Roehampton was a village within Putney parish, with its own open field system and its own local officials.
The Kings Head Photo © Photographer Dorian Gerhold
Early Anglo-Saxon buildings have recently been excavated, but the settlement probably dates back much further. The first detailed survey, from 1617, places the village in Roehampton Lane, in the Downshire House area. There was a medieval hunting park including what is now the Dover House Estate.
In the 1620s David Papillon built two mansions west of Roehampton Lane (the predecessors of Grove House and Elm Grove), and a large new park was created there for the Earl of Portland. A new village began to develop in what is now Roehampton High Street. The next transformation was the building of numerous villas in 1750-80, for nobles, bankers and others. Surviving villas include Parkstead, Mount Clare and Grove House. What remained of the old village in Roehampton Lane disappeared.
The present village is largely Victorian, including Holy Trinity Church (1898) and the parish school. Since the 1950s Roehampton has become much more intensively built up, with the Alton East and West Estates in the 1950s and recent developments around Roehampton House and at Roehampton University.
