Marlow: Georgian fronts, river lawns and a three-tonne bridge.

Marlow’s High Street runs from the Market Square down to All Saints Church and William Tierney Clark’s suspension bridge of the early 1830s, a smaller forerunner of his Chain Bridge in Budapest. The bridge takes nothing over three tonnes; heavier traffic, and most through traffic, uses the A404, the dual carriageway under a mile east linking the M40 at Handy Cross with the M4 near Maidenhead. A 37-tonne lorry on the old bridge in 2016 closed it to vehicles for two months. Across the river are Bisham and Cookham Dean, in Berkshire. The station ends a single-track branch whose trains, the Marlow Donkey, reverse at Bourne End; London passengers change at Maidenhead for the main line, and in the peak at Bourne End too.

Merchants and gentry gave West Street and the High Street their Georgian fronts. When the river trade faded, Marlow became a resort, and houses went up with lawns to the water. The 1873 branch line made it a fashionable place from which to work in London; it is a commuter town still. Green Belt and the Chilterns National Landscape have held it largely to infill since the late twentieth century. West Street has the Hand & Flowers, the first pub with two Michelin stars, its one-starred sister the Coach, and Sir William Borlase’s, the 1624 grammar school; visitors stay at the Compleat Angler by the bridge. Marlow Rowing Club crews, cruisers and towpath walkers pass the riverside lawns all summer, and the town regatta fills the banks each June.

At a Marlow house that runs down to the Thames, the survey looks back from the water: what the towpath and passing boats can see of the lawn, terrace and glazing, which doors face the river and how they lock, and whether the garden can be reached from the bank. Each point is graded in a written report, with accredited installers introduced only where something needs changing. A security driver takes the A404 north to the M40 for London or south to the M4 for Heathrow, and brings the family home from dinner on West Street.