Without a doubt the most famous British college, Eton was founded in 1440 by the young Henry VI. Then, it consisted of a church, a poorhouse and a community of secular priests providing free education to 70 choirboys and scholarship students. The school was then opened to non-scholarship students and became very popular with nobility, who sent their sons there.

Near the splendid Royal Botanical Gardens is the large triangular Kew Green. On the riverside is the Herbarium (5 million dried plants and a library), a three-storey building, followed by an irregular line of brick houses. Cambridge Cottage now houses the Wood Museum and Kew Gardens Gallery (enter from inside the gardens).

From the top of this sloping avenue, the view of Richmond, immortalised by artists such as Turner and Reynolds, is extremely beautiful. Two lovely homes face the river in the direction of Marble Hill: The Wick (1775) and Wick House (1772). The end of the road opens onto Richmond Park through a gate dating from 1700.

Hampton Court's 20 ha of gardens bear the mark of their designers, the Tudor, Stuart and Orange monarchs and their landscape gardeners. Over the course of the years several parts have been created and then suppressed. The 17 and 18C parterres bordered with boxwood have been converted into lawns and into wooded areas that are more fashionable.