The town now known as Maidenhead may have been known to the Romans as Alaunodunum. But we only have the word of ‘a 16th century antiquary’ for that, and when historians refer to antiquaries you can bet they mean amateurs.
Alaunodunum or whatever it was may subsequently have been visited by Vikings. The evidence for this is that Danes sailed up the Tamesis before disembarking and establishing a stronghold at Reading. Alfred the Great turfed them out, making Maidenhead safe once more.
In medieval times Bristol, as a port facing the Atlantic, became the second city of the country. Maidenhead was on the route. When Brunel built the railway in a very straight line straight through it, the town’s future was assured.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel… it’s a name to conjure with. Isambard was the middle name of his French father, Marc; Kingdom comes from his mother’s maiden name. He lived to be only 53 but much of his legacy remains in daily use.
The Maidenhead railway bridge is an example. Immortalised in JMW Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed, it crosses the Thames to the west of the town. Two main arches of 128ft meet in mid-stream on a small island. The arches were the flattest ever attempted, for their extent, and the nervous owners of the Great Western Railway asked that the wooden supporting structure used during the bridge’s construction be left in place, by way of insurance. Brunel acceded, but lowered the structure slightly to leave his brickwork to its own devices. The wood was later washed away by floods; the bridge remains.
Just a couple of hundred yards upstream is the road bridge that carries the A4 over the river. In the old coaching days, a wooden bridge replaced a ferry on the road to Bath and the west out of London. Maidenhead grew up as a place at which travellers rested, stayed overnight, had a meal etc, while the teams of horses on their coaches were changed. In one instance, apparently, the ostler of an inn was the same individual who would have held them up had they been foolhardy enough to press on through Maidenhead Thicket after dark.
The stone road bridge built in the Georgian period also inspired art. Jacques Joseph ‘James’ Tissot painted a rather lantern-jawed young lady disembarking on the north side of the bridge in The Return from the Boating Trip. It’s not his best, if you ask me, and the young lady doesn’t look greatly impressed either.
And another quarter mile upstream is the scene of a third painting, Edward John Gregory’s Boulter’s Lock, Sunday Afternoon. This depicts many, many pleasure craft of the late Victorian era approaching or leaving the aforementioned lock. Very few of the boaters are looking what they’re doing and one blogger has suggested the painting might be a poster for a Water Safety campaign. The original is in the Lady Lever Gallery on Merseyside; you’ll find a copy in the Maidenhead Heritage Centre, between the football ground and the town centre.
The Heritage Centre is quirky and very attractive. Downstairs, carefully laid out to make the best use of limited space, is a cute little local museum. Pride of place goes to an early motor car, from a time 100 years ago when Maidenhead led the world in automatic transmission. Upstairs, for a small fee (£3.50 in 2022) is a very sophisticated Spitfire flight simulator, featuring a cockpit, multiple screens and an instructor who uses appropriate lingo – “let’s try a roll-out now”. With surrounding exhibits it commemorates the Air Transport Auxiliary, a WWII civilian initiative set up to move military aircraft around. The ATA had its headquarters two miles away at White Waltham. It was supposedly unique in recruiting women pilots and giving them equal pay. That’s as maybe; while I was there, the people trying out the simulator were men of my age. I didn’t join the queue – I had a substandard football match to go to.
Maidenhead United 1 Oldham Athletic 1
York Road, 8 Oct 2022
