Place Name
Directional. As befits a road that has been around for at least 400 years this has gone though numerous name changes. It was first mentioned in the manor court rolls from 1640 as “the road from Mortlake” but by the time John Roque had got around to publishing his map of Surrey in 1741 it was known as Mortlake Lane, it was still called that 30 years later when the manor map was drawn. By the middle of the following century it became Mortlake Road and by 1887 Lower Mortlake Road to avoid confusion with Mortlake Road leading from Kew to Mortlake. Running alongside it for the last 100 years was the notorious Black Ditch which became an open sewer resulting in cholera outbreaks of 1832. The road was extended in 1933 to create the Twickenham Road and Richmond Circus sections of the A316.
