Place Name
Until development this was a literal name, as along its northern side ran the perimeter of Wimbledon Park House, which had gardens designed by Capability Brown. This master gardener’s approach to landscaping was to encircle parks he worked on, including at Wimbledon, with dense woodland to frame the views and to conceal the carriage drive. In 1865 the gardens and extensive lawn of the house remained in tact, but within 30 years, much of the land had been sold off to developers, and the once extensive woodland was being pulled up for housing, albeit slowly at first. That changed after 1889 with the arrival of Wimbledon Station, offering a half-hourly service into London. As Richard Milward in Wimbledon Past describes: “First, houses went up near the District terminus – alongside Woodside, Vineyard Hill and Kenilworth Avenue.”
