Place Name
Takes its name from a publican, one John Ball, who around the middle of the 17thCentury kept an inn, the Salutation House or Boarded House, which had a pond near the present-day Bingham Street. The pond was well stocked with fowl for drinkers visiting his tavern to shoot, as well as other entertainments including bull-baiting. The pond was featured on one of the earliest Ordnance Survey maps published in 1822 and the road took its name a few years later in 1841, although it was also called by other names until May 5, 1865 when the Vestry decreed that the Balls Pond Road be so-called throughout, the subsidiary names of places be abolished and the houses re-numbered, removing the ad hoc names, Willow Place, Albert Terrace, and Prospect Place, which had sprung up over the years. The pond itself disappeared in the late 19thCentury.
