The village, however little known it may be to-day, was sufficiently well known to the compilers of Domesday Book, in whose pages it appears in the grotesque spelling, “Ghistelworde.” Afterwards it is found written Yhistleworth, Istelworth, Ysselsworth, and at last, before the present formula was found for it, “Thistleworth.” A vast deal of contention has raged around the meaning of the place-name, and with such an orthographic choice you could give it almost any meaning you chose; but there can be little question but that it comes from two words, the Celtic _uisc_ for water, and the Saxon _worth_ for village. It is, indeed, distinctly a water-village, for not only does the Thames flow by it, but here the Crane, rising near Northolt, and coming down through Cranford, falls into the Thames, near by a little nameless brook that rises on Norwood Green. It is indeed the confluence of the Crane and the Thames that contributes so largely to the picturesqueness, the somewhat squalid waterside picturesqueness, of Isleworth; for the outlet of the smaller into the larger river is closed by little dock-gates, and the space thus shut in is presided over by the huge, and in themselves unbeautiful, flour mills of Messrs. Samuel Kidd & Sons. There is, however, always a something attractive about flour-mills, let the builders of them build never so prosaically; and here, where the little stream comes sliding out beneath the massive buildings, and where the road passes over the little dock, the sight of the barges coming up, each laden with their thousand or so quarters of wheat for the mills, is found generally interesting, especially to boys sent about some urgent business; the more immediate and pressing the errand, the more attractive the mills; which have their historical interest to the well-read in local story, for they are the successors, on this same spot, of the ancient water-mills of the Abbey of Sion. [Illustration: ISLEWORTH.]