Living in Teddington: area guide to homes, schools and transport links

This green spot by the Thames has been named the best place to live in London. Families looking for green space know why
Daniel Lynch
Ruth Bloomfield26 March 2021

Crowned as 2021’s top London neighbourhood, Teddington is a green and pleasant land of Victorian streets and good commuter links.

The Sunday Times Best Places to Live Guide singled the riverside area out for its community spirit, independent shops and cafes and its leafy location.

It’s an ideal in-betweener option for families ready to leave central London but not quite ready to bury themselves in the home counties.

Its houses are not cheap but offer better value than better-known outer west London riverside enclaves such as Richmond. Meanwhile, the conversion of its iconic film studios into flats is bringing new levels of luxury here.

Who lives in Teddington?

“The typical buyer would be a young couple, perhaps with children, coming to the area for the facilities and the schools,” says Ann Sinclair, director of Dexters estate agents.

“These buyers tend to be coming from more central, more expensive parts of south-west London — Chiswick, Clapham, Battersea and Fulham.

“It is a much more child-friendly environment,” she adds. “You’ve got the river, the parks, the schools.”

Local history

These young families are moving to an area with a history built on kings, both of England and of comedy.

​Teddington was almost entirely rural until the 16th century, when Henry VIII seized Hampton Court Palace from Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Proximity to the palace brought employment, farming and prosperity to the area.

The railways arrived in Teddington in 1863, turning it into a commuter suburb as first Victorian and then Edwardian developers started investing in streets of family homes.

The Victorians also devised the extraordinary idea of building a replica of the Notre Dame de Paris church in Teddington. Money ran out when only the nave of the church, St Alban’s, was complete. Today the surviving section of the building is a popular arts centre.

​Teddington’s brush with celebrity began at the start of the 20th century, when local resident Henry Chinnery started renting out the greenhouses of his home, Weir House, to film-makers. In the 1910s, dedicated studios were built, and in 1931 the site was named Teddington Film Studios.

The studios’ star rose when they were bought by Associated British Corporation (ABC), later replaced by Thames Television. In the following years, some of Britain’s most iconic Seventies and Eighties TV shows were filmed there, starring Tommy Cooper, Benny Hill and Morecambe and Wise, as well as modern classics including The Office.

Property in Teddington

Teddington’s building boom was in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and most of the houses built were terraces.

“A lot of bigger houses have been pulled down to make way for smaller blocks, although there is still the odd street of beautiful big Victorian villas, including Teddington Park Road,” says Mark Thompson, senior manager of Hamptons International.

​Teddington grew in the interwar years, so Twenties and Thirties semis can be found, and there are purpose-built post-war flats on bomb-damage sites.

Daniel Lynch

The district remains hugely popular with families, which is lucky because the market has been static since the EU referendum. Thompson feels good-quality houses in popular roads have held their value since the vote.

Scruffier homes in slightly less popular streets have seen some “slippage” with prices falling around five to eight per cent. He estimates prices are still 60 to 70 per cent higher than in the 2008 recession.

“It is quite a resilient area,” he says, and he doubts there will be any big price increases for the next decade.

The prime streets of Teddington are those closest to the river, says Sinclair. A detached five-to six-bedroom Victorian or Edwardian home on Broom Water or Broom Water West would set you back from £2.5m to £4m, while a four-bedroom 1930s house on nearby Trolock Avenue would cost around £1.4m

Better value is to be found on Stanley Road, which leads north from Teddington High Street towards Twickenham. But Sinclair estimates you would still pay just over £500,000 for a two-bedroom (extendable) Victorian cottage, or almost £900,000 four a four bedroom house.

New homes in Teddington

Teddington Gate is a boutique gated development of 35 houses and flats off Hampton Road by Howarth Homes. It’s already more than half sold, with prices starting at £399,995 for one-bedroom flats, and £529,995 for two-bedroom apartments. Help to Buy is also available, so a minimum five per cent deposit will secure a home (barnardmarcus.co.uk).

The former Teddington Studios site is being rebuilt as Teddington Riverside, a development of 217 luxury flats and six houses. The location is great, right beside the Thames, and the first homes will be completed later this year. Prices start from £770,000.

Designed by architect Hamiltons, the development is red-brick and warehouse style, and the specification includes underfloor heating, stone worktops, engineered oak floors and — in the best flats — river-facing balconies. There will be around a dozen affordable units (teddingtonriverside.co.uk).

Renting in Teddington

Daniel Lynch

Mark Birch, associate director at Jackson-Stops, says local renters tend to be couples in their late twenties or early thirties, older post-divorce singles and re-locators with new jobs at local employers BP and the National Physical Laboratory.

The essentials

Teddington residents have a TW11 postcode, shared with those living on the edges of Twickenham and Hampton Hill.

Rush hour trains to Waterloo take from 38 minutes. An annual season ticket costs £1,916.

Liberal Democrat-controlled Richmond Council. Band D council tax is charged at £1706.94.

Living in Teddington

There is a decent balance of independents, whether you want a second-hand designer dress at The Clothes Horse or posh chocolates at La Casa Del Habano, and all the useful basics like banks and supermarkets. The high street also has a pretty full complement of mid-range chain restaurants.

There are plenty of family friendly cafes, such as The Fallow Deer and The French Tarte, and several waterside pubs, notably Tide End Cottages and The Anglers, both by Teddington Lock.

Lovely and leafy. Walk due south into Bushy Park, through into Hampton Court Park and right down to the Thames. To the north is Ham Common, Ham House and Garden and Richmond Park.

There are plenty of stately homes to visit in Teddington within walking distance, including fantastic Gothic Strawberry Hill House, Hampton Court Palace and Ham House. Twickenham Stadium is a couple of miles away, making Teddington nirvana for rugby fans.

Messing about on the river around Teddington Lock (known to Monty Python’s Flying Circus fans as the location for its fish slapping dance sketch, which ended with Michael Palin plunging into the slightly greyish waters of the lock) is also popular, with several canoeing and rowing clubs to join. There is also a leisure centre with a pool.

The Landmark Arts Centre has regular art fairs, concerts, book clubs, and art classes.

Schools in Teddington

St Mary’s and St Peter’s Church of England Primary School, Collis Primary School, and Hampton Wick Infant and Nursery School are all rated “outstanding” by Ofsted. Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Primary School has a “good” report from the Government schools’ watchdog.

Teddington School has recently slipped into the “requires improvement” category says Ofsted, with very mixed standards of teaching and – likely as a direct result – bad behaviour in some classes.

There are no private schools in Teddington itself. But plenty to choose from in Richmond, Kingston-upon-Thames or Twickenham, where Radnor House, which opened in 2011 has since “developed an outstanding curriculum” according to Ofsted.

St Mary’s University offers a wide range of under and postgraduate degrees in everything from acting to law to political science. There is a particular emphasis on teaching degrees.