Louisa and Peter Hedley’s home

Louisa and Peter live in Barnes, a well-heeled urban village in West London.

Their house is on Lonsdale Road, primarily a residential street which curves around the western edge of the village from Castelnau at its northern end to the High Street in the south.

The red marker on the map points out Lonsdale Road, but does not indicate Louisa and Peter’s specific address. You can hover your cursor over the map to zoom in or out. Click on the map and drag to reposition it.

 

The house on Lonsdale Road

The Edwardian semi features a holly tree in the corner of the gravelled forecourt. Louisa likes to watch the handsome blackbird, a regular visitor, as it sings and eats the berries that adorn the boughs in late autumn. The desk in the bay window of the sitting room provides an ideal vantage point from which to do this.

Barnes

Barnes is part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Just six miles from Charing Cross Station, it combines proximity to the city centre with the feel of a comfortable urban village. It sits in a horseshoe bend of the River Thames, which envelopes it to the west, north and east.

Barnes boasts a wide variety of independent stores on the High Street, together with many 18th and 19th-century buildings near Barnes Pond. Together, they make up the Barnes Village conservation area. On the east riverside is the London Wetlands Centre adjoining Barn Elms playing fields.

The ‘Barnes Trail’ forms a pleasant circular walk taking in the riverside, commercial streets and conservation area. The Thames Path National Trail provides a public promenade along the entire bend of the river, a section of which forms the famous ‘Championship Course’ – the site of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.

Barnes has two railway stations, Barnes Bridge and Barnes. The journey from the latter to Waterloo Station takes twenty-five minutes. Barnes is poorly served by the London Underground, the nearest tube stations being Hammersmith, across the Thames to the north, and Putney Bridge, also across the river, but to the east.

The site of rock musician Marc Bolan's fatal car crash on Queen's Ride in 1977 is now Bolan's Rock Shrine. Although hard to find, the memorial receives frequent visits from tourists and his fans. In 2002, and to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, a bronze bust of Bolan was added to the memorial site.

The area around Barnes Pond hosts several open-air and covered markets each month. Barnes Green is the site of the Barnes Fair, held each year on the second Saturday of July, and organised and run by the Barnes Community Association. The association’s headquarters are at Rose House, a distinctive 17th-century pink-painted building on Barnes High Street. In 2015, Barnes Pond became home to London's largest dedicated children's book event, the Barnes Children's Literature Festival, now the second-largest such event in Europe.

Views of Barnes

Across Barnes Pond to the Sun Inn. A popular spot from where children feed the ducks.

Barnes railway bridge from the banks of the Thames.

Barnes riverside from Barnes railway bridge. This is the view Louisa would see from her train as she travels to and from work in Brentford.

Barnes Riverfront at low tide. The Thames path follows the horseshoe curve of the river as it skirts around the north of the village. The River Thames is tidal up as far as Teddington Lock, ten miles upstream.

Hammersmith Bridge. The bridge links Barnes, which is south of the river, with its neighbour to the north. One of the world’s oldest suspension bridges, it was closed in 2020, but has since been reopened to pedestrians and cyclists. Both Louisa and Peter use the bridge when walking to and from Hammersmith Underground Station.