Place Name
The name is a corruption of Margaret de Pouery, the owner of a manorial estate here in the 14thCentury. The area’s name however came much later, becoming Poverish in the 19thCentury, when the locality was still agricultural. Like many of the roads around St Mary’s Cray, the name was to be part of a cluster of streets connected with the legend of Robin Hood. In this case Sherwood Road, after the forest that the outlaw made his home. Indeed early post-war maps from the 1940s show the intended name for the old footpath. The inspiration for names associated with Hood and his band of merry men came from woodlands called Robin Hood Shaw, which were deforested by the development of St Mary’s Cray in the 1940s. The outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor became a popular folk figure in the Late Middle Ages with the earliest known ballads featuring him from the 15thCentury. Other roads in the cluster include Archer Road, Barnesdale Crescent, Hood Avenue and Marion Crescent.
