The parish church of Twickenham must have originally been a very picturesque feature of the village, and the ancient battlemented tower still presents a charming appearance from the river; but on to it was built, in the early eighteenth century, a barnlike red-brick structure that harmonises very ill with it, and is said to have been designed by Sir Godfrey Kneller, then churchwarden, who lived in a house near by--still known as Kneller Hall, now the Royal Military School of Music--and is buried beneath the central aisle, his contemporary Pope resting not far from him. Amongst the monuments in the church is one erected by the latter to the memory of his parents, which Lady Kneller tried in vain to persuade the poet to remove after the death of her husband, to make room for a memorial she wished to put up in his honour; and on the outer wall are some interesting tablets, including one to the famous comic actress Kitty Clive, who lived {289} in a cottage belonging to Horace Walpole called Little Strawberry Hill, later occupied by the Misses Berry, to whom it was bequeathed for their lifetime, and one to the beloved nurse of Pope, bearing the following touching inscription: 'To the memory of Mary Beach, who died November 25th, 1725, aged 75, Alexander Pope, whom she nursed in his infancy, and constantly attended for twenty-eight years, in gratitude to a faithful servant, erected this stone.' Little now remains in the populous modern suburb of Twickenham to recall the days when Dickens wrote in it his romance of _Oliver Twist_, certain scenes of which are laid at Isleworth, and the great artist Turner lived in Sandelcombe Lodge, that was recently sold by auction, fetching £865, but the view up and down stream is still practically the same as it was a century ago. The short reach between Strawberry Hill and Teddington Lock is one of the most beautiful on the Thames, charming alike when deserted but for a few barges being quanted slowly along, and when crowded with pleasure craft. Specially fascinating are the scenes that take place below the lock, when electric launches, skiffs, and punts, full of gaily dressed women and men in boating costume, await their turn for the opening of the gates; at the Rollers, and in the quiet pool above them, specially beloved of fishermen, that contrasts forcibly with the noisy weir, the foam-flecked rush of water forming a striking background to the groups of yachts and wherries moored to the Middlesex bank and beneath the Suspension Bridge. {290}