The
"large and busy" village of Isleworth lay some eight and one
half miles from the western edge of eighteenth-century London. In the
Regency period it had some 500 acres of market gardens chiefly put to
the growing of fruit, most particularly raspberries grown for the use
of distillers. Unusually, the fruit sent to Covent Garden market was
carried thence by women, who balanced the fruit in heavy baskets on
their heads. It must have been a long and laborious walk.
The
name Isleworth is possibly derived from the ancient words Gisel
(a hostage) and Worth (a village), although there is no known
historical reason for the appellation.
