Place Name
Joseph Bowen was the Borough Surveyor at Wimbledon Council who over saw the development of the Council’s Housing Estate, which was laid out in 1921 over land which had once been the grounds of David Thomson’s fruit nursery. Bowen, had been in post three years, replacing his long-standing boss Charles Cooper when he retired in 1918. He was a respected engineer in his own right who undertook much work on behalf of the Council in connection with the estate. Most of streets were named by councillors but when asked to name one of them he is said to have chosen Dennis after his son, which was probably just as well. For the names of the roads could have been somewhat different if one 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.
