Place Name
For such a short road – it scarcely warrants a name, let alone two. But in fact appearances are deceiving, until the installation of the flood walls this led out directly onto the towing Path and into Bulls Alley Drawdock. It used to continue on the other side of Mortlake High Street going past Rann House to near Vineyard Path. It was originally called Huntingdons Alley, after a Thomas Huntingdon who was a waterman who ran a sailing barge between Mortlake and London, and who lived nearby. But from at least 1865 it took its present name after its then owner local corn trader, Richard Bull. Charles Hailstone in Alleyways of Mortlake and East Sheen describes how important it was: “Before the war the alley was used by coal merchants and others with their horse carts for getting on the brewery wharf, then a very busy place. At exceptionally high tides the river would rise op through the alley and flood the adjacent parts of the High Street, depositing on the ebb a rich assortment of flotsam to be picked over by local beachcombers, mostly for firewood.”
