PLACE NAME
Richard Garth (1520 – 1610), the son of a successful lawyer and a clerk of the office of Petty Bay at Chancery Court, who in 1554 became the owner and Lord of the Manor of Morden, today’s Morden Hall Park. He married Elizabeth Dixon and had two children. Records of the time show a ‘newly built mansion house’ known as Growtes which stood to the south of the present Hall, which was built by the fifth Richard Garth between 1759 and 1765. From at least Saxon times up until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the manor had belonged to Westminster Abbey. Garth also acquired another property called Spital Farm in the area. The manor stayed in the family for several generations before being sold by another Sir Richard Garth to a snuff manufacturer in 1872. Like the adjoining Garth Road, this appears to have been formally laid out in the early 20thCentury however existed as a track between fields on maps dating to 1898.
