Richmond Ice Rink
| Location | Clevedon Road, Twickenham, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames |
|---|---|
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1928 |
| Closed | 1992 |
| Demolished | 1992 |
Richmond Ice Rink was an ice skating rink at Clevedon Road,Twickenham, formerly in Middlesex and now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. When it opened, in 1928, it had the longest ice surface in any indoor rink in the world and it soon became the premier rink in London. The rink closed in 1992 and the building was demolished.
Richmond Ice Rink in a sense replaced a roller-skating rink at a very similar location. This had been built before the First World War on Cambridge Road, East Twickenham, part of the lands of the historic Cambridge House owned by the poet Richard Owen Cambridge and his son Archdeacon George Cambridge. The disused rink was bought in 1914 by the French industrialist Charles Pelabon for use as a munitions factory. He built four or five more workshops over the extensive site, and one of the last was the red-brick riverside building of 1915 which later became Richmond Ice Rink. From 1914–15 about 6,000 Belgian refugees, some of them injured soldiers, settled in the Twickenham and Richmond area after the Germans invaded their country and most of the bread-winners became workers at the factory.
After the war almost all the Belgian refugees returned home, but Charles Pelabon continued to use the site for general engineering until 1924. He then sold it to Charles Langdon, who had developed the ice rink at Hammersmith. He converted the factory into an ice rink which opened on 18 December 1928. All the skating clubs that had previously been based at the ice-rinks at Hammersmith and Earl's Court transferred to Richmond, making it the premier rink in London.
When it opened in 1928 the ice surface (286 ft long by 80 ft wide) was the longest in any indoor rink in the world. However, it was shortened to 200 feet in 1935.
Joachim von Ribbentrop, appointed German Ambassador to Britain in 1936, bought a house next door to the ice rink; his hobby was ice dancing and he reputedly spent his evenings skating and socialising at the rink. He was appointed German foreign minister in 1938 and was later executed for war crimes following the Nuremberg Trials in 1946.
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