Surbiton Park is an area in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in Greater London, United Kingdom. It was the southernmost part of the pre-1965 Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey and corresponds roughly to the southernmost part of the present-day Kingston upon Thames postal district.
It lies between Portsmouth Road, Kingston and Maple Road, Surbiton and includes Surbiton Crescent, Anglesea Road, Palace Road and Uxbridge Road. It is largely residential, but there are office buildings and a school on the eastern side.
The Surbiton Park estate was established after the arrival of the railway in the mid 19th century. It occupies much of the grounds of a minor stately home, which survived until the 1930s.
Surbiton Park was developed as a residential area in the middle of the 19th century after the opening of the London and Southampton Railway. However, by the first decade of the 21st century the name was fading from the public consciousness. It appeared to survive principally in the wording Surbiton Park Terrace on the 20th-century row of shops on the south-west side of Surbiton Road, just to the north of the original park.
During that decade Surbiton Park sub-post office was closed and the bus stop formerly known as Surbiton Park Terrace was renamed Surbiton Road/Penrhyn Road.
History
The original park
From the mid 18th century until the early 1930s a large house stood on the south-west side of what is now Surbiton Road, Kingston, close to the junction with what is now Maple Road, Surbiton. To the south and west of the main building there was an extensive park.
The house was known at different times as Surbiton Place, Surbiton House and Surbiton Hall. It was built for William Roffee, a wealthy distiller, at the south-eastern end of Surbiton Street, now known as Surbiton Road, the principal thoroughfare of a hamlet of Kingston parish known as Surbiton (or Surbeton).
When Roffee died in 1785, Surbiton Place was bought by Thomas Fassett, who extended both the house and the grounds.
In 1809 Fassett sold the house to Henry Paget, originally Bayly, who became Earl of Uxbridge. His son, also Henry Paget, inherited it in 1812. This Henry was the Earl of Uxbridge who distinguished himself at Waterloo. Not long after the battle, he became the first Marquess of Anglesey.
After his mother died in 1817, Anglesey sold the house to John Garratt, a prominent local politician, who later sold it to Alexander Raphael, a wealthy Roman Catholic.
Raphael paid for the building of a Roman Catholic church on land in the north-western part of his estate. This is the Italianate church on Portsmouth Road known as St Raphael's.
Changing times
By the time Raphael died in 1850, major changes had begun to take place to the south of Kingston. The railway had reached the area in the late 1830s and the present-day town of Surbiton had started to grow up near the station.
Raphael's heir, his nephew Edward Raphael, sold most of the estate for housing development. Just three acres of land remained with the house, which was occupied by the family of John Shrubsole, a banker and draper, until the death of his widow in 1914.
Generally speaking, the house was known as Surbiton Hall during the Shrubsole period, but there is evidence that it was also referred to as Surbiton House. Adjacent to a 20th-century residential block in Surbiton Road called Garrick House, there is a wall on which is a plaque bearing this inscription:
The name Surbiton House was used for the house on the Elmers estate before 1823, but this was on the other side of Terry's Lane, which ran roughly where Maple Road does today. Both the date and location of the plaque suggest that it does not refer to that house.
In the 1861 census return there is an entry for Surbiton House and Coach House, Surbiton Road. The coach house was across the road, where Surbiton High School junior school now stands. The 1865 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25in. map also describes the building as Surbiton House.
Ten years later, in the 1871 census return, the house is described as Surbiton Hall. The coach house is not mentioned, neither does it appear on the 1865 O.S. map.
William Woods
Most of Raphael's estate was bought by William Woods, a speculative builder. He laid out the four principal streets of Surbiton Park in what had been the grounds of the house. He built large houses for the well-heeled, including some fine pairs of semi-detached houses, as well as some substantial mansions.