🏞️ The Sunbury & Shepperton History Society and Upper Halliford Medical Centre PPG 🩺

Gareth Davies: 00:00:43

This time on the Sheppertonian.

Nick Pollard: 00:00:45

In a time after the war, when employment was a bit tight, I guess local people did manage to get some employment out of it, although they didn't include my grandad, who'd come back to Laleham after the First World War and gone for a job on the reservoir. But the foreman wanted a quid bribe to take him on, which he didn't have, so he didn't get the job.

Ricky Wallis: 00:01:05

There is a particular service called Pharmacy First, and that's a service whereby people can go to pharmacies and they can have certain treatments where they don't need to go to the doctor. So we're looking to publicise that. We're looking to do more meet and greets and provide that feedback back to the surgery.

Gareth Davies: 00:01:23

Hello and welcome to the Sheppertonian, sharing the voices, stories and moments that make this village what it is. This time, we're starting by following the water.

I met up with local historian Nick Pollard to hear how the Thames, the Queen Mary Reservoir and even the River Ash have shaped Shepperton's past and its present.

Then we go across to Halliford park, where I sat down with Ricky Wallis, the volunteer chair of the Patient Participation Group at Upper Halliford Medical Centre. If you've never heard of a PPG, you're not alone. But it's quietly changing how patients and practices work together.

And of course, we'll wrap things up with the What's On Guide for August and the Sheppertonian shout out.

And remember, if you'd like more information about the Sheppertonian, you can visit thesheppertonian.uk where you'll find all episodes of the podcast, the link to subscribe to the newsletter, the Facebook and Instagram links, and even that big red button if you'd like to give someone in Shepperton a shout out. So to the lock.

Water is everywhere in Shepperton. The Thames draws our eastern edge, the Queen Mary Reservoir flattens the skyline to the north and the River Ash slips quietly through the centre. Easy to miss. But these bodies of water have played a major part in shaping the place we live in.

To explore that, I met with local historian Nick Pollard down by the lock, naturally.

Nick Pollard: 00:02:52

Shepperton has obviously been very dependent on the River Thames over the years. When the original village was founded by the Saxons, it was, I think, very deliberately placed by the river.

If you think about where the church square is now and the parish church on that bit, very cleverly placed on a little bit of high ground. By the river that doesn't flood. So, you know, even today when we have severe floods, that Church Square area never floods.

But of course, from the earliest times, the river will be very important for, as a means of communication, for travel and particularly for trade. In the days when, you know, to start with, there were no appreciable roads at all.

And even later into the 19th century, when the roads weren't terribly good at all, before the coming of the railways, the river was the principal means of transportation, particularly of bulk objects such as agricultural products, manure, stuff like that was being transported. And of course, Shepparton would have had its own wharf just at the Ferry Square, at the back of Church Square there as well.

Of course, the other importance of the river was for food, for fishing. In the early days that would have been more subsistence, you know, actually supplying fish for food.

There would have been fish traps put up to catch fish. Eels was particular delicacy, of course.

And there were special eel traps which were actually woven using willow from willow plantations along the banks of the Thames. So it was a very sort of sustainable local industry.

But gradually, of course, as time went on, the river gained more of a sort of leisure use and the fishing again became more sort of a recreational pursuit rather than a subsistence sort of activity.

Gareth Davies: 00:04:37

Today, the Thames feels timeless. But just a century ago, another body of water changed Shepparton dramatically.

ry Reservoir was completed in: 1925

Nick Pollard: 00:04:51

Yeah, the Queen Mary Reservoir was built really as one of a series of reservoirs to obviously supply water for London.

se after the big stink of the: 1860

tan Water Board was formed in: 1902

So they built reservoirs at Staines at the start of the century.

But by the: 1920

It was a big open expanse of land and Sir Richard Burbidge, the managing director of Harrods, who owned Littleton Park House sold the land, which was really Littleton Common, to the Metropolitan Water Board, for constructing the reservoir.

and obviously completed it by: 1925

And, of course, that's why it's called the Queen Mary Reservoir.

