Place Name
This was originally plain Park Lane and which, until development ran alongside the southern borders of the park. Charlton Park, is the surviving part of the original grounds of Charlton House the Jacobean mansion built between 1607 to 1612 by Adam Newton. From 1767 – 1925 the park was owned by the Maryon Wilson family, who then gave it to Greenwich Borough Council and Charlton Park was opened as a recreation ground in 1929. Charlton itself was first mentioned as Cerletun in the Domesday Book of 1086. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon words ceorl (pronounced churl) and tūn meaning the farmstead of the freeman or peasants. Caroline Taggart in The Book of London Place Names explains: “[They were] an independent peasant landowner. Not a rich man, but his own master.” They were freeman of the lowest rank who owned and cultivated a small farm. The village was variously recorded as Cherleton in 1275 and Cherlton in 1292.
