Addiscombe is an area of south London, England, within the London Borough of Croydon. It is located south of Charing Cross, and is situated north of Coombe and Selsdon, east of Croydon town centre, south of Woodside, and west of Shirley.
Etymology
Addiscombe as a place name is thought to be Anglo-Saxon in origin, meaning "Eadda or Æddi's estate", from an Anglo-Saxon personal name, and the word camp, meaning an enclosed area in Old English. The same Anglo-Saxon land-owner may have given his name to Addington, around two miles to the south.
History
First mentioned in the 13th century, Addiscombe formed part of Croydon Manor, and was known as enclosed land belonging to Eadda. The area was a rural and heavily wooded area for much of its history. Its main industries were farming and brick-making, clay deposits at Woodside providing the raw materials for the latter.
During the Tudor period, Addiscombe was a large country estate and the seat of the Heron family. Sir Nicholas Heron died there in 1568 and was interred at his family's chapel at Croydon Minster.
The estate passed through several owners until 1650 when it was sold to Sir Purbeck Temple, a member of the Privy Council in the time of Charles II. After the death of Sir Purbeck in 1695 and his wife Dame Sarah Temple in 1700, the estate passed to Dame Sarah's nephew, William Draper, who was married to the daughter of the famous diarist, John Evelyn. When Draper died in 1718, he left his estate to his son of the same name and it then passed to his nephew, Charles Clark.
Addiscombe Place
In 1703, Addiscombe Place was built for William Draper to Sir John Vanbrugh's design. The house was built on a site which is now the corner of Outram Road and Mulberry Lane and became known as one of three great houses in Addiscombe, the others being 'Ashburton House' and 'Stroud Green House'. It replaced the Elizabethan mansion built by Thomas Heron in 1516. John Tunstall, a courtier of Anne of Denmark, bought Heron's house and had a noted flower garden.
John Evelyn recorded in his Diary, "I went to Adscomb on 11 July 1703 to see my son-in-law’s new house. It has excellent brickwork and Portland stone features, that I pronounced it good solid architecture, and one of the very best gentlemen's houses in Surrey." Distinguished guests who stayed at the mansion include George III, William Pitt the Elder and Peter the Great of Russia. Peter the Great was reputed to have planted a cedar tree in Mulberry Lane to record his visit.
During the 18th century Addiscombe Place was successively the home to The Lord Talbot, The Lord Grantham and lastly The Earl of Liverpool, who died there in 1808.
Addiscombe Military Seminary
In 1809, Emelius Ratcliffe sold Addiscombe Place to the British East India Company for £15,500, whereupon it became a military academy known as the Addiscombe Military Seminary. Cadets were trained as officers for one of the Company's three Presidency Armies. Its counterpart, East India Company College in Hertfordshire, trained the Company's administrators. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 led to strong criticism of the Company, and in 1858 it was nationalised by the British government. The military seminary was closed in 1861 and the remaining cadets transferred to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
In 1863, the seminary buildings were sold for £33,600 to developers who razed most of them to the ground. Five parallel roads were laid out on the site, to the south of the former college site – Outram, Havelock, Elgin, Clyde and Canning Roads. They were all named after individuals who were prominent in either the military or civil governance of British India namely; Sir James Outram, Bt, Sir Henry Havelock, The Earl of Elgin, The Lord Clyde and The Earl Canning. All that survives of the Seminary itself are two buildings called 'Ashleigh' and 'India', on the corner of Clyde Road and Addiscombe Road, and a former gymnasium on Havelock Road, now private apartments.
Suburban growth
With the advent of the railways in the 1830s, Cherry Orchard Road linking Addiscombe with Croydon ceased to be a quiet rural lane and railway workers' cottages sprang up, many with the still-visible date of 1838. However it was not until 1858 and the sale of the college, that significant urbanisation occurred.