Place Name
Named due to its proximity to The Crescent, which itself was so-named after its shape, sandwiched as it is between Durnsford Road and the District Line. The nearby Woodman pub gives some idea of the once rural nature of the area, which was only developed following the arrival of Wimbledon Park Station in the late Victorian period. Richard Milward in Wimbledon Past explains: “After 1905 development shifted to the area around Wimbledon Park station, as a result of Henry Penfold, a property developer, and George Ryan, a builder and estate agent, opening an office in Arthur Road. They put up rows of villas in the nearby roads along the railway, which came to be known as The Grid. Their first hundred houses ‘on this charming estate’ were seemingly ‘offered For Nothing’ – in fact at a special discount. The bait worked and attracted the sort of people Penfold especially wished to house – superior working-class families whose fathers worked as clerks, salesmen, policemen or chauffeurs.”
