Place Name
Previously Haydon’s Lane and Heydon’s Lane. It can be traced back to a 15thCentury track leading to Butlers Farm. George Haydon (died December 10, 1768) was a tenant farmer whose family had already been living in Merton for over 200 years when he acquired Cowdrey’s Farm in 1746. He was a well known figure in the community, acting, at different times, as both a churchwarden at St Mary’s and overseer of the poor over time it took on its name (in one or other of its various spellings). Hayden was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s. In the years after his death, the farm was bought by the Bond Hopkins family and managed by Benjamin Paterson who was a “scientific farmer”. The Bond Hopkins family held onto the farm until 1818. The farm was sold for development in 1872 to the National Freehold Land Society and its subsidiary, the British Land Company. Haydons Road was developed sometime around this time for working class accommodation. The Journal of the Ottery St Mary Heritage Society writes: “The people who lived there were the workers who built the suburbs, the labourers, the brickmakers, the bricklayers, the carpenters and the bootmakers, for workers needed boots. They had moved from the countryside and the inner city areas to find work in South Wimbledon or New Wimbledon as it was called then called.”
