October 29, 2024

#20: The information I have collected about Chessington World Of Adventures

Ed Jefferson is attempting to visit every Mews in Greater London. This week: using semi-detached housing to pretend you're richer than you are, telling lies that film stars used to live in your flat for some reason, and treasonous bread delivery.

One of the places you have to go when you visit all the Mewses in Greater London is the village of Malden Rushett, and to get there you have to go to Chessington South station, and walk south down the Leatherhead Road.

Weirdly, most people who do this aren’t trying to visit a Mews in the village of Malden Rushett, but appear to instead want to visit Chessington World Of Adventures. Here is some information that I have collected about this:

1 - It started in 1931 as Surrey Zoological Gardens

By a chap named R.S. Goddard, who flew balloons in the first World War before taking over the family “slate and slab” business, establishing a sideline in billiards - opening a chain of halls and manufacturing miniature tables for enthusiasts to practice at home. Origin of zoo alleged to be the leasing of one of his billiard halls to an exotic pet shop (???), whose success left a lasting impression on him.

2 - In the early days of the zoo they used to exercise the elephants by walking them up and down the main road.

They’re not allowed to anymore because of woke.

2 - After Goddard’s death, it was eventually acquired by publishing company Pearson

This either makes more or less sense than it sounds, since Pearson originally started as a civil engineering firm and have had their fingers in basically every kind of pie at some point. They ended up with Chessington Zoo (as it was by then called) in 1967 after acquiring a 60% stake in the very real sounding ‘Standard Industrial Group’, who then owned it. The Madame Tussauds company attempted to buy the Zoo off Pearson in the late 1970s, only for Pearson to turn around and buy the Madame Tussauds company instead. For the banter, I guess?

3 - In the 1980s they realised that zoos are depressing and boring and decided to turn it into the UK’s first theme park

Okay, so the ‘fact’ that Chessington World of Adventures was the UK’s first theme park is, at best, extremely debatable, but John Wardley, the guy hired to create it, is adamant that it was¹, by his definition of ‘theme park’: rather than simply being a collection of rides, a true theme park should deliver a complete, immersive experience. Wardley worked on a few James Bond movies and sees the ideal theme park as analogous to that kind of film, with the rides being something like the special effects - very important, but only part of the package.

4 - The new ‘World of Adventures’ was opened by Prince Edward

For some reason. He reportedly made friends with a gorilla and said that the Dragon River was “very refreshing”, if “a bit worrying.”

5 - A lot of the TV ads seem adamant not to actually show you what the park looks like, for some reason

See this YouTube compilation, including some very lame sub-Creature Comforts efforts.

6 - Douglas Adams wrote the script for one of the original rides

Well, Wardley states that Adams was commissioned to write the script for The 5th Dimension ride, but piecing together the history it seems Adams’ contribution was along the lines of his involvement in lots of these sorts of endeavours at the time (e.g. various video games) - he thought it sounded like a great idea in theory, immediately got distracted by something else and left other people to do the actual work.

7 - No-one has ever died at Chessington World of Adventures

According to the extremely harrowing ‘Incidents at European amusement parks’ list on Wikipedia, anyway. A 4 year old girl did nearly die after falling through a hole while queuing on an elevated walkway but I guess that is the risk you take when making the queue into part of the ‘experience’.

8 - Well, yet

Apparently they’ve recently opened a CoComelon tie-in attraction for toddlers so I expect some exhausted parent will be having a Falling Down moment any day now.

9 - I think Chessington remains the only actual theme park I’ve ever been to

Excepting ‘some ropey old dodgems on a pier’ and so on. My main memory is all the rides making me feel like I definitely did not want to be on them anymore, which to be fair is basically my attitude to all fairground rides anywhere. Having spent too long reading about “Incidents at European amusement parks” has not improved this - bad enough to suffer head injuries let alone having to tell people that you suffered head injuries on something called ‘Mr. Ping's Noodle Surprise’.²

The Mewses

#191 Rushlight Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT9

Malden Rushett is a London suburb that wasn’t - the railway line that stops at Chessington South was supposed to continue this way, but they only got about halfway before the Second World War broke out, and by the time finishing the job became feasible it was inside the Green Belt so there was never any substantial development.

Many of the houses that are here are on ex-industrial land - mid-20th century maps show that the land the Mews now sits on as an asphalt factory (the firm appears to still have a premises on the road next door) and a garage where you could also get your car washed by hand.

