Place Name
Hatherleigh is a small market town in West Devon. The name is thought to derive from the Saxon settlement Haegporn Leah meaning Hawthorn Glade. It was first recorded in AD981, when it was confirmed as part of the endowment of Tavistock Abbey. 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. Certainly it fitted with his 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!”
