A Brief History of Worple Road

Like The Grange, Worple Road and the streets on the southern slopes of Wimbledon Hill are recorded in history as 'highly respectable'. Until about 1875 'Walpole Lane' (as it was named on a map of the time) had been a narrow cart-track leading to fields and petering out just before The Downs, an old right of way to Merton. Beyond lay the large Mount Ararat estate owned by Thomas Devas, across which ran a footpath to Raynes Park.

The first sign of development in this area came in 1868 when a self-styled All-England Croquet Club leased a field between Worple Road and the railway line. At first, the Club did not prosper and was in danger of going bankrupt until it decided to add the new game of Lawn Tennis to its activities. As the renamed All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, the members held their first Tennis Championship there in 1877. The event, which consisted solely of gentlemen's singles matches, attracted only twenty-two competitors and a crowd of about two hundred. But its popularity grew rapidly and by 1884 permanent stands for the spectators had been built round the Club's Centre Court. Thirty years later the Championships had outgrown the ground in Worple Road and in 1922 they were moved to the Club's present site in Church Road. The old ground then became the Girls' High School playing field.

Meanwhile, houses had started to be built along Worple Road and in the new side-roads like Edge Hill and Darlaston Road. The first, between Hill Road and Francis Grove, were put up by Henry Harmer in the years after 1870. About the same time, the Wimbledon Building Estate Company leased a block of land from Richard Mansel and built larger middle-class residences on the opposite side of the road between Hill Road and Raymond Road. By the early 1880s houses lined Worple Road as far as the Mount Ararat estate and there too Mr Devas had laid out a new road, Arterberry, linking the Ridgway and Worple Road, with its corkscrew route and drinking trough to help horses.

The most important change in this area, however, came in 1887. After long debate the local authority decided to extend Worple Road through Devas's fields to the new district of Raynes Park, thus making it a through route to Kingston. The extension was finally opened in 1891 to great popular rejoicing, with a big procession, complete with brass bands and a steam fire-engine. The new road had to be widened between 1905 and 1907 to take the trams from Kingston and Hampton Court, and traffic soon became a problem, especially at the newly-named Ely's Corner, where Worple Road met Wimbledon Hill Road.

Extracts compiled by Luke Whitaker from 'A New Short History of Wimbledon' by Richard Milward M.A.

Acknowledgement: Richard Milward M.A., The Wimbledon Society

Wimbledon's History

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