PLACE NAME
Like Leslie Grove and Leslie Place, this is named after the former Leslie Lodge estate. East Croydon Community Organisation says: “Leslie Lodge was built about 1825 on what was then Addiscombe Road, but what is now 22-24 Lower Addiscombe Road. The earliest owners are unknown and it is not clear whether they bore the name Leslie. The pub sign of the former Leslie Arms nearby displays the coat of arms of the Lords of Rothes, whose clan name is Leslie, together with the family motto Grip Fast. The clan was founded in 1070, when Bartholomew, a Hungarian nobleman attached to the fugitive Saxon court, married Beatrix, the sister of Malcolm III of Scotland. They were granted lands at Leslie in the district of the Garioch, near Abderdeen, from which they took their name. The family had links with West Surrey from 1772, when Lady Jane Elizabeth Leslie, the Countess of Rothes, married Sir Lucas Pepys, the physician to George III, who lived in Juniper Hall, near Leatherhead. However, there are no known links between the Leslie family and Croydon.” The 1844 tithe map shows the estate covering much of the land between Cross Road and Leslie Park Road, as well as land to the north of what is now Lower Addiscombe Road. The street was laid out along part of the southern boundary of the estate. By 1851, it was owned by Mary Vandervell, who put that part of it to the east of Cherry Orchard Road onto the market. The sales particulars noted that Leslie Park Road had already been laid through the land making it “a first class site for the erection of suburban residences”. Within ten years, the entire frontage along northern Leslie Park Road had been developed.
