Tag Archives: Love Lane

Russell Road

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Road off west side of Glebe Path, connecting to Love Lane.

Houses are numbered, from west to east, from 1 to 38. They all have the postcode CR4 3AP. Number 1 is divided into 3 flats. There are four terraces of houses. From Love Lane on the north side, houses are numbered odd 1 to 21, and on the south side even 2 to 24. At the Glebe Path end, the terrace on the north side is numbered odd 23 to 31 and on the south side 26 to 38. Source: Royal Mail postcode finder.

It is believed that the road is named after Athel Russell Harwood, as is the nearby Harwood Avenue.

1953 OS map

The Glebe Path end of this road was originally called Bounty Place, presumably a reference to Queen Anne’s Bounty. It was renamed to be an extension of Russell Road, and hence renumbered, by Mitcham Urban District Council in 1930. Source: Mitcham UDC minutes, 24th June, 1930, page 171.

Maps are reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

1960 : 132 year old Love Lane cottage to come down

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From the Mitcham News & Mercury, 2nd September 1960, page 1.

132-year old cottage to come down

SEVENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Mrs. Frances Dent, whose family have grown flowers in Love Lane, Mitcham for the past 60 years, walked out of her 132-year-old timber cottage for the last time on Tuesday.

She is the last owner of Dent’s Nursery, soon to be demolished to make way for a primary school.

When the Dent family first came to the cottage and nursery they were surrounded by open fields.

On the one-and-a-half-acre site they had five large greenhouses. Their main crop was flowers for Covent Garden.

Mrs. Dent who lived in the cottage alone since her husband died, walked along her narrow garden path and set off for the Tate Almshouses, Cricket Green, where she will now live.

HAPPY

“I have been very happy at the old place,” she said. “ It’s a great wrench to leave. But the house was in a bad state and it is best that it comes down.”

The lone nurseryman is 58-year-old Mr. Daniel Grace who rented the ground when Mrs. Dent’s husband died. He grew plants and vegetables to sell locally.

“ I am going to buy a little place in the country,” he said. “The place has changed. You have only got to cast an eye around the neighbourhood to realise that.
“In my day Love Lane was a lane. It was lined with hedges and dog roses.”

This OS map from 1954 shows a nursery and a pair of houses numbered 54 and 55 on the north side of Love Lane.

1954 OS map