The Origins of Darwin Green

Inspiration for street names in Darwin Green

Origin of the Names in Darwin Green

Darwin Green is a reference to Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the famous naturalist, geologist, and biologist. But do you know where the names of the streets and buildings in the development come from? The builder company hasn’t published the origin of the names, but here’s our guess:

Beagle Road: HMS Beagle was the ship that carried Darwin around the world, for a five-year trip that established the scientist’s status as an eminent geologist and played a key role in the formation of his theories on evolution.
Cornford Drive: In 1909, Francis Macdonald Cornford (1874-1943), a scholar from Trinity College in Cambridge, married the poet Frances Darwin, granddaughter of Charles Darwin.
Darwin building: A direct reference to Charles Darwin. Darwin had ties with Cambridge: he studied at Christ College from 1828 to 1831 before leaving for his famous voyage, and once returned he spent a few months (mid-December 1836 to early March 1837) in Cambridge to arrange expert classification of his collections while preparing his own research for publication.
Evolution Court: Darwin was instrumental to the conception of the theory of evolution.
Falmouth Avenue: Falmouth is a town on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall. On 2nd October 1836, HMS Beagle anchored at Falmouth, thus ending its second trip and bringing back Darwin to England.
Falmouth Close: See Falmouth Avenue.
Galton Road: Francis Galton (1822-1911) was Darwin’s half-cousin. He studied mathematics at Trinity College in Cambridge, and is credited for ideas that became the basis of behavioural genetics.
Hawking building: This is probably a reference to the theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), whose ashes were interred at Westminster Abbey, between the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
Henslow Crescent: John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) was an Anglican priest, botanist and geologist, and Darwin’s friend and academic advisor.
Horace Walk: Sir Horace Darwin (1851–1928) was an engineer specializing in the design and manufacture of precision scientific instruments, and the ninth child of Charles Darwin. He was also a Fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, and was elected Mayor of the city between 1896 and 1897.
Lawrence Weaver Road: Sir Lawrence Weaver (1876–1930) was an English architectural writer and civil servant. He founded the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. Lawrence Weaver Road predates the Darwin Green development, which is why that the character has no ties with Darwin.
Lewis building: This is a tricky name, because there’s no apparent well-known relationship between Darwin and anyone named Lewis. Based on the names of the neighbour buildings (Hawking, Darwin, Newton), we suppose it could be a scientist and/or an individual buried in Westminster Abbey. A good candidate would be C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), writer, literary scholar, and theologian, who authored The Chronicles of Narnia. He held a chair at Magdalene College in Cambridge from 1954 to 1963, and was honoured, 50 years after his death, with a memorial in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Newton building: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a scientist, whose legacy is too long to list in this paragraph but includes the laws of motion and universal gravitation. He was a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, and served twice as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge. After his death he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where Darwin later joined him.
Patagonia Way: The southern end of South America, Patagonia is a region spreading over Argentina and Chile. About his voyage aboard HMS Beagle, Darwin wrote: “The object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830-to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific-and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the World.”
Plymouth Close: On his second voyage, the one with Darwin on board, HMS Beagle departed from Plymouth, a port city in Devon. The city was also the birth town of William Elford Leach (1791-1836), a zoologist and marine biologist who paved the way for Darwin’s work.
Randal Way: This may related to Randal Keynes (1948–2023), conservationist, author, and great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Randal was born in Cambridge, and authored a book about the relationship between Darwin and his daughter Annie.
Shrewsbury Road: Shrewsbury is a town in Shropshire, and the birth town to Charles Darwin.
Wallace Way: Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1813) was a naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist, and illustrator. He was a friend to Darwin, and he independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection, which pushed Darwin to publish his book On the Origin of Species.
Wren House: Wrens are birds, to be more accurate they’re a family of small brown passerine birds. During his voyage, Darwin collected a specimen that he described as a Galápagos “wren”, but turned out to be another closely allied species of finch.