PLACE NAME
There are two potential candidates after whom this street is named. The first is Arabella Bucknall (about 1780 – 1862), mother of John Hanmer, 1st Baron Hanmer, who owned this land in the 19thCentury. Bucknall, also spelt Bucknell, was the daughter of Thomas Skip Dyot Bucknell and Jane Wyndham. She married Thomas Hanmer in 1808 and the couple had seven children. The Bucknall family were related to the Dyots, another resident landowning family in the 17thCentury. The alternative is Ralph Bucknall (died 1710), an eminent parishioner, MP and Vestryman in the 17th and 18th centuries. He was Lord of the Manor of Petersfield in 1697 and later served as MP for Petersfield during the early 18thCentury. In 1670 he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Birch of Whitbourne, Herefordshire, and they had one son and three daughters. Five years later he was elected a Vestryman, an early type of parish councillor, of St Giles in 1675. A brewer by trade he also had a government commission for manufacturing linen and paper in Jersey and Guernsey. The street was so-named in 1877. The 1561 Agas Map shows this area as undeveloped land in the vicinity of the St Giles leper colony which had been established on the outskirts of the City since the 12thCentury.
