Place Name
According to Jane Baxter, Richmond Council’s Heritage manager, the name is not quite as straightforward as one might think. In a Facebook post on some of the borough’s more unusual street names she writes: “Paved Court (pronounced Pav-ed) was named after a mysterious Czech resident whose origins are unknown.” James Green, Judith Filson and Margaret Watson writing in The Streets of Richmond and Kew do not speculate on this former Eastern European but instead say it was once part of the old Carthusian monastery’s land which was later owned by a Mr Kirkham. In 1692, seven houses were built on the south side at around the same time as Old Palace Terrace by Virtue Radford. The north side was built up more than a century later as stables and barns, and later cottages. It adopted its present name in 1842 by order of the Vestry, a prototype parish council, having been known as Paved Alley in court rolls since at least 1694 before that it was referred to as “near king Street”. Sometime in 1814 the Vestry preceded the low traffic neighbourhoods by 200 years by ordering the Surveyor of Highways “do cause a rail to be put at the end of Paved Alley next to the Green to prevent persons on Horse back going that way to the Town and that he do put down posts and turnstiles where absolutely necessary.”
