Place Name
As with Norman Road it is a reference to the founder of Merton Abbey, variously known as Gilbert the Norman, Gilbert the Knight, and Gilbert of Merton, who had been brought over from France to help run the country. Within two generations of William the Conquerer’s invasion of England, the administrative system had begun to unravel. When Henry I became king in 1100 following the death, accidental or otherwise, of Rufus, he found he found that he had inherited a bureaucracy rife with problems. Lionel Green of the Merton Historical Society explained what happened: “Henry found that he could no longer trust the earls to impartially administer justice, and to efficiently collect crown dues from the shires. He decided that Norman aristocracy should no longer govern England, and chose ‘new men’ of lesser nobility, who had been successful in Normandy, some in public office. A new generation of Norman settlers came to prosper under Henry I, and a possible immigrant was Roger, who was made sheriff of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Surrey about 1104. Sheriff Roger brought his nephew, Gilbert, from Normandy to assist him.” Gilbert, it seems was blessed, not only was he a good fighter but a highly competent administrator to boot. He also had an easy charm that won him favours without rancour. When Roger died in 1106 his nephew replaced him. He quickly proved a worthy successor, as Sheriff he collected taxes efficiently and won over all at court. He soon winning promotion. In December 1114 he was given the ville of Mitcham. Here he built a church and invited several Augustinian canons from the Augustinian priory of Huntingdon, where he had been sheriff, to come and live in community. He eventually gained the king’s permission to begin an Augustinian priory. By 1117 the first building of Merton Augustinian Priory on the River Wandle was finished (where Sainsbury’s and Merton Abbey Mills now stand) and Gilbert led the 15 canons, then living in community, and a crowd of local people into the first building of the new priory on the River Wandle. This was at 3pm on Ascension Day May 3, 1117. The Office of None was said at 3pm and on this first occasion a Processional was also sung – “Salve festa dies”. Thus began a new lively and very influential chapter in the nation’s history, very quickly producing a martyr (St Thomas à Becket) and the only English Pope Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear). Later, Merton College, Oxford, would be founded from the priory. To this Gilbert was very soon able to begin a school at the priory, and procured the services of a teacher from Bologna who became known as Guy de Merton. Also educated there was Walter de Merton, a future Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Rochester. He is also famous for being the founder of Merton College at Oxford University in 1264. The priory by the river was dismantled in 1538 as part of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries and only a few remnants survive off Merantun Way.
