Place Name
Curiously while St Ann’s Crescent has retained its apostrophe throughout the decades, it has lost an e in its name. It features on Sandford’s Library Map of 1866 as New Church Lane but later took the name St Anne’s Hill sometime after the Second World War, St Anne became St Ann, most probably due to an admin error. In any case, St Ann’s Crescent as with St Ann’s Hill are so named after St Anne’s Church. After the Napoleonic Wars, moves to have some kind of national monument of thanksgiving evolved into a scheme to build churches to serve the rapidly expanding urban population. St Anne’s Wandsworth, built in 1822, was one of the first Waterloo churches as they came to be known. Its architect was Robert Smirke, who later designed the British Museum, at a cost of £14,511. It is built in Greek Revival style with a portico and a circular tower, which has the nickname “the pepperpot”. The tower is much higher than was considered proportionate for the building at the time; this enables the church, which is located on the crest of St Ann’s Hill, to be visible as a landmark for miles around. The churchyard was originally meant to have been a burial ground, but this never happened because the bishop and the congregation never agreed on whether it should be enclosed by a stone wall or wooden fence. St Anne’s was originally part of the parish of All Saints, the ancient church in Wandsworth in the High Street, becoming a separate parish in 1850. In 1891 the galleries were cut back and the pews replaced by the present ones, then in 1896 a local architect, E.W. Mountford, added the apsidal neo-Wren chancel. The interior was then extremely light and airy and it has changed little since. St Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.
