Place Name
Originally called Battersea Road, the western section of this thoroughfare was at one time called Lower Wandsworth Road before being named Battersea Park Road from 1871. A riverside open air space for entrainment here was already well established long before Battersea Park was officially opened in 1853. This had been common land known as Battersea Fields, the history of which could be traced back to the 7thCentury. First mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters of AD693 as Badrices īeg or Badrices ege or even Batrices ege (according to an 11thCentury copy of the charter) it comes from a man’s name, Beaduric or Badric, and the Old English word ēg meaning island, referring to a dry patch of land surrounded by marshes. Before the Norman Conquest the land was in the hands of the crown but the newly installed King William gave it to the church. By the time of the great Domesday survey of England in 1086, the land was owned by the abbey of St Peter at Westminster, whose monks used the place as a convalescent home and one of their principal manors supporting the Abbey, and it was being referred to as Patricesy. By the 14thCentury it had reverted to its original name mentioned as Batriseye in 1366 and various other spellings including Batricheseie and Batricesege. In 1595 it was being written as Battersea.
