the Westminster School
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
boys who comprise nowadays most of the permanent inhabitants of Thorney Island.
Despite hardships and Viking raids over the next 300 years, the monks tamed the brambles, until by the time of Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor also known as St. Edward the Confessor , son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, was one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England and is usually regarded as the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066....
it was "A delightful place, surrounded by fertile land and green fields". The Abbey's College Garden
College Garden
College Garden is a private garden of Westminster Abbey in London, open to the public on some Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.A thousand years ago it was the infirmary garden of the monastery, and it is said to be the oldest garden in England under continuous cultivation; the produce can have done...
remains delightful, a thousand years later, the oldest garden in England.
The level of the land has risen, the rivulets
Stream
A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and stream banks. Depending on its locale or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to as a branch, brook, beck, burn, creek, "crick", gill , kill, lick, rill, river, syke, bayou, rivulet, streamage, wash, run or...
have been built over, and the Thames has been embanked
Thames Embankment
The Thames Embankment is a major feat of 19th century civil engineering designed to reclaim marshy land next to the River Thames in central London. It consists of the Victoria and Chelsea Embankment....
. There is now no sign of Thorney Island. The name is retained only by Thorney Street, at the back of the MI5 Security Service
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
building; but a local heritage organisation established by June Stubbs in 1976 took the name The Thorney Island Society.
In 1831 the boundaries of the former island were described as the Chelsea Waterworks, the Grosvenor Canal
Grosvenor Canal
Grosvenor Canal was a canal in the Pimlico area of London, opened in 1825. Almost nothing of it remains today.The canal started as the ponds of the Chelsea Waterworks Company, constructed in 1723 to supply west London with drinking water...
and the ornamental water in St. James's Park
St. James's Park
St. James's Park is a 23 hectare park in the City of Westminster, central London - the oldest of the Royal Parks of London. The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.- Geographical location :St. James's...
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