Place Name
Built as a bypass to to avoid the lower Petersham Road which was prone to rutting and flooding in winter months – making it impassable. This road was first described as the Causey in the Court Rolls of 1605 and a few years later as Upper Causeway leading to Petersham. By the 18thCentury different names began to apply to different sections of the hill – Hill Street, Upper Hill Street, Highway a causeway, Hill Walk, and Richmond Hill. Things barely improved at the dawn of the next century as James Green, Judith Filson, and Margaret Watson in The Streets of Richmond and Kew note: “In 1800 the Rate Books were still using vague descriptions such as ‘going up the hill’. The use of definite names was established in the 1860s but from then onwards their use produced a long period of confusion rather than clarification.” It appears the names Upper Hill Street, Hill Rise, and Richmond Hill ebbed and flowed up and down the hill over the decades. This unsustainable situation ended in 1924 when Richmond Council renumbered and redefined the extent of Richmond Hill as it stands now. It starts at the junction with the Vineyard on the east and Compass Hill on the west and continues to the summit. As for the name of Richmond. It is named after Henry VII’s title as Earl of Richmond, relating to the town in Yorkshire. Richmond comes from Old French meaning strong hill, which might equally apply to this area. It was originally called Sheen, meaning shelters from Saxon times, when it was recorded as Sceon sometime around AD950. After Sheen Palace, built by Edward I was razed to the ground in 1501, Henry VII decided to rebuild and renamed it after his Yorkshire earldom. And with it West Sheen, Westshenes as written in 1256, all but disappeared. First written as Shene otherwise called Richemount in 1502 and within 20 years as Richmond al. Shene.