Gareth Davies: 00:06:32

The land may have looked empty, but people lived there and the project took more than originally planned.

Nick Pollard: 00:06:38

There were a couple of isolated cottages.

In fact, one of them, Asla Manor Cottage, was, Was actually paid for by Sir Richard Burbidge to be dismantled and moved outside the perimeter of the reservoir. And funnily enough, it's been moved again since, and it's now at the Chiltern Open Air Museum up in Chalfont St Giles.

But the original intention was that was all that was going to be taken.

But they had to change the shape of the reservoir, because originally it extended out further to the west, but they found this pocket of running sands which they couldn't dig a trench in, literally, you know, it just filled up every time.

So they had to change the plan of the reservoir and shorten it to the west, but extend it on the south, which meant they took the north part of the village of Littleton and a fair chunk of Littleton Green. Littleton Green, you see now, is only about a quarter of what was there originally.

So they took several cottages and a farm and various other buildings in what was part of Littleton, and then they built the replacement houses that we see along New Road to house the people who'd been displaced.

Gareth Davies: 00:07:44

Displaced? Those residents must have been quite upset.

Nick Pollard: 00:07:47

There's no record of any particular resistance. I think society was a little more accepting of officialdom at the time.

You can imagine if anyone suggested that scheme now, there'd be huge petitions and protests against it. But the local population, I suppose, seem to be more accepting of these things.

I mean, it wasn't to provide water for the local population, clearly, it was to. To provide water for London. So there was no particular local benefit.

Although in a time after the war, when employment was a bit tight, I guess local people did manage to get some employment out of it, although they didn't include my granddad, who'd come back to Leyla after the First World War and gone for a job on the reservoir. But the foreman wanted a quid bribe to take him on, which he didn't have. So he didn't get the job.

Gareth Davies: 00:08:32

Away from the grand scale of the Thames and the reservoir, there's another waterway that's easy to miss, but equally important, the River Ash.

Nick Pollard: 00:08:40

It's a tributary of the Thames that actually comes off the River Colne up at the southern end of Staines Moor, and obviously it flows through Ashford and gives Ashford its name, and then it comes down through Halliford and reaches the Thames in the creek at Sunbury. It is actually the sort of boundary between the old parishes of Sunbury and Shepperton, so it's been significant in that sense.

hich was located in the early: 1980

And there's a similar henge that they discovered up at Ashford when they were building the Bronzefield Prison, and that, again, is in the loop of the River Ash.

So whether this proximity to water, you know, was a factor in sighting these sites, we'll never really know, but it seems likely that there was some, you know, significance to it.

Gareth Davies: 00:09:54

And it's not just the obvious waterways that have shaped Shepperton. I asked Nick about the forgotten ones, the lesser known flows beneath our feet.

Nick Pollard: 00:10:01

Yeah. One that's perhaps not remembered quite so well is the one that's called Black Ditch today.

name when I was a kid in the: 1960

But it ran along the back of the footpath, along the back of St. Nicholas School.

And then, of course, it emerges near the Three Horseshoes Publishing, goes underneath the war memorial, and then re emerges in more or less a ditch that runs around the side of Russell Road and it runs around into the Thames at Sandhills Meadow, more or less opposite the Red Lion Pub there. That did used to flood quite significantly before they built the Shepparton Bypass and enlarged the culvert.

Under the warmer oil, there was only a small pipe that took it under the warmer wall, and it used to flood really badly in times of excessive rainfall.

And this is why they had the Little Lord's Bridge built over that area, because it was always getting flooded and that linked up the sort of Church Square area of Shepparton with the present High street area.

d it in the enclosures in the: 1860

Gareth Davies: 00:11:26

Some of the best local history isn't written, it's whispered in stories. I asked Nick if any riverside tales have stuck with him.

