Place Name
Directional, this road links Wandsworth to South Wimbledon/Merton. Merton, formerly an ancient Surrey parish, is now a London Borough. The parish was centred on the 12thCentury church of St Mary, now in Merton Park. The name itself has long been said to date back to at least the 8thCentury, since it was apparently featured in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Merantun. For it was at Merantun that King Cynewulf of Wessex met his death while visiting his mistress in AD786. However, David Mills, in a Dictionary of London Place Names is not convinced, saying the link is “exceedingly doubtful”. Even if the name is not quite so old, Mertone (from the Old English words mere and tūn meaning farmstead or estate by the pool, the pool most likely being a reference to the River Wandle) was featured in the Anglo Saxon Charter of AD949, a settlement having formed around the river crossing on the old Roman road from London to Chichester providing a convenient stopping off point for travellers. By the time of the Domesday Book of 1086 the name, had mutated to Meretone, by the 12thCentury it had become Meritone, and in 1679 Morton alias Marten. The Priory of St Mary of Merton was founded by Gilbert Norman in 1114 and is believed to have been the birthplace of Walter de Merton, founder of Merton College, Oxford. In 1235, Henry III held negotiations here with his barons for the Statute of Merton. The Abbey provided the education of St Thomas Becket and, it is believed, also Nicholas Breakspear, who as Adrian IV was the only English Pope. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries its buildings were dismantled and the materials removed for reuse elsewhere.
