Place Name
Named after the now “lost” River Neckinger. The term comes from the old slang for the hangman’s noose, the Devil’s Neckercher (a type of cravat). John Field in Place Names of Greater London: “The stream enters the Thames near Neckinger Wharf, where pirates are said to have been hanged; alternatively the name may have derived from the looping course if the tributary in Bermondsey… The Neckinger crossed the road to Canterbury at the spot known to Chaucer as St Thomas’s Watering.” David Mills in a A Dictionary of London Place Names thinks the pirate theory is “probably only a legend”. It was previously marked as Neckinger Road on Roque’s map of 1746. The stream was previously called the Neckercher to Devills Neckercher around 1570s, taking the current spelling in 1682.
