| Roehampton | |
|---|---|
 Roehampton High Street | |
  Roehampton Location withinGreater London | |
| Population | 16,132 (2011 Ward of Roehampton and Putney Heath)[1] |
| OS grid reference | TQ225745 |
| London borough | |
| Ceremonial county | Greater London |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LONDON |
| Postcode district | SW15 |
| Dialling code | 020 |
| Police | Metropolitan |
| Fire | London |
| Ambulance | London |
| UK Parliament | |
| London Assembly | |
| 51°27′04″N0°14′35″W / 51.451°N 0.243°W /51.451; -0.243 | |
Roehampton is an area in southwestLondon, in thePutney SW15 postal district, and takes up a far western strip, running north to south, in theLondon Borough of Wandsworth.[2] It contains a number of largecouncil house estates and is home to theUniversity of Roehampton.
TheRoe in Roehampton's name is thought to refer to the large number ofrooks that still inhabit the area.
Roehampton is centred about 6.3 miles (roughly 10 km) south-west ofCharing Cross. It occupies high land, withBarnes to the north,Putney andPutney Heath to the east, andRichmond Park andRichmond Park Golf Course to the west. To the south is Roehampton Vale, that straddles theA3, withWimbledon Common andPutney Vale beyond.
Roehampton was originally a small village – with only 14 houses during the reign ofHenry VII – with the area largely forest and heath. The population gradually increased in the 18th and 19th centuries as it became a favoured residential outlying suburb for summer villas and larger houses set in parkland, following the opening ofPutney Bridge in 1729.[3] Several of the original houses survive.
Roehampton House (Grade I) byThomas Archer was built between 1710 and 1712, and enlarged bySir Edwin Lutyens in 1910. Until 2008, it was the administrative centre forQueen Mary's Hospital. The building was Grade I Listed in 1978 when it was still being used by the hospital.[4] It was subsequently developed into private flats.
Parkstead House (Grade I), built in 1760 forWilliam Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough, was the home of the socialiteLady Caroline Lamb before being acquired in 1861 for use as a seminary by theJesuits and renamed Manresa House.[5]Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit poet, lived there. Parkstead House is now owned byRoehampton University, as are a number of other surviving 18th century houses. These includeMount Clare (Grade I) built in 1772 for George Clive, cousin ofLord Clive;Grove House (Grade II*), built originally for Sir Joshua Vanneck in 1777 –Capability Brown is reputed to have laid out the grounds; and Downshire House (Grade II*) built in 1770 and once occupied by theMarquess of Downshire.[6]
Templeton House, a Georgian mansion, was built in the 1780s and its first resident was Lady Elizabeth Templetown. In 1930, the building was converted into student flats; during both World Wars, it was used as a hospital. From the winter of 1919 to the spring of 1920,Winston Churchill lived at Templeton House while it was owned byFreddie Guest and his wife Amy.[7] After its sale in 2010, the new owners again converted the building into a single family home, with the exterior also restored.[8][9] Some of the filming for series 3 ofDownton Abbey was completed at Templeton House.[10]
Originally a part of PutneyAnglicanparish, Roehampton became a separate parish in 1845, after the building of Holy Trinity Church on Roehampton Lane in 1842.[3] TheSociety of Jesus foundedSt Joseph Church in Roehampton in 1869 from thenovitiate that becameWhitelands College.
The MaharajahDuleep Singh lived for a time in Ashburton House in Roehampton with the family of SirJohn Spencer Login and LadyLena Login. Lady Login wrote in her memoirs that the Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales visited him there on one occasion.[11]
DuringWorld War I there was aRoyal Naval Air ServiceKite Balloon Training School based on land now part of the university and golf course.[12]
Much of the old village of Roehampton still remains, dominated by large detached houses. An old watering trough for Victorian carriage-horses exists at the junction of Medfield Street and Roehampton Lane.[5]
TheLondon County Council (LCC) built the Roehampton Estate in the 1920s and 1930s (later renamed the Dover House Estate) and theAlton Estate in the 1950s, covering many of the large gardens and woodlands in the area.
Dover House Estate is one of a number of importantLondon County Councilcottage estates inspired by theGarden City movement. The land was previously the estates of two large houses,Dover House andPutney Park House, which were purchased by theLCC soon afterWorld War I. Dover House was demolished for the new estate, butPutney Park House remains. The common characteristic of the LCC cottage estates is picturesque housing influenced by theArts and Crafts style. It was the intention at Dover House Estate to create housing in groups that overlooked or had access to open space, to provide a sense of intimacy and individuality, and the estate was laid out with communal green spaces. Allotments were also provided in three backland areas behind houses, two of which remain, the third subsequently infilled by housing.
