Place Name
The unimaginatively named northern road of a small development in New Wimbledon, as this area was called in the mid-19thCentury. Richard Milward in Wimbledon Past explains that the spot was picked because of its assured water supply. He adds: “The chief developers south of the Broadway were the National Freehold Land Society and its subsidiary, the British Land Company. They were controlled by Liberal financiers who wanted, not merely to make a profit, but to increase the number of voters supporting their party at elections, they aimed to do this by buying land and selling it in small lots to men who would thus become ‘forty shilling’ freeholders’, the only people with the right to vote in county constituencies like East Surrey, which included Wimbledon (until it gained its own MP in 1885). Their first development in 1852 – a small Merton Estate just north of the flour mill on the Wandle – only produced three rows of workmen’s cottages.” The others were East Road and South Road.
