Chertsey Court

Chertsey Court is a large purpose-built complex of apartments erected in the 1930s. It is bordered by the Lower Richmond Road to the south and Clifford Avenue to the west.

The first detailed record of the area is the tithe map of 1837.The western part of the area was owned by General Popham (shown in blue) and the eastern part by Thomas Fitzgerald (shown in yellow). The fields owned by Popham were worked as market gardens – plot 72 was farmed by Thomas Pocock and plot 74 by William Attwood. Snake Alley divided the two plots. Snake Alley was closed/stopped up in 1841 at the request of Thomas Fitzgerald who said "it afforded a lurking place and place of concealment for depredators and petty thieves". In the winter Snake Alley was full of mud, and the alley was said to be used by river thieves who ran their goods ashore at the Ship Lane draw dock and took them via Snake Alley towards Richmond.

Charles Hailstone added a note: The sinister reputation attached to Snake Alley persisted into the 20th century. On the western side of Watney Road was a large field given over to cabbage growing, Snake Alley having run along the bottom of it. A few yards from the hawthorn hedge dividing the field from the Lower Richmond Road there was a little copse of dense bushes, once a pond. Timid persons would hurry past this spot after dark as it was held to have unpleasant associations. As late as the 1930s it was said a gipsy chief was buried there, or someone taken out of the river to secure the ground for a cemetery.

Plot 77 on the tithe map was pastureland managed by John Williams who probably gave his name to Williams Lane. Watney's Brewery bought much of Fitzgerald's land shown on the map in the early 20th century and built Watney Road on plot 77. The growing population of London and its suburbs after the first world war resulted in heavy road congestion. A scheme to relieve this congestion in the southwest approach to London, was approved in 1927. The scheme involved a major new road, the Great Chertsey Road, and the building of new bridges at Kew, Hampton and Chiswick. All three bridges were opened by Edward Prince of Wales on 3 July 1933. The road from Chalker's Corner to Chiswick Bridge is shown as the dotted line on the map. It is now named Clifford Avenue after Charlie Clifford, a local market gardener in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the new road that was laid out in the 1930s was generally known as the Great Chertsey Road. Mortlake Cemetery and Crematorium were laid out to the northwest of the new road and opened in January 1939.

Chertsey Court was built by the Borough of Barnes in the triangle to the southeast of the new road at a cost of £92,000 and was opened in May 1938. The land had previously been earmarked for a bus garage. Most of the first residents of Chertsey Court were families re-housed from Hampton Square which by the 1930s was regarded as unsuitable for habitation.

The 1959 plan of the Court shows there were 154 flats, there were also pram stores, a playground, a garden and allotments as well as a car park. The flats were well-designed with many amenities for families and they continue to be popular places in which to live. Today it acts as a stylish landmark at the Chalkers Corner intersection.