TheAlton Estate, one of the largest council estates in the UK, occupies an extensive swathe of land west of Roehampton village and runs between Roehampton Lane and Richmond Park Golf Course. The estate has a mix of low and high-risemodernist architecture consisting of Alton East (1958) styled a subtleScandinavian-influencedvernacular and its slightly later brutalist counterpart: Alton West (1959). At Highcliffe Drive on Alton West the LCC essentially retained the Georgian landscape and placed within it five ultra modern slab blocks: Binley, Winchfield, Dunbridge, Charcot and Denmead Houses, (all grade II*) inspired byLe Corbusier'sUnite d'Habitation. At the time of its completion in 1958, Alton West was considered by many British architects to be the crowning glory of post-World War II council housing.[13]
The estate is now part of a regeneration scheme with a number of government initiatives such asSureStart helping to tackle issues of poverty andsocial exclusion.
Roehampton contains a number ofconservation areas, covering much of the Alton and Dover House estates, and the centre of Roehampton Village. This includes theKing's Head Inn, at the foot of Roehampton High Street and theMontague Arms, Medfield Street, both of 17th century origin.[14]
In 2007,Justine Greening, the localMember of Parliament, secured a commitment to install a pedestrian entrance to Richmond Park from the Alton Estate.[15] A footpath and cycleway from Chohole Gate to Richmond Park was opened in 2014.[16]
Roehampton is home to a number of well-known educational institutions: theUniversity of Roehampton has approximately 10,500 students housed in 4 colleges and around 4,000 students studying online; the new Queen Mary's Hospital with its renowned amputee rehabilitation centre opened in 2006 is a teaching centre for medical students based in Wandsworth NHS Primary Care Trust;Kingston University has one of its campuses in Roehampton Vale;South Thames College also has a campus on Roehampton Lane. It has long been a major centre for teacher-training, being the site of two constituent colleges (Digby Stuart College andFroebel College) of the former federal Roehampton Institute of Higher Education (now the University of Roehampton), as well asSouth East England's only lecturer-training college (Garnett College) which eventually moved and became part of theUniversity of Greenwich.
Apart from education, other notable institutions based here includeThe Priory Clinic, theBank of England Sports Centre,Rosslyn Park Rugby Football Club, and theRoehampton Club. TheInternational Tennis Federation (ITF) moved to Roehampton from Baron's Court in 1998, and in 2007 theLawn Tennis Association moved to a newly built headquarters next to the ITF.
In the2011 census, the Wandsworth ward of Roehampton and Putney Heath did not record a single majority ethnic group. The largest ethnicity in the ward wasWhite British at 45%, followed byother White (18.4%),Black African (7.9%), and other Asian (4.6%).[17]
In 2011, 59.1% of people living in Roehampton and Putney Heath were born in England. The other most common census responses were those born inPoland (5.6%),Pakistan (1.8%),Ireland (1.6%), thePhilippines (1.6%),South Africa (1.2%),Ghana (1.1%),Germany (1.0%), andSomalia (1.0%).[18]
The religious makeup of Roehampton and Putney Heath is 52.9%Christian, 23.6% no religion, 11.1%Muslim, 1.4%Hindu, 1.1%Buddhist, 0.7%Jewish, 0.4%Sikh, and 0.2%agnostic.[18]
Roehampton is served by bus route 170 (to Victoria), 265 (to Putney and Tolworth), 419 (to Richmond), 493 (to Richmond and Tooting), 430 (to South Kensington) and 85 (to Putney and Kingston).
Barnes andPutney are the nearest railway stations. Roehampton University has campaigned to have nearby Barnes station renamedBarnes & Roehampton, as the station is situated between the two areas.[19]
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Roehampton is an important location inH. G. Wells' novelThe Sleeper Awakes. Roehampton, along with five other locations in London, includingWimbledon Park,Norwood,Blackheath andShooter's Hill, form a series of rudimentary airports known as "Flying Stages". The Flying Stage at Roehampton is the scene for a major battle in the plot.
The Alton Estate has featured as a film and television location.Fahrenheit 451 (1966) used some of the estate as its backdrop for a bleak dystopian society of the future.Thames Television's film divisionEuston Films used the Danebury Avenue area of the estate to film the opening scenes ofSweeney 2 (1978), the sequel to the filmSweeney! (1977).
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Destinations from Roehampton | |
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{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)probably in the 1780s – that Templeton House must have been built. The house is first recorded on a map of 1787.
The sprawling 28,000-square-foot property, with its amber brick façade and stately decor, is nestled in the quiet suburb of Roehampton in southwest London, and was once the home of Winston Churchill.
its first occupant, in 1786, was Lady Elizabeth Templetown, the wife of an Irish aristocrat and an artist
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