Addiscombe

In 1703, Addiscombe Place was built for William Draper to Sir John Vanbrugh's design.[2] The house was built on a site which is now the corner of Outram Road and Mulberry Lane and became known as one of three great houses in Addiscombe, the others being 'Ashburton House' and 'Stroud Green House'. It replaced the Elizabethan mansion built by Thomas Heron in 1516. John Tunstall, a courtier of Anne of Denmark, bought Heron's house and had a noted flower garden.[7]

John Evelyn recorded in his Diary, "I went to Adscomb on 11 July 1703 to see my son-in-law’s new house. It has excellent brickwork and Portland stone features, that I pronounced it good solid architecture, and one of the very best gentlemen's houses in Surrey."[4] Distinguished guests who stayed at the mansion include George III, William Pitt the Elder and Peter the Great of Russia.[8] Peter the Great was reputed to have planted a cedar tree in Mulberry Lane to record his visit.

During the 18th century Addiscombe Place was successively the home to The Lord Talbot, The Lord Grantham and lastly The Earl of Liverpool, who died there in 1808.[9]

Addiscombe Military Seminary, photographed c.1859, with cadets in the foreground

In 1809, Emelius Ratcliffe sold Addiscombe Place to the British East India Company for £15,500, whereupon it became a military academy known as the Addiscombe Military Seminary.[2] Cadets were trained as officers for one of the Company's three Presidency Armies. Its counterpart, East India Company College in Hertfordshire, trained the Company's administrators. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 led to strong criticism of the Company, and in 1858 it was nationalised by the British government. The military seminary was closed in 1861 and the remaining cadets transferred to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.[2]

In 1863, the seminary buildings were sold for £33,600 to developers who razed most of them to the ground. Five parallel roads were laid out on the site, to the south of the former college site – Outram, Havelock, Elgin, Clyde and Canning Roads. They were all named after individuals who were prominent in either the military or civil governance of British India namely; Sir James Outram, Bt, Sir Henry Havelock, The Earl of Elgin, The Lord Clyde and The Earl Canning. All that survives of the Seminary itself are two buildings called 'Ashleigh' and 'India', on the corner of Clyde Road and Addiscombe Road, and a former gymnasium on Havelock Road, now private apartments.[2]

St Mary Magdalene Church, Addiscombe.

With the advent of the railways in the 1830s, Cherry Orchard Road linking Addiscombe with Croydon ceased to be a quiet rural lane and railway workers' cottages sprang up, many with the still-visible date of 1838. However it was not until 1858 and the sale of the college, that significant urbanisation occurred.

There was formerly a small chapel attached to Addiscombe Military Seminary and to this, cadets paraded each morning and evening for a service conducted by the chaplain. On Sundays, cadets went down to the Parish Church in Croydon. By 1827, it became clear that Croydon Parish Church was too far away to minister to the college needs and St James' Parish Church was built and consecrated on 31 January 1829. The population of Addiscombe at this time was about 1,000. In 1870, the church of St Paul's (built by Edward Buckton Lamb) was opened and then rededicated in 1874 to St Mary Magdalene. The parish of Addiscombe was formed in 1879.

In the 1890s, the Ashburton Estate was gradually sold for redevelopment, and Ashburton House, which had previously hosted literary figures such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was demolished in 1910.[10]

Much of the land remaining in the area after the initial Victorian-era had been infilled with smaller housing developments by the 1930s.[2] Addiscombe railway station closed in the late 1990s and was replaced by housing. Since early 2006 several parts of Addiscombe have been in the process of extensive regeneration, notably the addition of housing to the site of the former Black Horse Pub and the demolition of former Church Halls and a small garden centre in Bingham Road allowing a new Church Hall and community complex to be built and providing luxury retirement apartments on adjoining land.

The area contains a number of parks and green spaces, notably Ashburton Park and Addiscombe Recreation Ground. The main shopping area is situated along Lower Addiscombe Road, containing a variety of shops, restaurants and pubs.