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Eel Pie Island, which sprawls in the river between Twickenham and Ham, took its name from its most abundant foodstuff. It is said – possibly apocryphally – that Henry VIII would visit the island to fill up on eel pies when hopping between Hampton Court and one of his many mistresses, housed in suitably grand style along the river between Richmond and Kew.

For Trevor Baylis (inventor of the wind-up radio), the island has never lost its association with sex. ‘I first came in the 1950s when they put on trad jazz in the old Eel Pie Hotel. It was wild. If you wanted to pull a bit of crumpet, this was where you came. It was so decadent it was unreal. The boys were as bad as the girls. We all had to go to the clinic on the Monday!’ The concerts were the brainchild of Arthur Chisnall, a junk shop owner from Richmond who started to put on jazz at Eel Pie in 1956, but Eel Pie’s reputation as a place of entertainment stretches back much further. Feature continues

In the seventeenth century, when it was called Twickenham’s Ait, it was home to a bowling alley. The first pub on the island, the Ship, which later became the White Cross, dates back to the mid-eighteenth century. In 1830 the White Cross was replaced by the Eel Pie Hotel, a grand hotel and dance hall with a huge bar, unique sprung floor and ‘lots of little alcoves to slip into if you were lucky’, recalls Baylis. By now the island had received its more familiar name and cemented its reputation as a destination for roistering. Londoners who couldn’t afford the seaside would come to the island to let their hair down. It was mentioned in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ thus: ‘Unto the Eel-Pie Island at Twickenham, there to make merry upon a cold collation, bottled beer, shrub, and shrimps, and to dance in the open air to the music of a locomotive band.’ There were also full-time residents on the island, although nobody is sure how long the island has been inhabited. Baylis remembers ‘old biddies in tin huts, shacks and bungalows’ in the 1950s. These days, the island is almost purely residential, bar one working boatyard: there are around 120 inhabitants in 40 houses of all shapes and sizes, plus numerous houseboats – the occupants of which Baylis once described as ‘50 drunks clinging to a mudflat’.

Henry Harrison, an architect and also the silver-haired Mellotron player for indie band Mystery Jets, moved to the mudflat in 1996, when he bought half an acre of land that had once been a boatyard. It took him a while to be accepted: Eel Pie, like many communes where people are trying to escape the norm, exudes an atmosphere that is simultaneously open-minded and closed to outsiders – if the residents could raise the bridge that connects them to the mainland on the Twickenham side, they probably would. Now Harrison feels one of the gang. Like them, he was attracted by the river and the atmosphere, but also by the island’s association with music. ‘The idea of bringing music back to the island was uppermost in my mind. I liked the idea of living on an island, which not many people have an opportunity to do, and I like the atmosphere – it reminds me of living in Cornwall. But the fact that there had been a great music scene here… I secretly thought we might bring it back.

’The scene blossomed in the 1950s, when Chisnall’s shows at the hotel brought over jazz greats like Cy Laurie, Acker Bilk and Ken Colyer. Baylis says ‘Traditional jazz was really cool in the early ’50s and the mecca was Eel Pie Island, so we’d get here by hook or by crook. The old hotel had a dancefloor like a trampoline and we’d all get in there and get ourselves pissed. You couldn’t lose.’ George Melly was one performer: ‘In those days you couldn’t get to it by bridge. You had to get in a punt and an old man like Charon would haul you across on a chain. It was a wonderfully decaying place, there was the hotel and collapsing sheds and overgrown shrubbery.’ After you got off the ferry, a little old lady would collect your fee from her toll booth. ‘She would stand up to some real monsters to get her tuppence,’ says Baylis. ‘It was an important form of revenue for the island.’The bridge to Twickenham went up in 1957 and with it came more visitors and a new sound. Says Baylis, ‘I remember crossing the bridge in ’63 and hearing the Rolling Stones playing and I thought: Fuck this – and turned round and went home. I didn’t know they’d turn out to be so good – I just thought it was a ghastly sound.’

Baylis’s trad crowd was replaced by young Mods and rock ’n’ rollers, including Ian McLagan, later pianist for the Small Faces and the Faces. ‘I lived in Hounslow and was at art school in Twickenham. I’d go down to the island on Saturday night. You’d get there as early as you could and drink as much as you could. I think I saw Cyril Davies there the first time, but I also saw Memphis Slim with the Tridents, who had Jeff Beck on guitar. I saw Alexis Korner a few times. My membership card, the Eel Pie Passport, I got that signed by Alexis.’

This was where McLagan first met Rod Stewart. ‘He was playing with Long John Baldry. He’d sing when Baldry was having his interval. But I knew Rod from the audience – it turned out we were both trying to shag the same girl. His hair was bouffant and he would wear a three-piece suit, very smart. When he sang he was fucking good, bit sharp, but he stood out.’

Ticket from 1964

Other regulars included the Stones, John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, David Jones (later Bowie) and The Who. Pete Townshend was so taken by Eel Pie Island he named his music company after it and in the late ’60s would help out at the Simms’ boatyard, which once made the crafts for the Boat Race but which has long since closed down. By contrast, when Henry Harrison met Roger Daltrey recently and tried to pump him for memories of the island, Daltrey claimed to not recall playing there at all.