Place Name
As you may expect, this is actually much older than the name would suggest. It has been a feature on the Ordnance Survey maps since at least 1867, but it wasn’t fully developed until it was purchased by the then Mitcham Borough Council which bought it from Messrs Clarkson for £14,475 in the early 1930s. They developed the land for social housing as part of their slum clearance programme, it also served to provide accommodation for households left long-term homeless following a massive explosion at Messrs W J Bush and Co’s lavender factory on March 30, 1933. One 12-year-old boy was killed, many more injured and more than 100 houses were seriously damaged, by the blast and fire that was caused by a large quantity of methylated spirit escaping from a 1,000-gallon still. The street’s name could easily have changed. Work on the estate was already well underway by 1936, when it was suggested in a Housing Committee report to name the new development Jarrow Road, a reference to the northern town, which – even before the famous Jarrow Crusade Marches later that same year – had become a symbol of the deprivation the country was suffering during the Great Depression. The idea was rejected, and the following year the New Close Estate was officially opened.
