Place Name
Until 1588, Wimbledon was a farmers’ village, of little importance. That changed when Sir Thomas Cecil, the eldest son of Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s trusted advisor, decided to build a new home here. “Since 1575 Thomas had been living happily at the Rectory with his wife and 13 children,” writes Richard Milward in Wimbledon Past. “He had grown to love Wimbledon and decided to build here a new and even grander house, to rival his father’s mansions at Burghley and Theobalds. He hoped thus to create one of the great prestige houses in Elizabethan England and so both insert his importance and entice the Queen to pay him a state visit.” Built in the H style favoured by grand Elizabethan homes like Hampton Court, it was abandoned during the Civil War and fell into decay. When, many years later, a young Huguenot, Theodore Janssen, purchased the title of Lord of the Manor of Wimbledon during the 18thCentury, the house was suffering from the twin ills of not only being in desperate need of repair but also being unfashionable in style. In 1720, he set about demolishing this former great house and, using the bricks of the original palace, built his very own grand home, choosing a new location which was at the entrance of what in modern times is Alan Road. The house itself was a stunning example of Georgian architecture inspired by modern neo-classical themes. But the sprawling Belvedere estate, which covered from Church Road down to Woodside and the High Street to St. Mary’s Road, was broken up and sold off to property developers when Jansson ran into trouble and was accused of fraud, resulting in a number of large fines. The house was sold and later christened Belvedere House – Old French for fine view (an unoriginal but fashionable name for a time) by an early Victorian owner James Courthorpe Peache, a timber merchant from Lambeth. In 1900 Belvedere House was demolished and the site sold to the Belvedere Estate Company for house building. This is one of a number of roads named after the house.
