Place Name
Takes its name from The Larches a former 17thCentury property facing the east side of Milestone Green. It was knocked down in 1908 to make way for the first cinema known as the Picturedrome, which opened on Boxing Day 1910 and advertised as “the most luxurious electric theatre around London”. Its successor cinema, the Odeon, was replaced in the 1960s by the present office block known as Parkway House. The street was named in 1909. The house name may have been inspired by some local trees, thought to have been planted in East Sheen by Sir Theodore Janssen, the disgraced director of the South Sea Company who held Wimbledon manor which formed part of the far larger manor of Mortlake. In 1712 he planted some larches at Wimbledon from seed he had imported from Europe and he is thought to have provided the larches planted at East Sheen on the other side of Richmond Park.
