Place Name
This private road was created when the extensive grounds of Downe House, for a time the home of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, were divided in the 1870s to provide access to the coachhouses which were built at the back of the new gardens of houses along the Terrace. Bygone Richmond gives this description: “As late as the year 1865, the house stood by itself, and in its gardens ran as far as Friar’s Stile Road. Brian Duppa, Bishop of Winchester, is supposed to have lived in an earlier building on this site.” His almshouses originally stood in the grounds until they were razed in 1852, having reached a point of dilapidation that they needed to be rebuilt. The owner of Downe House seized his opportunity and bought the land from the charity trustees and offered a new site at opposite Queen Elizabeth’s almshouses in the Vineyard. He used the new space to grow a kitchen garden. This street featured on maps in 1894 but wasn’t named until 1954. As for the name, there had been a reference to Terrace since at least 1823, when a row of houses on Richmond Hill were referred to as Hill Terrace in the Vestry minutes.
