Place Name
Originally called Red Lion Street, it later became part of York Road before adopting its current name. The Ram – also known as the Brewery Tap – pub sits at the junction with Wandsworth High Street and has been here since the mid-16thCentury. According to the Wandsworth Archives: “The first recorded instance of the Ram dates from around 1550 in a survey of Battersea and Wandsworth Manor. At the time, it was leased by Elizabeth Ridon and her family appears to have held the Ram from 1533 until the late 17th century. By 1581, the site was occupied by Humphrey Langridge who is recorded as ‘beer-brewer at Wandsworth’ in assize court records from 1576 following a burglary on the premises. By 1675, the brewery was in the hands of the Draper family and in 1763 the business was sold to the Tritton family who were well known in the brewing world.” The Youngs’ Ram brewery was nearby until the site was sold in 2006. But why the Ram pub in the first instance? Paul Cavill in the New Dictionary of English Field Names, the standard reference on the subject, says this name, completely unsurprisingly, means that rams were kept here once.
