Place Name
From the mid-18thCentury until the early 1930s a large house stood on the south-west side of what is now Surbiton Road, Kingston, close to the junction with what is now Maple Road. To the south and west of the main building was an extensive park. The house was known at different times as Surbiton Place, Surbiton House and Surbiton Hall. It was originally built for William Roffee, a wealthy distiller. When he died in 1785, Surbiton Place was bought by Thomas Fassett, who extended both the house and the grounds. In 1809 Fassett sold the house to Henry Paget, originally Bayly, who became Earl of Uxbridge. His son, also Henry Paget, who would later distinguished himself at the Battle of Waterloo and became the first Marquess of Anglesey, inherited it three years later. After his mother died in 1817, Anglesey sold the house to John Garratt, a prominent local politician, who later sold it to Alexander Raphael, a wealthy Roman Catholic. Raphael paid for the building of a Roman Catholic church on land. By the time he died in 1850, major changes had begun to take place to the south of Kingston. The railway had reached the area in the late 1830s and the present-day town of Surbiton had started to grow up near the station. Raphael’s heir, his nephew Edward Raphael, sold most of the estate for housing development. Just three acres of land remained with the house, which was occupied by the family of John Shrubsole, a banker and draper, until the death of his widow in 1914. It was sold to Sir Sidney Job Pocock who died in 1931. The name Surbiton itself comes from the Old English words sūð meaning south and bere-tūn meaning grange or barley farm, Norbiton, on the otherside of the hill, has the same origins. It features as Suberton in the records of 1179, Surberton in 1263, Surburton in 1272 and Surbition in 1597.
