Oates Road

There are a cluster of roads in behind the site of Robert Falcon Scott's birthplace, Outlands House, commemorating the names of the party of five men who, with Scott, reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912 - one of them is Oates Road.

Lawrence Edward Grace Oates was born in Putney in 1880, his family were from Yorkshire and he was sent to Eton School. After Eton he went straight into the army to serve with the Inniskilling Dragoons in the South African War.

In 1910, the thirty year-old captain was given leave to serve with Scott on the Terra Nova, on his expedition to the Antarctic. After successfully reaching the pole (Amundsen having just pipped them), Scott and his party made slow progress on the return leg.

One of the men died after several falls and Oates, lamed by frostbite and convinced his crippled condition would hamper his colleagues chances of survival, "walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try and save his comrades beset by hardships". Sadly the gesture was to be in vain as Scott and the others were also to die short of their goal in March 1912.