Place Name
Originally called New Park Road, to distinguish it from Old Park, it was later renamed sometime in the 1900s in honour of the energetic Conservative Councillor John Marshall Bathgate (1866 – May 17, 1953), who went on to become mayor of Wimbledon Town Council three times. He was born in Bellshill, near Glasgow, Scotland, and was originally employed in the offices of the Clydesdale Steel Works, but resigned when he was refused a pay rise. He moved to London, where he started working for Pearson’s Weekly. He rose rapidly to become a director of C Arthur Pearson Limited, the publishers and printers of the newspaper. He settled in Wimbledon in the Surrey suburbs of London and became a member of Surrey County Council and of Wimbledon Borough Council. As Alderman Bathgate he was charged in 1923 with heading a committee to consider plans for a new Town Hall and Civic Centre. At the time the borough council was still using the Local Board Offices were proving too small for the expanding duties that was being placed on local authorities. The committee launched a competition inviting architects “of British nationality” to submit designs, with a £200 prize for the best. The work started in 1929 and was completed 18 months later at a cost of £200,000 – just in time for the global slump, leading to accusations that the council was wasting public money. Bathgate Road was laid out between 1873 and 1874. It was intended that it should go across Wimbledon Park to the new railway line on the eastern edge of the park, although this never happened after the council acquired what remained of Wimbledon Park in 1914 to protect it from future development.
