Eel Pie Island Museum

Eel Pie Island Museum stands on Richmond Road in Twickenham, beside the Thames. The small island once housed boatyards whose vessels helped evacuate soldiers from Dunkirk in 1940. Its ballroom also became a stage for 1960s pop acts that shaped the decade’s music. The museum itself opened in 2018, run entirely by volunteers. It preserves the island’s stories in glass cases and photographs. Trevor Baylis, the wind-up radio inventor, lived here and is featured in the displays. Michele Whitby founded the museum and still curates its changing exhibits. The museum keeps alive the island’s links to music history. Bands rehearsed and performed in the old hotel ballroom before fame arrived elsewhere. Local boatbuilders once launched craft that crossed the Channel under fire. Baylis’s workshop tools sit beside early radio prototypes. Visitors see how an ordinary street became a creative hub. The collection mixes artefacts with oral histories recorded from former residents. Every object has a label that names its maker or its moment. Inside, the single room holds cases of oars, radios and concert posters. A map shows where each boatyard once stood along the towpath. Photographs line the walls, showing the island in flood and festival. A listening post plays interviews with people who remember the music scene. Outside, the Thames still carries the same barges past the same cottages. The museum offers a quiet corner where the island’s past feels close at hand.