Place Name
Built on the former market garden, that ran between Tangier Road and Upper Richmond Road, that belonged to the Barker family in 1926. The name comes from Tangier Lodge, on Vine Road, in Barnes, the Barker family home. Charles Barker lived at Vine Road from before 1845 when he ran a successful market garden including orchards and some live stock – in 1864 he was charged with allowing his geese onto Barnes Common (a practise that had been banned by the dean and chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral from 1566). The family were originally from Guildford, in Surrey. Alexander and Walter Barker became tenants of farmland in Barnes in 1882 and continued to farm the local land for many years. Just a few years before development of these streets they were still employing up to 140 women to harvest, scrub and pack radishes from one of their fields. How the house got its exotic name is uncertain. Sir Gerard Augustus Lowther, the local landowner who named several Barnes streets after his diplomatic postings was the Minister at Tangier from around 1908. However, there are several references to the house at least a decade before that when it was occupied by Mary Millard.
