Place Name
Takes its name from the East Yorkshire village, located about four miles north of Bridlington along the Holderness Coast. The name is thought to come from the Old English words bēam referring to a beam tree and tūn meaning a farm village. As with the vast majority of Ruislip Manor this was laid out as a single private housing estate by developer George Ball’s Manor Homes from 1933 to 1939. Ball had acquired 186 acres south of the railway from King’s College, Cambridge, the original landowner from medieval times. King’s had originally planned a Hampstead-style Garden Suburb here, but this never came to pass. Ball’s initial plan was to build 2,322 houses all built to one of two basic types, mostly in terraces of four to six, although a few were semi-detached. Soon afterwards he conceded 50 houses to build a school, Lady Bankes Primary, and in 1935 reduced the number by a further 34 in return for permission to build a church and a pub (the Black Bull). Unlike King’s plans, Ball priced these properties within the reach of working people, starting at £450, and many were sold to families from the North who had come to London in search of work during the Great Depression and from industrial West London, namely Acton. With so many houses developed in such a short period, Ball needed to used a theme to save time thinking of street names, and this is one of many streets named for places in Devon and East Yorkshire. Eileen M Bowlt in Ruislip Past speculates he may have been inspired by the work of English illustrator John Hassall who in 1908 was commissioned by the Great Northern Railway to produce a poster advertising the town of Skegness. His poster The Jolly Fisherman depicted a fisherman skipping along the beach, with the slogan “Skegness is SO bracing”. Certainly the message fitted with Ball’s own advertisements for the estate extolling the virtues of the area: “Live in Ruislip! The air’s like wine. It’s less than half an hour on the Piccadilly Line!”
