Place Name
Catherine of Aragon (December 16, 1485 – January 7, 1536) was Queen of England from June 1509 until May 1533 as the first wife of King Henry VIII. The fiercely intelligent, thoughtful and popular Catherine was the daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon and before becoming queen, served as ambassador of the Aragonese Crown to England in 1507, making her the first female ambassador in Europe. Along with Boleyn and Tudor Gardens this takes its name from the link between King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, whose aunt lived at Wickham Court, while Henry himself often hunted deer at Spring Park in the grounds of what would later become Addington Palace. Catherine married the recently crowned king, Henry VIII after the death of her first husband, the king’s brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales. The couple had one daughter, later to become Mary I, but the lack of a male heir infuriated her husband. By 1525 Henry had fallen for Anne Boleyn and sought to have his marriage annulled, marking the start of the English reformation. The street was laid out in the first part of the 20thCentury during a period of major residential development in the area.
