Surrey
Referred to as Eddington in Domesday Book, the name probably means ‘estate in Eadda’s territory’. In its 12th-century St Mary’s church, five Archbishops of Canterbury were buried.
From 1807 the nearby Addington Palace was their country residence. To the west of the palace in 1929, a 1.5-metre high brick-lined subterranean passage was discovered. According to local legend this passage, once linked to the remains of a monastery, was used by Henry VIII to reach Wickham Court when he was in love with Anne Boleyn.
Addington Cricket Club dates from 1743. The Cricketers’ Inn was built in 1847 on the site of a Tudor tavern. The parish was merged in the Borough of Croydon in 1927. Development of New Addington was begun in 1935 by the First National Housing Trust which erected houses to be let at ‘reasonable rents’.
Excerpted from The London Encyclopaedia by kind permission of the Publishers, Pan MacMillan.
