Place Name
A corrupted reference to Dunsford, a former manor, meaning a ford in the valley, in this case crossing the River Wandle. Originally owned by Merton Priory “by 1535 the possessions of the house [i.e. the Priory] in Wandsworth and Dunsford formed an estate of considerable value”. It was seized in 1538 by the Crown during Henry VIII’s land grab against the Roman Catholic Church, also known as the dissolution of the monasteries. Henry gave the manor to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, a loyal and successful lieutenant who enthusiastically supported the Monarch’s ecclesiastical policy. The duke in turn promptly sold his new possession the following year to Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s Chancellor. When Cromwell fell out with Henry, the king sentenced him to death, and the manor (along with much else) passed, in 1540, back to the Crown. This it held until 1563, when Elizabeth I granted it to her favourite Lord Robert Dudley. Dudley in turn sold it in the same year to Sir William Cecil, who the following year sold it to John Swift. Swift sold it to Thomas Smith in 1569, and it stayed in the possession of his descendants until 1664 when it was sold to Sir Alan Brodrick. It passed in 1730 to his great nephew, Alan 2nd Viscount Midleton (the cricket patron who was jointly responsible for creating the sport’s earliest known written rules). It remained in the family until it was apparently sold to a James Clark in 1851. By then the manor had been much reduced on account of being sold off piecemeal to tenants.
