Place Name
Bowling has been popular in Putney since the early 17thCentury, the green that was laid here in 1636 was not the first in the area – that had been recorded some 19 years earlier in a field west of Walkers Place – but it was the more significant, largely on account of who it was attracting. This area, says Dorian Gerald in Putney and Roehampton Past, “became a fashionable place for public breakfasts and evening assemblies. It was also where the Surrey Justices of the Peace held their monthly meetings in the late seventeenth century.” Indeed, it appeared to be attracting some of the leading lights of the day, John Locke wrote in 1679: “The sports of England for a curious stranger to see are horse-racing, hawking, hunting, and bowling; at Putney he may see several persons of quality bowling two or three times a week.” So popular had the sport become that in 1707 a second green was added. But clearly the sport had begun attracting the wrong sort. Horace Walpole recounting the arrest of James McLean, the “fashionable highwayman,” to Sir Horace Mann, in August 2, 1750, writes: “McLean had a quarrel at Putney Bowling-green two months ago with an officer whom he challenged for disputing his rank; but the captain declined till McLean should produce a certificate of his nobility, which he had just received.” McLean had been executed at Tyburn. Whatever the reason, the popularity of bowling waned in the second half of the 17thCentury and the last of the two greens was closed sometime around 1770 when Bowling Green House became a private residence. Its most famous resident was Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, who died here aged 47 on January 23, 1806, probably from a peptic ulcer caused by excessive port consumption. Bowling Green House still stands but the wider grounds were built over when this road was laid out in 1933.
