Place Name
John Augustus Beaumont (September 16, 1806 – September 10, 1886) was the son of the hugely successful John Thomas Barber Beaumont, founder of the County Fire and the Provident Life insurance company. In 1846 he bought the Wimbledon Park Estate from the Spencer family, who had been lords of the manor since 1744. Soon after he started developing the area between Parkside and Wimbledon Park Road and Somerset Road and Queensmere Road. He planned to turn Wimbledon Park into “a site for villa dwellers” which “would have no rival in England”. When he died in 1886 the estate was inherited by his daughter, Augusta Beaumont, who became Lady Lane in 1893. She lived in Suffolk and her only interest in Wimbledon Park appeared to have been financial, selling as much property at the highest possible price without much regard for the area. She leased part of the park to cricket, tennis, and golf clubs, while land near the railway line was built up with terraced housing of the sort that the neighbourhood had not seen before. In 1899 Sir Cuthbert Peek sold the Wimbledon House Estate to a company of developers, thereby sealing the final fate of the house. The Wimbledon House Estate Company Ltd. decided that the development would be entirely residential and in 1900 Wimbledon House was demolished, its estate walls taken down and the first roads constructed. Roads were named after prominent past owners, such as Colonne and Marryat.
