Cathy Cooper relives memories at Twickenham restaurant, Moidul's Rawalpindi, which shut for good after 15 years' service

Cathy Cooper, of Talbot Road, Twickenham, took to Facebook on August 21 after discovering that Moidul’s Rawalpindi, in King Street, had shut permanently and was being converted into a Nando’s.

In a post on a group page, she wrote: “I went there three weeks ago on August 1 and had no indication this was going to happen.

“Within days, the Twickenham refurbishment was on the window and then I saw a planning application for 62 King Street by Nando’s Chickenland.”

The North Star pub, circa 1850s. Photo: Kenneth Lea

Mrs Cooper, 65, remembers going there in 1974 when visiting a friend in Twickenham and knew the owner, Moidul Hussain, who told her “many stories about life in Twickenham and other restaurants”.

“I am personally sad about this,” she added. “It was a part of Twickenham that has now gone.”

Her friend Graham Hodkinson, 70, wrote about how he had his first curry at the Rawalpindi in 1963 and ordered “jugs of monsoon” during the visit.

They reconnected earlier this year when Mr Hodkinson visited Twickenham from Norfolk one weekend after they first met in The Royal Albert pub, Hampton Road, when she worked there part-time.

The now-closed Moidul's Rawalpindi. Photo: © Cathy Cooper

Mrs Cooper told the Richmond & Twickenham Times: “The trouble is not many people I knew would have been bothered about it, that’s why I then put in Facebook just to mention it.

“I was a bit surprised because this was three weeks on from my last meal there, so the notices had been in the window for over two weeks and nobody had mentioned it.

“Then of course all these memories came.

Mrs Cooper said she was “amazed” by the reaction, including one woman who admitted she cried after seeing the post.

Cathy, now a photographer, moved to Twickenham in 1975 from Crouch End, north London, after being brought up on curry in Wales.

“I was used to having one at 3am in the morning.

“You’d get out of bed in your pyjamas and got out for a curry, that’s what we used to do!”

However, now that the Rawalpindi has gone too she says she will miss the staff dearly.

Nasir's Asian Cuisine, circa 1990s. Photo: © Cathy Cooper

“I don’t know what has happened to them, and there was a lovely waitress from Sri Lanka,” Mrs Cooper said.

“She was a vegetarian, like me, and she used to help me choose dishes and try them out for me.

“When it was my husband’s [Robert] birthday, and she went and bought a birthday cake next door in Marks and Spencer.

“It was out of her own pocket, she didn’t have to do that, so she was very, very kind.”

According to the British Library, the building was a pub called The Nags Head in 1709, and later became The North Star circa 1853 before closing down in roughly 1955.

It is said to have been originally called the Rawalpindi in the 1960s, and later Nasir Asian Cuisine in the 1990s, before becoming Moidul’s Rawalpindi in 2002.