Nick Pollard: 00:11:34

I think one of the interesting ones relates to D'Oyly Carte Island, actually, which we can see from where we're recording this, and that's Richard D'Oyly Carte's crocodile, which he kept in a pool on the island.

It wasn't a very big crocodile, I should hasten to add, but it did inevitably escape at one point got loose in the river and it was out there for, I think for a couple of weeks until Richard D' Oyly Carp put up a 20 pound reward, which was quite a substantial sum of money in the late 19th century, and a group of local fishermen got together and managed to recapture it and return it to him.

Gareth Davies: 00:12:08

So with new developments and changing times, are we in danger of losing our connection to the water?

Nick Pollard: 00:12:14

Well, there is always a risk of that, I guess. I mean, where we're sitting down here at the lock, it always seems to be a popular place.

We've got the cafes here on the Lock island itself and of course at the Ferry Cafe and bring a lot of peace people down. I was at the Swan Apping down here on Monday and there was a good crowd of people here.

And I think when people think of Shepperton, they do think of the riverside and the riverside pubs are popular as well, you know, and that brings in people from far and wide, not just from Shepperton itself. So I think people do connect with the river and the tow path.

You know, people walk along it for recreation, but, you know, as new people come into the village.

And I think there's always opportunities for people to discover more about their village and about the river, which has played such an important part in its history.

Gareth Davies: 00:13:04

Before we finished, I asked Nick one last thing. If someone's walking along the riverbank today, what should they stop and notice?

Nick Pollard: 00:13:11

I always think it's worth stopping and looking out for the wildlife, actually. It's an important part of it to me. We're Very lucky to have the river here and the reservoir, although in a sense it was imposed on us.

Again, it's a brilliant resource for sailing and that, but you do see a lot of wildlife up there as well, waterfowl in particular. And, of course, on the river we get these occasional sightings of the seal, which is just incredible to me.

I never thought we'd see such a thing this far up the Thames when I was younger.

But he seems to turn up regularly and spend quite a bit of time sunning himself on the jetty at Desborough Sailing Club and People's Riverside Gardens. So it's always worth looking at.

There's always a chance of seeing a kingfish or something, you know, when you're walking along a quieter stretch of the river. So I always think, yeah, don't just walk along on your phone or listening to music on headphones.

Look around, see what there is around and listen out for things as well.

Gareth Davies: 00:14:07

Thanks to Nick Pollard from the Sunbury and Shepperton Local History Society. If you want to understand Shepparton, start by following the water.

One morning in Halliford park, just across from the Upper Halliford Medical Centre, I met with Ricky Wallis, the volunteer chair of the surgery's Patient Participation Group, or PPG. If you've never heard of a PPG, you're not alone.

But as Ricky explained to me, it's becoming an increasingly important link between local patients and their GP practice.

Ricky Wallis: 00:15:59

It's basically. It's a group of committee of four people and we were formed 18 months ago when Sandy from the surgery reached out to patients.

I'm the chairman and John Curley is the vice chairman and Sandra Dunn is the secretary and Camilla Govinden is a committee member. We are a conduit between the surgery and the patients. We look to have communication between the two and that's really what we've been set up to do.

Gareth Davies: 00:16:28

Communication is at the heart of what the PPG does. Ricky told me about the simple but effective way they connect with patients. Informal meet and greets held in the.

Ricky Wallis: 00:16:38

Surgery itself, we have regular meet and greets, which is an informal process whereby myself and committee members meet with patients in the surgery to discuss with them are there any problems with the service, how do they find the service, anything they want to talk about? And the ones that I've run and the ones that the other committee members have run have all been very positive.

And that positive news we have fed back to the surgery.

Gareth Davies: 00:17:06

The group has already made a difference in practical ways too, particularly by building closer links with local pharmacies.

