It was long protected from building by the regular flooding of the low-lying land by the River Thames, remaining as orchards, open fields, and riverside marshland until the 1880s.

The architecture of the area includes houses in British Queen Anne Revival style, while the station building is Italianate.

Famous residents of Grove Park include the actor John Thaw, the soldier Bernard Montgomery, and the poet Dylan Thomas.

St Paul's vicarage has repeatedly been used as a film set, including in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Killing Eve, Lewis, Grantchester, and The Theory of Everything.

[4] Grove House was owned by the Barker family at that time; from 1745 it belonged to the Earl of Grantham and then to an eccentric animal-lover, Humphrey Morice.

Inside, the church has a high altar from St Margaret's, Birmingham, to a design by Lord Norton, and a large 16th-century Florentine painting of the transfiguration of Christ.

Pevsner calls the exterior "picturesque";[7] it is in red brick, its buttresses joined by tiled arches, and with dormers in the roof.

The windows have decorative curving stone tracery in "free flamboyant Gothic" style;[7] they are recessed under tiled arches.

Just beside the railway bridge is the small Duke's Hollow nature reserve, which is allowed to flood at high spring tides.