Place Name
Takes its name from the Dorset village of Almer which is part of the Charborough estate, owned by the Drax family. Or, looked at another way, it is a misspelling of Aylmer, one of the (many) colourful names of Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (August 28, 1880 – October 16, 1967) – more commonly known as Sir Reginald Plunkett or Sir Reginald Drax. As well as owning huge swathes of land, in Dorset, the Drax family also owned The Old Park (known as Warren Park) in Wimbledon. This 300 acre estate, which had covered an area from Westside to Beverley Brook, had been in the family since 1827. Over the decades the Draxes had been – at times – controversial owners. In 1924, Sir Reginald began selling off the land, in so doing it was the last of the five great Wimbledon estates to go under the developer, with each road named after a connection to the family. The name Almer comes from the Old English words ǣl and mere, meaning eel pool, a reference to a pool on River Winterborne just south east of the village. As for Sir Reginald, he was the younger son of the 17th Baron of Dunsany and his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Burton, later Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. He inherited the name and the majority of her vast estates in Dorset, Kent, Surrey, Wiltshire, Yorkshire, and the West Indies. His naval career saw him at most of the naval sea battles during the First World War, he became a staff officer where he argued that the Royal Navy’s commanders were too timid in their actions against the enemy, and argued for ships to be more aggressive in their tactics. Despite being near retirement, he led the doomed delegation that negotiated with the Russians on the eve of the Second World War, only for them to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In fairness, he did not have the authority to make agreements, and was given the near impossible task of convincing the Russians to limit their operations inside Poland. In his spare time He was an early pioneer of solar heating, most notably for his swimming pool. His friend, James Bond novelist Ian Fleming, named the character Sir Hugo Drax in his book Moonraker as a tribute.
