Place Name
Charles Hailstone in Alleyways of Mortlake and East Sheen explains: “The Wapple, Whapple, Warple, Warepall or Worple Way, as it occurs in old records, comes from the Saxon wearp in the sense of to throw or cast up (cf German, wren). A ridge of land was in provincial husbandry called a wapp, perhaps from a similar source.” During the medieval period worples were tracks running between fields. Their importance was made clear in a court order from December 1564 that set out their routes and recorded “there are divers (a number of) holes made in the middle of the warples aforesaid, and between furlong and furlong, and shoyt and shott'”. By the April more orders were made protecting these rights of way within Wimbledon manor, of which Mortlake was a large part, Hailstone: “The court general of the manor of Wimbledon… considered the worples in the Wimbledon common field and ordered that no one by himself, his servant to servants, ‘shall plough within seven feet of such warple, nor shall plough, sow, nor mow grass there’ on pain of a fine of one shilling.” The names North Worple Way and South Worple Way did not come into use however until 1894, although the Worple Way was the ancient bridleway between White Hart Lane and Sheen Lane running between Ewe Furlong also known as Town Furlong and Short Furlong, in the Mortlake Common Field. When the railway was built in 1846 along the original Worple Way, it was ordered that a track should be built on either side.
