Twickenham Welcomes Rugby Crowds
- Category: Projects
- Date Published: 29th November 2022
- client: Solum
- contact: Euan MacGillivray, Charles Graham
Rolfe Judd were delighted to see rugby fans passing through their Twickenham Gateway development for Solum, a much-needed benefit for the area, providing a new station and public area as well as delivering 115 new homes. It also provides a gateway development for Twickenham town centre, that reflects the importance of the site in relation to local residents as well as local and international visitors to Twickenham Stadium on event days.
The scheme has created a new modern and pleasant arrival experience at Twickenham Station. The station’s step free access provides for all station users and is now a worthy arrival space for the 80,000 visitors that attend each of the England Rugby Internationals at the Twickenham Stadium. It has created a welcoming public plaza space that can be used by all visitors and residents alike and acts as the local transport hub for trains, buses, taxis, and private vehicles.
The layout of the site has been designed to accommodate for event day crowds, with a specific area set aside as a crowd control route that opens when crowd control is necessary. This is in addition to the opening up of the bridge linking platforms which also opens on match days. The intention is to allow crowds to have use of a much more efficient space than was previously available.

The key intention for the project was to provide a high-quality public realm that offered a transition between the more civic town centre space in front of the station ticket hall, and the more intimate environment along the River Crane creating a new amenity destination on the riverside walk. The station environment and facilities have been vastly improved with a significantly larger ticket office and new lifts and stairs.
As well as new homes, the scheme provides new retail space occupied by M&S and Sainsbury’s. The site is located within Twickenham town centre, so residential and ancillary retail uses were provided to improve the vitality of the town centre, without compromising its main retail core, further south along London Road.



