Until 1733 the Battersea Manor was held by the St Johns of Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire. They became Viscounts Bolingbroke, whose armorial bearings carried falcon wings which probably explains the name Falcon Rd and that of the pub. The St John and Bolingbroke family are commemorated by the names of various streets in the Wandsworth area.
The mention of Lydiard Tregoze, brings to mind Thomas's intense love for Wiltshire. He compiled The Woodland Life in 18977, collected from previously-published articles, his nature diaries and notebooks. He moves through the seasons, describing their changes with delicate and minute observations. Chapter 2, describing Spring, is entitled Lydiard Tregoze and recounts its meadows, pools, fields and coppices which he had explored in his visits to Swindon relatives. Displaying his extensive knowledge, in this chapter alone he comments on twenty-five flower types, plus fungi, moss and lichen, ten tree species, the animals rabbit, dog and ferret, and eleven types of bird. Later, in the South Country he wrote, with his deep curiosity about names (so evident in In Pursuit of Spring), if only those poems which are place-names could be translated at last, the pretty, the odd, the romantic, the racy names of copse and field and lane and house.8 He creates a list of them and in this lyrical litany is the St John family estate of Lydiard Tregoze. [The Woodland Life, Blackwood, 1897]
Send me an email if you want to comment on anything you've seen or read on the site, or would like to know more about something, or just want to be kept in touch.
Philip Boys (aka "HistoryBoys")