Thames Tributary - Chaffinch Brook - Shirley

Thames Tributary
The Chaffinch Brook rises here and flows northwards to eventually join the Pool, which flows to the Ravensbourne.

Post to the west Addiscombe
Post to the north Arena
Post to the south Shirley


Glenthorne Avenue
Marks the southern boundary of the Croydon Racetrack

Poppy Lane
Shirley Oaks BMI Hospital., private health facility,

Primrose Lane
The Chaffinch Brook flows north from slightly north of the road
Stroud Green Well and Pump. This is the name of what was once a playing field with cricket pitches, and an ambulance station. Later a wildflower meadow laid out.
Stroud Green well. Thames Water pumping from the chalk aquifer.
A stream flows north from this area which becomes the Chaffinch.

Shirley Oaks Road
Shirley Oaks Children's Home. Bermondsey Board of Guardians residential school as a haven for children from the social evils of the day. Built on a green field site, it was opened in 1904 and closed in 1982. The guardians aimed to provide a secure environment and to give the children a good education. Site is now housing.

Shirley
Shirley Means bright wood- or ‘thinly grown'.
The poppy was developed there. The Shirley poppy was created from 1880 by the Reverend William Wilks, local vicar. Wilks found in a corner of his garden next to arable fields, a variant of the field poppy that had a narrow white border around the petals. By careful selection and hybridization over many years he obtained a strain of poppies ranging in colour from white and pale lilac to pink and red, and unlike the wild poppies these had no dark blotches at the base of the petals. Further selection has given rise to semi-double and double forms.

Shirley Road
Shirley Lodge

Stroud Green
Strodegrene in 1483 and then Stroud Green in 1749. The name comes from “le Strode” 1279, which is Old English for 'marshy land overgrown with brushwood'.

Stroud Green Way
Stroud Green Lodge. Care home.

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