Alfred Heaver

The possibility is that they overstretched in this first venture, as they are recorded in March 1871 as living at 2 and 3 Salcott Road - again, properties they had built - in bankruptcy proceedings at the country court of Surrey in Croydon.

However a step-change took place in 1878, when Heaver purchased a 4.5 acres (1.8 ha) site to the east of the Bolingbroke Park Estate, on which extensions to Belleville and Wakehurst Roads were constructed, and plots for 70 properties laid out.

Bailey speculates, based on road-naming evidence, that Heaver may have been assisted by John Ashdown, Secretary of and surveyor for the CLS, and by Joseph Hiscox, a building contractor.

[2] Heaver's modus operandi appears to have been to purchase the freehold of under-developed properties on the frontier of urban development; in Battersea, often the very large gardens of villas built in a previous era.

The estate borders the north-west of Tooting Commons, and comprises Ritherdon Road and 10 streets to the south of it, on which Heaver laid out and contracted with building companies to construct more than 1,000 terraced houses in the Queen Anne style.

[9] Some time around 1896 Heaver and family took possession of a summer property in Westcott near Dorking where on 4 August 1901, whilst walking to church with his wife, he was shot twice, in the back and the head, by his brother-in-law James Young.

[10][11] The Economist, listing him as late of Oak Lodge, Tooting, reports that he left an estate of £389,833 (equivalent to circa £45 million in 2017 currency).