Place Name
A reference to the original name of Carshalton as featured in the Domesday Book of 1086, the survey of England by William the Conqueror. This road, and all that surround it, was laid out over The Park extensive gardens which were turned over to housing between the First and Second World Wars. The original name for the town goes back to AD675 when it was recorded as Æuultone, by AD880 it had become Aweltun and in AD933 Euualtone but in the Domesday Book of 1086 was written as Aultone. A E Jones in From Medieval Manor to London Suburb: An Obituary of Carshalton writes: “The early writers on Surrey’s history did not go behind then Norman Conquest and they considered it obvious that Aultone was a corruption of Old Town. They held that the later first syllable addition was derived from Cross, though opinion was not agreed on whether it referred to a cross-roads, a crossing of the waters, or a wayside crucifix. Modern etymology has quite different explanations. It relates the original name back to an Anglo-Saxon composite Æwell-tun the Tun (homestead) at the Æwell (source of a stream).” He adds: “It is not until 1150 that the village at the source of the Wandle is found recorded with a prefix to its early name…. Ewell, four miles from Carshalton, preserves the same word, almost unchanged, and is also a village of springs at the source of a stream – the tiny Hogsmill River.”
