Historically an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex and situated close to the border with Surrey, the district became part of Greater London in 1965.

In 2021, The Sunday Times named Teddington as the best place to live in London,[2] and in 2023, the wider borough was ranked first in Rightmove's Happy at Home index, making it the "happiest place to live in Great Britain"; the first time a London borough has taken the top spot.

[3][4] Teddington is situated on a long meandering of the Thames between Hampton Wick and Strawberry Hill, Twickenham.

Around Teddington station and the town centre are a number of offices in industries such as direct marketing and IT, which include Tearfund and BMT Limited.

Starting in 2016 the riverside site of the former Teddington Studios was redeveloped to provide modern apartment blocks and other smaller houses.

Such theory featured in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, "The River's Tale", which has the line "At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington."

There have been isolated findings of flint and bone tools from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Bushy Park, and some unauthenticated evidence of Roman occupation.

Teddington Manor was first owned by Benedictine monks in Staines, and it is believed they built a chapel dedicated to St. Mary[which one?]

By the 14th century Teddington had a population of 100–200; most of the land was owned by the Abbot of Westminster and the remainder was rented by tenants who had to work the fields a certain number of days a year.

One notable resident was British Prime Minister Lord North, who lived there for over twenty years.

[9][10] Shortly afterwards, the Duke of Clarence lived there with his mistress Dorothy Jordan[11] before he became King William IV, and later with his Queen Consort, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

In subsequent centuries, Teddington enjoyed a prosperous life due to the proximity of royalty, and by 1800 had grown significantly.

After the railway was built in 1863, easy travel to Twickenham, Richmond, Kingston and London was possible and Teddington experienced a population boom, rising from 1,183 in 1861 to 6,599 in 1881 and 14,037 in 1901.

[13] Many roads and houses were built, continuing into the 20th century, forming the close-knit network of Victorian and Edwardian streets present today.

The Victorians attempted to build a large church, St. Alban's, based on the Notre Dame de Paris; however, funds ran out and only the nave of what was to be the "Cathedral of the Thames Valley" was completed.

[14] In 1993 the temporary wall was replaced with a permanent one as part of a refurbishment that converted St Alban's Church into the Landmark Arts Centre, a venue for concerts and exhibitions.

In 1902 the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, and the largest applied physics organisation in the UK, started in Bushy House (primarily working in industry and metrology and where the first accurate atomic clock was built) and the Teddington Carnegie Library was built in 1906.

[citation needed] Its main focus in the war was military research and its most famous invention, the "bouncing bomb", was developed.

During the war General Dwight D. Eisenhower planned the D-Day landings at his Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) at Camp Griffiss in Bushy Park.