Deputy Mayor Matthew Wherry speaks about the history and development of Mortlake Station.

“One hundred and eighty years ago today, the first scheduled public passenger trains ran on this line. On Monday 27 July 1846 Mortlake station opened, together with Richmond, the terminus of a brand-new railway from Nine Elms.

This was not a great railway company extending its empire. The line was promoted by local residents, and their independent venture, the Richmond Railway Company, was authorised by its own Act of Parliament in 1845 and opened the line a year later.

Today we sit on the Waterloo to Reading line – though in 1846 there was no Waterloo, no Clapham Junction, and certainly no trains to Reading.

In 1846 you could send a letter anywhere in Britain for a penny, and the electric telegraph and photography were dazzling new technologies. But there was no telephone, no electric light, no motor car and no London Underground. The first transatlantic telegraph cable was still more than a decade away.

By the summer of 1847, more than one hundred thousand journeys between Richmond and London were being made in a few weeks, with thousands more beginning or ending here at Mortlake. The railway transformed these communities from villages of market gardens and meadows into the places we know today. Last year, Mortlake served well over a million passengers, and Richmond handled over nine million National Rail journeys. These stations now welcome more travellers in a matter of days than lived in both parishes combined when the line first opened.

Some of those passengers waited in rather more style than others — this very building began life as a royal waiting room, built for Queen Victoria’s visits to White Lodge in Richmond Park. Prince Albert used it too, as, in later years, did Edward VII when Prince of Wales.

But we are not only here for the history – we are also here to celebrate the newly installed artwork on the pedestrian bridge. The mural began when pupils at Thomson House School were invited to draw the high street they know so well – the street that crosses this railway line, with the station, the shops and the buildings they pass every day walking between their school buildings. Students and tutors at the Art Department at Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, were also involved in enhancing them.

The children’s drawings are stunning and delightful – full of joy, and full of belonging. The project itself embodies what community rail is all about: it has linked child artists and adult artists across two of our borough’s learning settings, and delivered by the Hounslow and Richmond Community Rail Partnership, in collaboration with South Western Railway.

One hundred and eighty years ago, local people built this railway. Today, local schoolchildren, students, volunteers and rail partners are still shaping it. That is worth celebrating.

Today we mark not simply two stations, but everything they made possible: connection, growth, opportunity – and one hundred and eighty years of grumbling about the fares!”

Deputy Mayor Matthew Wherry delivers his speech.

Tim Catchpole, Chairman of the Mortlake with East Sheen Society, congratulates Daniel Opoku on his long service as stationmaster.