Place Name
Erconwald, also spelt Erkenwald (died AD693) was Bishop of London between AD675 and AD693 and later the patron saint of London. He founded two monasteries in England in the 7thCentury, Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, for men in AD666, and Barking Abbey a year later for his sister, Æthelburg. Born in Lincolnshire, and supposedly of royal ancestry, the siblings served as the first abbot and abbess of their respective monasteries. Erkenwald went on to serve as Bishop of London, during which time he advised King Ine of Wessex on his code of laws. Issued in about AD694 these Anglo-Saxon laws were the written rules and customs that remained in place until the Norman Conquest. They were the first issued by an Anglo-Saxon king outside of Kent, and the second in medieval Western Europe to be written in a language other than Latin. It is also thought that in AD677 Erkenwald converted Sebba, King of the East Saxons, to Christianity. This is one of a small number of Edwardian streets built in 1911 that are named after bishops of London, who were lords of the manor of Fulham. Their former summer house, Fulham Palace, is a few miles away and Wormholt, as the area was referred to, was considered the waste ground of the manor and used for “depasturing cattle and swine of copyhold tenants”.
