Things you didn't know about... Mortlake

Mortlake's big past
Squeezed between Barnes, East Sheen and the Thames, Mortlake is a small area in south-west London. However, it was once a vast tract of estate lands that included Putney and Wimbledon. Mortlake was owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury until the reign of Henry VIII when it was passed to the Crown.

Mortlake's famous tomb
Traveller, scholar, linguist, anthropologist and mystic Sir Richard Burton and his wife Isabel are interred in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene's Church in Mortlake. Their stone tomb is carved in the shape of a Bedouin tent.

Burton moved freely through Arab lands, often in disguise, and was the first to translate many of the core books of Eastern learning.

No one knows the true origin of the name "Mortlake"
Some say the name refers to a salmon stream—known as a Mortelage. Others say there was once a "mortlake" here. A mortlake is a lake formed by a curve in a river that creates a crescent-shaped body of still water.

Mortlake is famous for its Jacobean tapestries
A large tapestry works was set up at the beginning of the 17th century supplying a variety of Old Master and religious subjects woven for the royal palaces.

Several of these tapestries are now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum and at Hampton Court Palace.

The University Boat Race finishes at Mortlake
Oxford and Cambridge universities' annual rowing race traditionally ends here. A stone marks the exact finishing spot—on the bank of the Thames below Chiswick Bridge.

Brewing was always big in Mortlake
West London has traditionally been a centre of the brewing industry in the South of England, though rising land prices have driven a lot of the breweries out. Mortlake had two breweries in the early 18th century, which amalgamated in 1881. The resulting business expanded over the decades and is now a vast concern producing American Budweiser.

Mortlake's mystical son
John Dee was a 16th-century polymath and alchemist who moved between the political and mystical worlds in a very dangerous age. An adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, he travelled extensively around Europe in search of arcane knowledge, and created one of England's finest libraries. He fell out of favour with James I and died in penury. His library was looted by a mob.

Marc Bolan died near Mortlake
On Barnes Common, actually. The T.Rex singer was a passenger in a car driven by girlfriend Gloria Jones which crashed into a tree. Bolan had refused to learn to drive as he feared he would die young in a car crash. His house in East Sheen, near Mortlake, was also looted by a mob.