Place Name
Agricultural. Until the 1980s this was a former industrial site with both gas works and a coal depot, there are a gasometer for the Wandsworth and Putney Gas Works by the mid-19thCentury and there was a coal wharf near where Pier Terrace stands today. So the road name itself – now part of the A217 – harks back to an earlier era. Another clue to its once rural nature comes in a road name now lost Warple Way (a worple or warple was a right of way between fields). The name goes back to Swandon Field which once occupied the site. According to Paul Cavill’s New Dictionary of English Field Names, the standard reference on the subject, the name Swandon suggests that swans were often seen on or near the land – this would make sense given the close proximity of the River Thames.
