An
up date is very overdue...
This
website started life in around 2012 to coincide with an Atbara Road street party.
Since then more information has come to light and hopefully some of this will
be added soon. In the longer term its hoped to be able to give the site a new
format covering a greater range of material on the history of, what estate agents
like to call, the "River Roads" area of Teddington. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A
Teddington Society booklet suggests that Atbara Road was the last of the six roads
built between Kingston Road and Broom Road. Although, a road in this position
appears in a sale plan for 1873, it is not shown on the 1894 OS map for the area. The
Richmond Local History Collection shows that plans for Atbara Road were submitted
to Teddington Urban District Council in 1898 and again in 1899. Among
the fields
If you look along the road there is distinct 'kink' about halfway
down. This probably follows the field boundary in the land to the north of the
Road where St Winifred’s now is. This is clearly shown in the 19th century
sale plans (see right). Further evidence can be found in the line of Horse Chestnut
trees immediately behind gardens in Atbara. I recently measured the trunk on one
of these trees. It appears to be at least 150 years’ old making it 50 or
more years’ old when the first houses were built in Atbara Road. The sale
plans also show that the area in which Atbara Road was developed also originally
included the north-side of King Edwards Grove (originally known as Cornelius Road)
and land adjoining Broom Road (Lower Kingston Road) and Kingston Road (Upper Kingston
Road). A
British Empire connection
Atbara Road is almost certainly named after a
city in Sudan at which Herbert Kitchener won a battle in 1898. It took place where
the Atbara tributary, flowing down from Ethiopia, meets the River Nile. It is
on two main railway routes: from Atbara to Port Sudan, and from Khartoum to Wadi
Halfa. In 1898 it was the site of a battle where combined forces of the British
and Egyptians defeated the Mahdists, when 3,000 of the latter were killed or wounded
by armies lead by Kitchener.
Today
it seems odd to name a road after a battle, however, this was the highpoint of
the British Empire. Many British towns have streets named after Mafeking, the
Boer War siege which occurred just two years after the battle at Atbara. So its
not surprising that when in 1900, the Great Western Railway introduced a class
of 4-4-0 express locomotives, names for these engines were mostly taken from contemporary
military engagements, senior army commanders or cities of the British Empire.
One of them, No 3373, was named Atbara. At that time people would have been familiar
with these names and perhaps there is some local connection as yet to be discovered.
Benjamin
Ferris
The name of Benjamin Ferris appears in many of the first plans and
sale deeds for Atbara Road. According to the 1901 Census he was living at 'Quinta'
in Atbara Road with his wife and two sons. His occupation is given as builder
and he was then 33 years of age. By 1911 he appears to be living in Kingston and
is described as a Builder’s General Foreman although he did have a domestic
servant so must have been moderately well-off. Tragically, his younger son was
killed in 1916 while fighting in France. He was aged 18. Whether
Benjamin Ferris was actively involved in developing the road or just acted as
an agent for others we don't know. More research needs to be done on the developers
and landowners who made our Road.  The
Atbara class
of express locomotive built by the Great Western Railway between April 1900 and
October 1901. The last of the class was withdrawn from service in 1932. More
on the GWR archive website
----------------------------- There
is only one other Atbara Road in the UK at Church Crookham, Fleet, Hampshire,
although there is an Atbara Close in Swindon and an Atbara Terrace in King’s
Lynn, Norfolk. ----------------------------- Thank
you to people who have helped me so far and others who have provided information
which I have not yet been able to include. If
you have any further information on the history of Atbara Road e-mail me on mail@atbararoadhistory.uk
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