Ricky Wallis: 00:17:13

One of the things we've been doing is working with some of the local pharmacies to understand the services they provide, who the contacts are, so that we can then we're then going to be looking to publicise that information on the screen that we have in the surgery.

Also, John Curley, who's the Vice chair, did a very good piece of work with Trio in Shepparton High street who didn't have access to be able to provide COVID vaccinations. John worked tirelessly with the nhs, which was quite a hard task to make sure that Trio got access to be able to provide Covid injections.

Gareth Davies: 00:17:48

Talking to Ricky, I realised the PPG isn't just about ideas, it's about insight. Volunteering gave him a rare view of how the surgery actually runs.

Ricky Wallis: 00:17:59

What I've learnt about the particular surgery that I'm involved with is that it's a very well run surgery. They run a very tight ship.

I've built very good relationships with the people that work there and I think that, as I mentioned earlier with the meet and greets, the patients are happy with the service and we have very little complaints. What have I Learned in the 18 months? I've learned to see how hard they work on reception, what a good job they do.

I've also come to see that the various other people that I've interacted with do a very good job.

Gareth Davies: 00:18:33

The work hasn't gone unnoticed. In December of last year, the group marked its first anniversary by inviting the local mp, Lincoln Jopp, to see what they'd achieved.

Ricky Wallis: 00:18:42

Well, we decided that to mark the anniversary of one year, it would be a good idea to invite our local MP, Lincoln Jopp, and he was more than happy to come.

And we had George, Camille and other people from the surgery present and myself and the committee, we found Lincoln to be very engaging, very interested in what we did and he clearly had done his research because he asked some very, very good questions. And I think it was, you know, very positive for us that he could come to the surgery and just see, you know, how well run it is.

Gareth Davies: 00:19:13

For Ricky, being on the committee of the PPG is more than administration, it's personal. It started with a simple decision to volunteer.

Ricky Wallis: 00:19:22

As I've mentioned you previously, I'm very keen to do some volunteering.

I'm looking at options around that and I think that when Sandy approached people, patients, I thought, yeah, it'd be a great opportunity, something I'd like to do. And looking back on the 18 months that I've done this. I'm very happy with it. I think it's been a good experience and I enjoy it.

Gareth Davies: 00:19:44

And when I asked what has been most rewarding, the answer was swift.

Ricky Wallis: 00:19:48

I think it's been rewarding to see how well the surgery's run. I think it's been good to form really good relationships with George and the other staff that are there.

And I think it's good to do the meet and greets and actually see how positive people are about the surgery. That's what I found to be very rewarding and interesting.

Gareth Davies: 00:20:07

With those strong foundations, the group's focus now is on building for the future.

Ricky Wallis: 00:20:11

I think it's more of the same. I think it's looking to build on the relationships with the pharmacies.

There is a particular service called Pharmacy first, and that's a service whereby people can go to pharmacies and they can have certain treatments where they don't need to go to the doctor. So we're looking to publicise that. We're looking to do more meet and greets and provide that feedback back to the surgery.

It's really more of the same. We have another person joining the committee who's going to join next week, so we have a full contingent and we have enough staff now.

I would say that if anybody's got anything that they want to say to me about the service, or if they think there are any areas where it could be improved, we'd be interested to hear those. And we do also Talk to other PPGs to see what they're doing. And I think as far as we're concerned, things are working well.

George Camille runs a tight ship. The staff are very helpful and they do a good job.

Gareth Davies: 00:21:08

Ricky Wallace, the volunteer chair of the Upper Halliford Patient Participation Group.

Proof that sometimes the biggest changes in local healthcare start with a handful of volunteers, a few conversations and a willingness to get involved. What's going on in Shepperton? Sponsored by Shepperton Matters. We have a bumper August full of events for you in and around Shepparton.

And thanks to Monica at Shepperton Matters for the kind permission to reproduce a lot of these dates from the magazine. It's much appreciated.

