Place Name
Richard de Gravenel was a landowner who held a large swathe of Lower or South Tooting around 1215, what is now known as Tooting Broadway was originally called Tooting Graveney. Richard held the land under what was called a knight’s fee, that is enough land to support a knight, his family and his servants. It is believed the family who came over during the Norman invasion may have taken their name from the village in Kent. Although the de Gravenels were most likely lords of the manor, the land itself was owned by Chertsey Abbey. The River Graveney, which now flows underground through the centre of the town, was named after the manor, written as Thoting Gravenel in 1272. Graveney Road was already developed by 1888, so is among the earliest of Tooting’s many terraced Victorian and Edwardian streets that were built as it became an Underground suburb.