A rushlight is a sort of shit olden days candle made by soaking a rush plant in animal fat, I assume the name was picked because it sounds a bit like Rushett rather than because they wanted to associate the houses with stinking fat candles.

#192 Oakleigh Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Cunningly designed housing development - at the first glance it’s two semi-detached houses but it’s actually split along two axes, so back half is another pair of houses. But anyone passing by will assume the occupiers are more well to do than they actually are!

This sort of trickery isn’t new - in 1825 garden designer John Claudius Loudon built a pair of houses that still stand in Bayswater, where both the building and gardens are designed to be easily mistaken for a single, much bigger property - e.g. by putting the entrance doors slightly outside of site on either side. He even published a DIY guide, in which he spells out some reasons that you might want to do this even if you intend to use both properties yourself: i.e. as a tax dodge.³

#193 Bakery Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Housing development on the site of a Bakery - apparently for years just known as The Bakery. This seems likely to have been the bakery owned by one W. Wallis, which got some interesting press in 1917 when a Mr. James Wilson, presumably an employee, drove one of their vans to a nearby farm where he attempted to give 14 loaves of bread to the German prisoners of war who were being kept there. He was arrested and fined £5. 14 loaves isn’t even a baker’s dozen, you German prisoner loving bread idiot.

#194 Inglewood Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Two houses built on a former builders yard in the early 2000s. Not be confused with the Inglewood Mews in Minneapolis, USA, so double check your GPS before you set off.

#195 Calendar Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Housing development that replaced some garages off Electric Parade. Was hoping the name Calendar Mews was connected to some sort of naming gimmick where the houses were called January, etc, but apparently not.

Planning records indicate that the Sycamore trees on or adjacent to the Mews have had a “holistic crown reduction” which is presumably more sensible than it sounds.

#196 Irongate Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Mixed use redevelopment in a yard that appears to have been used as a garage at some point. It has a gate, though I don’t know what it’s made of.

#197 Coppergate Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

The word Coppergate sounds more literal than it is - it actually likely derives from the word cooper - meaning barrel maker - i.e. the gate where you find the barrel makers. It is most notably the name of road in York, but I suspect was just picked at random here - the font on the sign is the same as that above Irongate Mews so I assume they’re linked. Zinc Mews when?

Apparently people do use copper in gates, mostly for decoration, although a poster on the finehomebuilding.com forums recommended it against it on the grounds that it would be stolen and sold to buy meth.

#198 Siden Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Recently completed development that replaced a Jewson’s Builders Merchants - I wonder how many times during construction someone was like “Oh no worries Google says there’s a Jewson’s really close to h… ah, shit”. Siden is the Swedish for satin, and Norwegian for later, but the development brochure has the name written over a logo that looks a swan, so I have no idea what they thought they were trying to do.

#199 Surbiton Court Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT6

Though the building here now is another very recently completed redevelopment, what it replaced was also called Surbiton Court Mews and was a residential block converted from what was once a porter’s lodge and a restaurant built to service Surbiton Court itself, a block of 68 ‘sunshine flats’ opened in the 1930s for Londoners looking for some countryside-style living. This turned out to be a bit of a bust as if you were going to all the effort of moving to Surbiton you were probably going to buy a house rather than rent a flat so they had a lot of problems getting anyone to live here.

The block’s website notes a persistent but completely unverifiable myth that the otherwise hard to let flats were used by film stars shooting down the road at Shepperton studios, presumably including this purely to get residents to shut up about how some old film star no-one remembers any more definitely touch their bath once.⁴

The Surbiton Court flats are now all separately owned, and come with a lengthy residents handbook full of rules that, while individually mostly reasonable, do given an overall effect of making you think that life is probably too short.

#200 Belgravia Mews, Kingston upon Thames, KT1

Presumably some sort of 1970s attempt at gaming the SEO here - though there’s no other Belgravia Mews in London, there are certainly lots of Mewses in Belgravia, which you are presumably supposed to be thinking about when you read the newspaper ads for this ‘superbly appointed accommodation with luxury bathrooms’ (given the ad is from 1974 this presumably just means the toilets are inside).

My interest was piqued by finding an internet comment suggesting some sort of rogue MI6 officer may have lived here but it turns out the source for this is the sort of website that might as well be written in green crayon and at any time feels a sentence away from talking about newsreaders sending the author secret messages, so I’ll leave them to it.

Mewses Visited So Far: 200/2380