New Addington, Croydon
An unofficial new town situated in the far east of the borough of Croydon, set on a steep hillside rising into the North Downs by nearly 200 feet along its north-south axis
The wide open spaces of New Addington
Domesday Book records that, “Albert the clerk holds of the king Addington. Osweard held it of King Edward. It was then assessed at eight hides; now at two. There is land for four ploughs … woodland for 20 pigs.” This was the manor later known as Addington Temple, which covered roughly the area of modern New Addington. It remained as farmland well into the 20th century.
In 1935 the First National Housing Trust acquired 569 acres of Fisher’s Farm to lay out a garden village. Croydon council supported the plan as a way of reducing the over-crowding in its semi-slum urban areas. Just over a thousand homes had been built by the time the outbreak of the Second World War brought construction to a halt.
After the war housing need had become even more pressing, but there was also pressure to protect London’s countryside. The borough took over the housing trust’s unused land and acquired a further 400 acres, while the land west of Lodge Lane was declared green belt. The plan was completed by 1963, but continuing housing need prompted another extension to New Addington five years later. This latter part is known as the Fieldway estate and has become the most disadvantaged part of the district.
The estate’s layout included generous open spaces, as shown in the photograph of Fieldway, above. Some critics dismissed this as ‘prairie planning’ – arguing that the greenswards served only to inhibit a sense of community while providing little in the way of beautification or recreational facilities.
New Addington’s centre lies two-and-a-half miles south of the nearest train station, at West Wickham, and its inaccessibility was a major reason for the creation of Croydon Tramlink, which arrived here in 2000.
Fieldway and New Addington are the borough’s first and second most deprived wards and are the principal recipients of its regeneration funds. A 2001 planning document declared the council’s aim to counter the perception that, “if you come to live in New Addington, you’ve failed.”
New Addington resident Emma West gained (presumably) unwanted global attention in late 2011, when she was charged with committing a racially-aggravated public order offence, after a video showing a woman abusing ethnic minority tram passengers was posted on YouTube. The clip went viral and rapidly garnered more than ten million views before the uploader removed it.
