Place Name
John Warrington Morris (1829 – sometime in the late 1880s) was an architect and mining speculator, who was residing at Hermitage House when this cut-de-sac was built in its gardens sometime around 1886. Originally from Poplar, Morris had offices in Richmond and was responsible for the designs of the Danish Church, in Ming Street, Poplar; St Michael and All Angels, Bromley by Bow; and the Ragged School, in East India Dock Road. He had previously lived at Queensberry Villa, in Buckhurst Hill, but moved to Richmond a few years after the death of his wife, Louisa, who was daughter of the engineer John Howkins. Shortly before his death he persuaded the Irish architect William Patrick Ryan to take on his practice in Richmond under the name of Morris & Ryan. According to the census for 1891 Ryan was living at a house named Warrington in King’s Road, Richmond, with his wife, Gertrude (née Bernal), widowed mother, and six daughters, who were all born in Ireland, and seven-month-old son Bernal John, who was born in Richmond.
