Place Name
For many centuries Penge was a detached hamlet of the ancient parish of Battersea in the Brixton hundred of Surrey, which this road once came under. A hundred was an ancient form of civil administration, dealing with among much else local taxation. But the 19thCentury was a time of great change in the growing city’s administration. The Metropolis Management Act 1855 saw the civil responsibilities of the parish passed to the Metropolitan Board of Works. The two parts of the parish were assigned to different districts by the Act: Battersea was included in the area of the Wandsworth District Board of Works and the hamlet of Penge, which included the rapidly developing area of Anerley, to Lewisham District Board of Works. Although on paper Battersea and Penge remained linked, the latter became a civil parish in its own right in 1866. On March 25, 1888, the two formerly broke up, a separate vestry was formed as a local authority for The parish of Saint Mary Battersea excluding Penge. The following year, the Local Government Act 1888 reconstituted the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works as the County of London, and Battersea was transferred from Surrey to the new county. So at the time this road name was chosen, in 1863, this would have been part of Battersea, although the connection between the two was fast coming to a close, which may explain why it was named as such, to keep the link between these two separate places. As for the name, Anerley itself had only been named a few decades before. It was the property owned by William Sanderson, a Scottish silk manufacturer, who bought a large tract of land shortly after Penge Common was enclosed and the turnpike (toll road) Clays Lane was extended across it, creating a new access route in 1827. The station was opened originally as Anerley Bridge by the London and Croydon Railway in 1839. It was situated in a largely unpopulated area, but was built as part of an agreement with Sanderson. According to Alan Warwick, in The Phoenix Suburb: A South London Social History the landowner was asked for the landmark by which the station would be known, he replied: “Mine is the annerly (only) hoose.” The timetable of the day seems to back this up since it says: ‘There is no place of that name.”
