Place Name
Like nearby Adamson Road, Crossfield Road and Elsworthy Road it is thought to be named after a contractor or architect to Eton College, which was given the land the around Chalk Farm as an endowment by Henry VI shortly after he founded the school in 1440. However, no mention is made of Harley or the others in this set in Sir Henry Churchill Maxwell Lyte’s A History of Eton College 1440 – 1875 published in 1889. This road began to be laid out at the western end by Samuel Cuming, a Devonshire carpenter, in 1856. Cuming had scaled up Thomas Cubitt’s model of housebuilding, employing some 80 men by 1851 and dying in 1870 a wealthy man.
