Place Name
This is one of several roads, so named as they come off of Lancaster Road. This was was laid out sometime around the 1900s. The Reverend Thomas Lancaster was a village schoolmaster, who later ordained as a minister and set up a boys’ boarding school in Wimbledon. Wimbledon School for Young Noblemen and Gentlemen, as it was originally known, was later renamed Nelson House School after a visit by Lord Nelson in 1805, for a time it was known as Brackenbury’s, and later as Eagle House school. The Wimbledon school was not Lancaster’s first attempt at running an educational establishment, his first school at Parson’s Green had suffered from excessive competition for pupils with other area schools. But, perhaps learning a few lessons of his own, he calculated that Eagle House, a Jacobean property with a fine brick façade and picturesque gardens, would be more likely to impress parents. Thus the house and 17 acres were bought in 1789 at a cost of £2,300 and the Wimbledon school opened the following year. Pupils were taught reading, writing and elocution, in addition to arithmetic, geography and history. As befitted the sons of the wealthy, the school curriculum also included several languages, including Latin, Greek and French. Lessons were learned by heart and progress was monitored with weekly tests. Lancaster was evidently a civic minded man giving a clock to the parish in 1829, and paying a Mr Casswell for its winding and maintenance. Lancaster made back at least part of his investment by letting part of the land for building. In its history of the school, The Eagle House Magazine 1948-1949 explains: “The little road along the east side of the garden is still called Lancaster Road….” It continues: “And now Eagle House is touched for a moment by glory and Romance. Lancaster became Vicar of near-by Merton in 1801, the year in which Nelson took up residence there. The relations of Marton Place with the Vicar (writes Miss Carola Oman in her biography of Nelson) ‘had been cordial from the first. The Rev. Thomas Lancaster… had a younger son whom he hoped to send to sea under the auspices of his most influential parishioner. On an unascertained morning of the week (just before Nelson left for Trafalgar in 1805) Lady Hamilton fulfilled a promise. An open chariot breasted Wimbledon Hill, and drew up outside a handsome house in the Dutch-Jacobean style, to be renamed in honour of this day’s occasion Nelson House. Here some favoured young gentlemen in blue coats with brass buttons were summoned to the front parlour and ordered by their clerical pedagogue to recite to the Victor of the Nile, an ordeal which ended happily for all, with a request from the chief guest for a half-holiday for the school, and with three hearty cheers for Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton.’ The School continued under the name of Nelson House until it was acquired by a Reverend Dr Huntingford, who renamed it Eagle House after a school so named which he had had at Hammersmith and when he moved the establishment here he brought not only the name but the Eagle which still surmounts the front central gable.”
