Place Name
Not to be found on any maps today, and indeed cartographers were coy about naming it even when it was a navigable route. But Shitting Alley was an officially recognised right of way until it was stopped up in October 1862.
Charles Hailstone in Alleyways of Mortlake and East Sheen writes: “Shitting Alley was the official name but nothing is known about its origin. It occurs, although coyly abbreviated to Shn., in 1722 when the vestry leased it for one shilling. In 1862 Mrs Georgina Charlotte Bankes of Sheen Elms applied for the stopping up of Shitting Alley, so named in the court documents.” The Justices of the Peace EH Leycester Penrhyn and J Stuart Wortley, sitting in Kingston Magistrates Court, agreed it should be blocked off on the grounds that it was “unnecessary because Sheen Lane aforesaid is a good road with pathways only a few feet from the said highway and running parallel and straighter. Sheen Lasne affords ample and superior accommodation for the public and for a long period the said highway has ceased to be used.” Recalling the hearing in his newspaper column Mortlake Memories John Eustace Anderson, who was Vestry clerk at the time wrote: “In my time my father and myself have been employed in diverting and shutting up at least a dozen footpaths in the parish. I recollect one which ran from Mrs Bankes’ house, Sheen Elms, carriage gates along the back of Nelson Terrace out into the Upper Richmond Road, close by Mr Gaunt, the baker’s shop. It had been leased by the parish for about ninety years at sixpence per annum. On its expiration, rather than have it opened again, Mrs Bankes gave some money to the parish and got leave to close it. The name was such an unpleasant one that when it was read out in court it created a good deal of laughter that a pathway should bear such a name, but I expect it was very appropriate.” It used to run from Sheen Lane opposite the entrance of St Leonard’s Road taking a sharp right at the wall to Sheen Elms house and continued to Upper Richmond Road, coming out between numbers 242 and 244. Today it runs from opposite 3 Milton Road and ends in a courtyard behind Sheen Lane.
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