Addington, Croydon
A North Downs village situated two-and-a-half miles east of South Croydon
As the bunker in the foreground suggests, Addington Palace is now home to a golf club
Addington’s name relates to a Saxon landowner and the manor was mentioned in Domesday Book as being held by Tezelin, the king’s cook. The book was a survey of English land ownership made by order of William the Conqueror in 1086. It was the site of one of Henry VIII’s hunting lodges.
Addington Palace, a rather plain mansion built in 1780 with grounds landscaped by Capability Brown, was a home of the archbishops of Canterbury in the 19th century. During the following century it was successively a diamond merchant’s home, a Red Cross hospital, a hotel and a music college, and is now a country club.
Five archbishops of Canterbury are buried at St Mary the Blessed Virgin and are remembered in many memorials, decorations and windows around the church, which dates from 1080 but is now mainly Victorian, following extensive renovations.
Addington has a cricket club founded in 1743 and several golf courses in the surrounding parkland. Addington Hills are to the west, near Upper Shirley.
The village has kept itself at arm’s length from the much larger settlement of New Addington to the south-east, but has suffered a decline with the loss of its school and village shop. The arrival of the Croydon Tramlink helped Addington’s accessibility, but the stop is not conveniently situated because the line needs to bear southwards for New Addington.
A ghost story told at Addington by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Henry James inspired the author to write The Turn of the Screw.
, Phillimore, 1984
