please empty your brain below
The Dagenham Idol is (probably) older than anything in Richmond museum.
Richmond bus station, not much there nowadays, just a bus shelter and a standing area for buses. There are some wash room facilities for drivers.
Back in the 1960’s there was a little café there which stayed open fairly late, serving teas and baked beans on toast, perhaps a ready made pie. Black and white TV on a corner shelf. Did reasonable trade with the waiting passengers. Now demolished. A n expensive fitness centre on the site.
Richmond Police station also backed onto the bus station back then, and as they had horse stables at the back one would often see horses coming and going whilst waiting for a bus. Now demolished.
The Odeon cinema is nearby the bus station and in the 1960’s had its own car park which was accessed from the bus station road, in the evenings they had an Odeon uniformed car park attendant in a little wooden hut on the corner of where the buses now turn right leaving the bus stop.
He was quite a character, and once he had got few tips from car drivers he would sail of to the pub.
The Odeon is still there but the car park attendants hut and most of the parking space has been built on.
On the corner where the buses turn left to re-enter the main road there is an Odeon studio cinema. That building was originally built as a Temperance Billiard Hall.
I still miss that little café.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_Billiard_Halls
The Odeon and the Bull Sheen have long been demolished.
The link between the Odeons is that they were originally built by a local business man, Joseph Mears. He ran a Thames passenger boat and pleasure trip service from Richmond pier called Mears Motor Launches. When cinemas became popular he entered that market and had 4 cinemas built in the area, the Richmond Kinema, the Twickenham Queens Cinema, the Ritz Whitton and the Queens Cinema Sheen. He used to advertise his riverboat trips in the cinemas. He later sold all four of them to what became the Rank organisation and they became Odeons except for Twickenham which became a Gaumont. All demolished apart from Richmond Odeon.
There were lots of Temperance Billiard Halls around London. They had full sized tables with lights over the top fed from an individual electricity meters which the manager would have behind his counter, you paid on leaving from the meter reading for your table. For refreshments they served hot drinks and ham or cheese rolls.
Venture upstairs at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park and there are photos there illustrating some aspects of the park's wartime role, as a base for a Liaison Regiment - David Niven was in it - which went by the name of 'Phantom.'
http://www.wimbledonmuseum.org.uk/
only open weekends I think
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