Place Name
Named after the River Wandle that flows nearby, rising near Croydon and flowing into the Thames at Wandsworth, but the name is comparatively new. It is a so-called back-formation named after the village of Wandsworth, itself named after a Saxon chief named Wændel sometime around the first millennium. The river’s earlier name, from AD693 was Hlidaburnan, meaning the loud river. It continued under various spellings, Ledeborne sometime around 1230, Ludeburne in 1255 and Lotebourn in 1337. David Mills in A Dictionary of London Place Names writes: “[It] was first recorded in a Latinized form Vandalis riuulus in 1586, and as Vandal or Wandle in 1612.”
