In 1820 it would appear that Colonel James Elliot, of Barley House, not only bought the Hoe Fields, but he also had a survey carried out of Leigham Manor, which was then owned by Addis Archer. Ten years later Elliot himself became the owner of Leigham and, firstly through his son and then through a cousin, the property stayed in the family well into the twentieth century.
Meanwhile as Elliot’s land on the Hoe came to be developed so his name came to be preserved in the naming of Elliot Road and Elliot Terrace, so the name of his new home came to be duplicated in that part of town with the naming of Leigham Street.
Although probably deemed quite unlikely at the time, it may have crossed the old soldier’s mind that one day, his remote rural haven of Leigham may itself one day be swallowed up for development, just as so much of the Hoe was in the middle of the nineteenth century. That process began with the development of the Leigham Estate in 1966 and finally came closer to home when, in 1987, the old, and long-since neglected house and grounds were finally put up for sale, to be replaced by forty-one executive homes.
