Battersea - History

History

Further information: History of London

Historically a part of Surrey, the area takes its name from the old village of Battersea, an island settlement established in the river delta of the Falconbrook; a river that rises in Tooting Bec Common and flows underground through south London to the River Thames. The site of the original settlement is marked by St. Mary's Church. William Blake was married, and Benedict Arnold and his wife and daughter are buried in the crypt of the church. Battersea is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon time as Badrices īeg = "Badric's Island" and later "Patrisey". As with many former Thames island settlements, Battersea was reclaimed by draining marshland and building culverts for streams.

The settlement appears in the Domesday Book as Patricesy. It was held by St Peter's Abbey, Westminster. Its Domesday Assets were: 18 hides; 7 mills worth £42 9s 8d, 17 ploughs, 82 acres (330,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 50 hogs. It rendered (in total): £75 9s 8d.

Read more about this topic:  Battersea

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
    —Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

    “There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
    —Umberto Eco (b. 1932)

    “Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
    —Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)