Norbiton ward of Kingston upon Thames Municipal Borough, 1868.
Plaque on flats at site of original Norbiton Hall
Plaque at site of Kingston Lodge
Its name was originally Norberton(e) and it was named in a similar way to Surbiton on the opposite side of the Hogsmill River. The origin of the place-name is from the Old English words north, bere and tun (meaning northern grange or outlying farm).[3]
Until the mid-nineteenth century much of Norbiton was made up of country estates, all since sold as housing land. These included:
Norbiton Hall, a manor from the 16th century. Residents included Richard Taverner, who lived there 1547–75 and Sir Anthony Benn, 1605–18. In 1829, the Surrey MP Charles Pallmer sold the estate to Mary, Countess of Liverpool, widow of the late prime minister Lord Liverpool.[5] It was finally demolished in the 1930s to make way for a complex of flats, also called Norbiton Hall. These flats were built between 1933 and 1935 and received local listing in 2018.[6]
Norbiton Place was bought by Sir John Philipps, who died there in 1764.[7] One of the family's servants was Cesar Picton, originally an African slave, he was brought to England aged six in 1761. He lived at Norbiton Place for nearly thirty years, before becoming a successful coal-merchant in Kingston.[8] In the early 1800s Norbiton Place became the main residence of Charles Pallmer, owner of neighbouring Norbiton Hall.[5] Pallmer greatly developed the estate, including adding a dairy styled like an Indian temple and a lodge in the form of a doric temple.[7] Living above his means, Pallmer was declared bankrupt in 1831.[9] Much of the main house was pulled down after 1830,[5] with St Peter's Church built on part of the grounds.[10]
Kingston Lodge, opposite Norbiton Hall, was leased by Novelist George Meredith in 1865. Disliking the increasing development of the area, he moved away at the end of 1867.[11]
Norbiton today
Norbiton's housing stock largely consists of large Victorian and Edwardian family houses, plus small localised brownfield redevelopments of 1960s, 1980s and modern flats. It contains more council and social housing than most other areas of Kingston – one of the largest such sites, the Cambridge Road estate, was used as a fictional council estate in TV drama The Bill, as well as the BBC sitcom Some Girls. In 2020 plans were agreed to regenerate the Cambridge Road estate, including demolishing 865 existing homes and building 2,170 new ones.[12] Homes on the renewed estate will obtain heating by a process that turns treated sewage into clean energy, the first such scheme in England.[13]
In the 2018 Kingston borough elections, both council seats in Norbiton ward were gained by the Liberal Democrats from Labour, leaving Labour with no seats on the council.[16]
^Mills, A.D. (2011) [First published 1991]. A Dictionary of British Place Names (First edition revised 2011 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN9780199609086.
