Place Name
Agricultural. This was once a lane leading to Swain’s Farm, which was developed for housing between the wars. The road – originally called Swain’s Lane – was once much longer linking London Road to the Roman Road of Stane Street (now called High Street Colliers Wood), passing the large house called Collierswood (sic) which gave the present area its name. It was cut in two around 1868 by the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (Tooting, Wimbledon and Merton branch) line. Sometime around the 1880s when the area began to developed, the now orphaned western section was renamed Robinson Road. The railway line turned out to be a failure and was pulled up and removed in 1975. As to how Swain’s Lane got its name, there are two possibilities, the first is that it may have taken its name from the farm owner, a now forgotten Mr Swain or possibly it was a corruption of an original Swine’s Lane, a driving route for pigs (as is the case of Swain’s Lane in Highgate).
