Another in the occasional series on historic sites on the “Thames Path” walk …

Battersea was first recorded in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 693 as Badrices ege or Batrices ege, from the Old English personal name Beaduric and eg, meaning island, or high, dry land in an otherwise  marshy area. 

There is also evidence  of even older human presence, in the form of Stone, Bronze and Iron Age artefacts,  the most famous being the Iron Age Battersea Shield, now in the British Museum.

The Medieval to post-Medieval settlement was centred around what is now Battersea Square. The church of St Mary was built here sometime before 1067 (see below); …

… and the former Raven public house during the reign of Charles II. 

Development began to spread during  the Georgian period of the eighteenth century, although the area remained essentially rural, and the economy  predominantly agricultural, and subordinately industrial, until the Victorian period of the nineteenth. 

Urbanisation and heavy industrialisation began with the arrival of the railway at nearby Nine Elms in  1838, although approximately  200 acres of  green space was preserved when Battersea Park  was created in 1853, following recommendations made to Queen Victoria’s “Commission for Improving the Metropolis” in 1843.   

The present Battersea Bridge  was built by Joseph Bazalgette between 1886-90, to replace an earlier, wooden one built between  1771-2 (and immortalised in Whistler’s evocative nocturnes). 

The former Battersea Power Station, currently being redeveloped, was built between 1929-55.

The “Peace Pagoda” in Battersea Park was built in 1984-5.

Church of St Mary

The church of St Mary was originally built sometime before 1067, and at this time given by William I to the monks of Westminster Abbey.  It was partially rebuilt by the master mason Henry Yevele in 1379, and extended in 1400  and 1469, when the south aisle and chapel were added, and in 1613   and 1639, when the north aisle and tower were added; and subsequently substantially rebuilt again, by the local architect Joseph Dixon, between 1775-7. Most of the manor house that used to stand near the church was demolished in 1778, and the remaining part in the early twentieth century, some materials being salvaged and shipped to the United States for re-use at this time.

The east window, of  stained-glass depicting Margaret Beauchamp, Henry VII and Elizabeth I, survives from  the seventeenth century.

The church has links with the artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), who used to sit in one of the windows overlooking the Thames  to paint the play of the light on the water.

The visionary poet and artist William Blake was married in the church  in 1782; and the high-ranking soldier  Benedict Arnold, who famously defected from the American Continental Army  to the British during the American Revolutionary War, was buried here in 1802.