It is centred 3.5 miles (5.6 km) southwest of Charing Cross it also extends along the south bank of the Thames Tideway.

Battersea is mentioned in the few surviving Anglo-Saxon geographical accounts as Badrices īeg, 'Badric's Island' and later Old English: Patrisey.

As with many former parishes beside tidal flood plains the lowest land was reclaimed for agriculture by draining marshland and building culverts for streams.

The settlement appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Middle English: Patricesy, a vast manor held by St Peter's Abbey, Westminster.

Before the Industrial Revolution, much of the large parish was farmland, providing food for the City of London and surrounding population centres; and with particular specialisms, such as growing lavender on Lavender Hill (nowadays denoted by the road of the same name), asparagus (sold as "Battersea Bundles") or pig breeding on Pig Hill (later the site of the Shaftesbury Park Estate).

This was settled from the 16th century by Protestant craftsmen – Huguenots – fleeing religious persecution in Europe, who planted lavender and gardens and established a range of industries such as mills, breweries and dyeing, bleaching and calico printing.

[4] Along the Thames, a number of large and, in their field, pre-eminent firms grew; notably the Morgan Crucible company, which survives to this day and is listed on the London Stock Exchange; Price's Candles, which also made cycle lamp oil; oil refiner and paint manufacturer S. Bowley and Son; and Orlando Jones' Starch Factory.

resurgent demand among magnates and high income earners for parkside and riverside property close to planned Underground links has led to significant construction, [citation needed] Factories have been demolished and replaced with modern apartment buildings.

Battersea neighbourhoods close to the railway have some of the most deprived local authority housing in the Borough of Wandsworth, in an area which saw condemned slums after their erection in the Victoria era.

The effect was precipitate: a population of 6,000 people in 1840 was increased to 168,000 by 1910; and save for the green spaces of Battersea Park, Clapham Common, Wandsworth Common and some smaller isolated pockets, all other farmland was built over, with, from north to south, industrial buildings and vast railway sheds and sidings (much of which remain), slum housing for workers, especially north of the main east–west railway, and gradually more genteel residential terraced housing further south.

The railway station encouraged the government to site its buildings in the area surrounding Clapham Junction, where a cluster of new civic buildings including the town hall, library, police station, court and post office was developed along Lavender Hill in the 1880s and 1890s.

[citation needed] Battersea has a long and varied history of social housing, and the completion of the Shaftesbury Park Estate in 1877 was one of the earliest in London or the UK.

Indeed, both of these earlier estates have since been recognised as conservation areas due to their historical and architectural significance and are protected from redevelopment.

[8][9] Battersea also has a large area of mid-20th century public housing estates, almost all located north of the main railway lines and spanning from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east.

[11] Winstanley is close to Clapham Junction railway station in the northern perimeter of Battersea, and is currently being considered for comprehensive redevelopment as one of the London Mayor's new Housing Zones.

)[13][14] The Battersea Battalion served alongside Pals battalions from Lambeth (11th Queens), Bermondsey (12th East Surreys) and Lewisham (10th West Kents) in 41st Division on the Western Front, including the battles of the Somme, Messines, and Ypres, on the Italian Front, and then back in the west against the German spring offensive and in the final victorious Hundred Days Offensive.

The Battersea Battalion was kept up to strength with dismounted cavalrymen from the Surrey Yeomanry (TF), based at Clapham Park.

Battersea's governance can be traced back to 693, when the manor was held by the nunnery of St. Mary at Barking Abbey.

After the Norman Conquest of 1066, control of the manor passed to Westminster Abbey, ending at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540.

Local control rested with an officer appointed by the abbey, variously termed a beadle, reeve or sergeant, whose responsibility it was supervise the farm servants of the manor, and to enforce and direct customary work performed by manorial tenants.

[15] The Survey of London identified the period of Frederick's tenure with the development of the Vestry in Battersea; absent a competent lord of the manor, this local secular and ecclesiastical government took it upon itself to establish a workhouse in 1733, and met monthly from 1742.

And albeit Battersea saw some slow change over the first seven centuries of the second millennium, it was not until a later period that an imperative for greater local government arose.

[15] The vestry of Battersea continued to increase in importance from 1742, notably concerning itself with Poor Law administration and drainage.

John Burns founded a branch of the Social Democratic Federation, Britain's first organised socialist political party, in the borough and after the turmoil of dock strikes affecting the populace of north Battersea, was elected to represent the borough in the newly formed London County Council.

The fountain, forming a plinth for the statue of a brown dog, was installed in the Latchmere Recreation Ground, became a cause célèbre, fought over in riots and battles between medical students and the local populace until its removal in 1910.

The Winstanley and York Road council estates have developed a reputation for such offences and were included in a zero-tolerance "drug exclusion zone" in 2007.

Kitty Neale's Nobody's Girl is set in a fictional café and the surrounding Battersea High Street Market.

Battersea provides the backdrop for the real world scenes in the audio book and app series Rockford's Rock Opera.

Its famous abandoned power station is also the site of a few race tracks in a few console and PC games from the Dirt series.