Wonder no more! One resident gives us his take on it....
Old measurements although not 'universal' can be quite useful locally for map making and making boundaries (well before satellite navigation became of age) for Land Surveyors. This road would have been part of an Agricultural field (part of a larger estate parcelled up and sold).
Ramsden Road, for example, (you might ask what a strange name for a road). But then Romans called every 1000 steps 1 mile (mile=1,000 steps) and that is precisely where we get our mesurement in Miles (as Milestones on Roads) for our UK road maps.
But if we take a road name like Ramsden Road (SW12) we can make an interesting connection.
100 feet = 1 Ramsden's chain. The Ramsden's chain (or engineer's chain) is 100 feet long, where each link is one foot long (see below). It is also possible that this chain was called after Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800), an English astronomical and scientific instrument maker. Measurements were important for local map makers and land owners selling land:
(A Ramsden chain, was used at one time for geographically surveying land. On longer stretches, two people, one at each end of the chain, would 'flip flop' end for end. If one person remained stationary then other could walk past the first until the chain reached its 'tether' producing a count of 1 unit measure (1 Ramsden) and then usually an iron peg placed at the desired length to be marked off. These iron pegs were called surveyors' stakes).
Any other local history on this Road welcome.
