Place Name
Originally Hermitage Road, when it was first named in 1860. It took its present name in 1930. The name of the road comes from a large house that stands on the corner of Church Terrace and Warrington Road. It is thought, but by no means certain, that the name may have been inspired by Queen Caroline’s little Hermitage which was in Richmond Lodge gardens from where she would entertain artists and the leading men of the day. Like Richmond Lodge it was pulled down by landscape gardener “Capability” Brown who had been employed by George III to reorganise his estate. However, the name Hermitage, which means retreat, was quite a popular one with the new commuters who sought to escape City life. This Hermitage House, built in the late 18th or early 19th centuries and which was part of former Queen Anne Hotel survives to this day. John Cloake in Richmond Past writes: “Then came the railway. The Richmond Upper Field (from the Lower Mortlake Road to the Hill top) disappeared beneath streets of large and medium-sized villas for middle class Londoners anxious to commute from the country instead. New estates were developed in the grounds of large houses – and the new roads were named after the houses: Halford Road, the Hermitage, Ellerker Gardens, Mount Ararat Road. By the end of the nineteenth century no open building land was left in the Upper Field apart from the grounds of a few remaining mansions.”