Place Name
Takes its name from a small district in Surrey which was once a detached possession of the manor of Wimbledon. Sometime around 1375, Burstow Park was given to Sir Philip St Clere by his father-in-law. At the time St Clere’s was lord of the manor of Wimbledon and so it was under his tenure that Wimbledon and Burstow became linked. In 1531 Burstow Park was leased to Sir John Gage for 80 years. Meanwhile the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, exchanged the Wimbledon manor with Henry VIII in 1535. In 1590 Elizabeth granted to Sir Thomas Cecil and his heirs the manor of Wimbledon and “all those our lands in Bristowe alias Burstowe called le Parke”. She later sold the land. So the two had some historical significance with Wimbledon and when, in 1921, councillors were asked to suggest road names for a new council estate, over land which had once been the grounds of David Thomson’s fruit nursery, one councillor on the housing committee suggested Birstow Road (note the original spelling). The names of the roads could have been somewhat different if Alderman Peel had had his way. He thought that it would have been better if the council had named the roads in such a way as to remind people in the years to come of the way in which the government spent the ratepayers money. At one of the housing committees he suggested the names of Folly Road, Waste Avenue and Spendthrift Crescent. Needless to say these were not adopted.