So, on Saturday 9 August, the Sunbury Regatta at Desborough Sailing Club is on a traditional skiff regatta with the main Thames clubs competing for points. And that includes a local tug of war and row for your local events, open to all.

And that's followed on Sunday the 10th with the Junior Regatta also at the Desborough Sailing Club. For local children aged 7 to 15 racing against each other. Also on Sunday the 10th from 2 till 4, it's music in the Park.

Staines Brass Band will be performing at the Lammas Bandstand, Lammas Recreation Ground, Raspberry Road, Staines Upon Thames. And this is a free event. All you need to do is bring a chair or a picnic blanket.

-: 36303

A selection of cascales and special gins together with music and food stalls. If you head to sunburycricket.co.uk, you can find out more. Also on Sunday 17 August from 2 till 4pm, it's Music in the Park.

Dale Harris and Sophie Varlo will be performing at the Walled Garden at Thames street in Sunbury. Bring a chair or picnic blanket. Again, refreshments from the cafe. Again, it's a free event.

Tuesday the 19th to Saturday the 30th of August, Sunbury Working Artists will be exhibiting at the Sunbury Millennium in Bright Embroidery Gallery in Thames Street, Lower Sunbury. That's free. Saturday 23rd August at 8pm, Hampton Sailing Club present Radio Caroline DJ Peter PA Anthony A live QBURN Show.

Headliners are Kimberly Rue and Lee Cave Berry. Kimberly was a member of Katrina and the Waves and wrote Walking on Sunshine and many more.

Tickets are £15, £10 for members and if you subscribe to the Sheppartonian newsletter, the email's in there there for you to purchase tickets. On Sunday 24th August from 6 till 9pm, Strawberry Hill House presents the Pasadena Roof Orchestra.

Music from the Roaring Twenties and elegant thirties. Sounds fun. Again, bring a picnic and enjoy the music, taking you back in time to the setting of our beautiful building and grounds in Twickenham.

Tickets and more information@strawberryhillhouse.org.uk and finally on Sunday the 3rd, 31st of August, 2 till 4pm, it's back to the Walled Garden in Thames Street, Sunbury for Music in the Park. Lindham Wind Orchestra this time will be performing. Bring a chair or a picnic blanket, refreshments from the cafe and again it's a free event.

So that's what's going on in August. Hear this. The Sheppertonian shout out. So this month's Sheppartonian shout out is in the form of a poll.

I put a poll out on social media to the good people of Shepperton, asking what what's your favourite local walk? Where's your go to walking route around Shepperton? Is it one by the Thames at Dumsey Meadow? Is it two around Manor Park?

Nick Pollard: 00:24:43

Is it three?

Gareth Davies: 00:24:44

Through the village centre and High Street? Is it four? Anywhere with a good coffee stop? I asked you to comment with your pick or suggest a hidden gem we should all try.

So Darren said the lakes and studios walk all day long. Thank you, Darren. Carol says, I walk all of these and more. You may have seen me out and about.

Well, now you've posted a photo of you and your dogs, Carol, I will look out for you and say hello. Deborah says, why do we never see the pits or the lakes on this type of list? Fair dues. Alexandra says one is stunning. We love it.

That's by the Thames at Dumsey Meadow. Couldn't agree more there, Alexandra. And Lulu says four anywhere with a good coffee stop. Sounds like Lulu enjoys a coffee!

So do you have a favorite walk around Shepperton? Do let me know by visiting thesheppertonian.uk and there are ways to get in touch through there and through the Facebook group and Instagram account.

And that's it for this episode of the Sheppertonian.

Thanks to Nick Pollard from the Sunbury and Shepperton Local History Society for sharing his knowledge, and to Ricky Wallace for talking about the work of the Patient Participation Group.

If you want more local stories, photos and the full list of events, you can sign up to the Sheppertonian newsletter at thesheppertonian.uk I'm Gareth, so until next time, take care and I'll see you around.