Place Name
H M Cundall in Bygone Richmond baldly states: “Both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fruit was largely cultivated. Evelyn in his Diary mentions in the grounds of the former monastery of Carthusians at Sheen ‘several pretty villas and fine gardens of most excellent fruits, especially Sir William Temple’s…’ The road called the Vineyard in Richmond owes its name to an attempt to grow grapes in rivalry with France.” The monastery had been closed down under Henry VIII’s land grab and the grounds developed over the next 200 years. But that is not the whole story John Cloake, Richmond’s leading local historian, wrote: “The name belonged to an island in the Thames in 1301. In Tudor and Stuart times, however, the Vineyard was the name of a close of land south of Ferry Hill between the river and the Petersham Road. The street we know today as The Vineyard is described as ‘the lane leading to the Vineyard’. Yet in the 18th century, there was another piece of ground, just by the bend in the road at the Halford Road/Onslow Road corner, which was called Stanley’s Vineyard, where Vineyard House was built in the early 18th century.” James Green, Judith Filson, and Margaret Watson in The Streets of Richmond and Kew write: “There were two vineyards which may be connected with it. The first mentioned in manorial records from 1445, was a large close by the riverside, south of Ferry Hill (Bridge Street) and known as the Vineyard (originally Wyndeyarde). Early descriptions of the pathway are ‘the way into the fields’ or ‘the church way’ but it could possibly have also have been the way to the vineyard. In the early 18th century there was another vineyard – Stanley’s Vineyard on the site of the former Vineyard Schools.” The 1771 Manor map shows The Vineyard ending at what is now Mount Ararat Road. Beyond was Love Tree lane through land owned by William Selwyn. By 1865, the section running from Vineyard House to Mount Ararat Road was known as Vineyard Lane – but this was temporary, changing to The Vineyard and Vineyard Road from there to Church Road, this extension being completed by 1883. Three years later and Richard Council decided the whole of the road from Hill Rise to Church Road should be called simply The Vineyard.
