Teddington is a town in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Until 1965, it was in the historic county of Middlesex. Teddington is on the north bank of the Thames, just after the start of a long meander, between Hampton Wick and Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. Mostly residential, it stretches from the Thames to Bushy Park with a long high street reaching down to pubs, restaurants, leisure premises, fields and fitness clubs by the riverside, having a pedestrian suspension bridge over the lowest non-tidal lock on the Thames, Teddington Lock. Teddington has no dual carriageways or high-rise residential buildings and its centre is mid-rise urban development.
The name "Teddington" comes from the name of an Old English tribal leader, Tuda. The place was known in Saxon and Norman times as Todyngton and Tutington, meaning "the farm (or enclosed land) of Tuda's people (or family).
There was this rather fanciful notion put around some time back that Teddington meant "tide-end town". Certainly there is no tidal water above Teddington but that is only because of the barrier that was built there. Previous to the lock gates, the Thames was tidal as far upstream as Oxford (where the oxen crossed the river at low tide).
