Place Name
The road leading to Carshalton, this is the main road that leads between Sutton and Carshalton. The original name for the town goes back to AD675 when it was recorded as Æuultone, by AD880 it had become Aweltun and in AD933 Euualtone but in the Domesday Book of 1086 was written as Aultone. A E Jones in From Medieval Manor to London Suburb: An Obituary of Carshalton writes: “The early writers on Surrey’s history did not go behind then Norman Conquest and they considered it obvious that Aultone was a corruption of Old Town. They held that the later first syllable addition was derived from Cross, though opinion was not agreed on whether it referred to a cross-roads, a crossing of the waters, or a wayside crucifix. Modern etymology has quite different explanations. It relates the original name back to an Anglo-Saxon composite Æwell-tun the Tun (homestead) at the Æwell (source of a stream).” He adds: “It is not until 1150 that the village at the source of the Wandle is found recorded with a prefix to its early name. It then appears as Kersaulton. But in 1275 it is written Cressalton, and the generally accepted derivation of the first syllable is nowadays exactly that: cress’ (Old English: cærse). Water cress is not mentioned in any medieval document as a commercial product of Carshalton, but it was not commonly cultivated in England before 1800. By the first part of the twentieth century the artificial water cress beds in Carshalton were quite extensive and were using the river water to grow a sizeable commercial crop. In former times cress was probably picked wild from the streams. In 1392 a Carshalton brook is referred to as the Kersse-brok and a fourteenth century deed relates to a house and Kersenaria attingente, which, presumably, means adjoining water cress bed.” The name went through numerous spellings including Kerswelton, Cash Haulton and Case Horton before becoming standardised in the 18thCentury. Jones also adds that the name was mispronounced by the “overwhelming flood of newcomers who transformed the place into a London suburb” in the first half of the 20thCentury. He says: “The present accent is on the second syllable, and this, doubtless because of its origin, is sounded ‘shawl’ rather than ‘shall’.”