Corea Terrace runs along the line of an old lane that ran between the rectory of Stoke Damerel Church and the church itself. When the railway was extended through to Ocean Quay at Richmond Walk, a bridge was constructed over the western end of the lane. At that time a finger of Stonehouse Creek still extended up to the lane, and the garden of the rectory. As the nineteenth century faded and the twentieth dawned, so the demand for housing necessitated the development of the land around the rectory – some of it for housing and some of it, a large part of it, in fact, for creation of the Rectory Sports Ground.
The newly-created streets were not laboured over particularly when it came to the naming process; Rectory Road was laid out on the eastern bank of the creek inlet, while off were constructed First, Second and Third Avenue, and Corea Terrace.
Why Corea? The answer is not clear, however it may be something to do with the first Anglican Bishop of Corea (better known now as Korea), CJ Corfe. Corfe, the former Chaplain of HMS Alexandra, was apparently appointed in 1889 and was still in the post 16 years later, during which time first the Japanese had compelled China to give up control of the area (after the Sino-Japanese War 1894-5 and then annexed the country themselves after Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Meanwhile, throughout the Anglican churches in Corea, there were a large number of weekly memorials instituted – “the year’s mind” given of places that the Bishop had visited on his various missionary journeys and one of these visits had brought him here to Stoke Damerel (its memorial date 14 November).
