Motspur Park, also known locally as West Barnes, is a residential suburb in south-west London, in the New Malden district.

Motspur Park owes its identity to the railway station of the same name, opened in 1925, which has six trains an hour to London Waterloo, and to the adjacent parade of small shops.

The Motspur Park athletics stadium was built by the University of London in 1928 and achieved fame when the world mile record was set there in 1938.

[2] The Mot family owned land in this area in the 14th century and gave their name to a farm that lay west of the Beverley Brook.

But the "Park" addition was deliberately promoted to suggest the area was a conversion from a landscaped garden or a wider inclosure.

The word 'park' was further adopted by local government, railway operators, and house builders in promotional literature to attract capital-rich or high income residents into these new outer commuter suburbs.

In the nineteenth century two major landowners were Charles Blake of Blue House Farm (area of the modern Barnes End) and Richard Garth Lord of the Manor of Morden.

[6] The 1871 map shows small farm workers cottages adjunct to farmhouses and a few mansions as the only dwellings of the area.

The mature oak woodland alongside it was planted around this time as screening from the railway; today it is a nature reserve.

Mostly these were well-serviced short terraces, typically six houses joined, each with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and two living rooms and a kitchen downstairs.

Wates were also active builders in the area in the inter war years, building to the west of the railway line.

In 1931 part of Hobbald(e)s Farm was acquired by Merton and Morden Urban District to become the Sir Joseph Hood Memorial Playing Fields.

[citation needed] The company diversified during World War II to make radar and the Decca Navigator System.

Nearby were the Venner timeswitch company maker of Britain's first parking meters and Carter's Tested Seeds.

Bradbury Wilkinson, a security printing company, designers and makers of banknotes for small country clients, is today the site of Tesco hypermarket.

The product was in 1925 West Barnes Gospel Hall in Seaforth Avenue, which later became the home of New Malden Evangelical Free Church, was opened.

[11] On the morning of 3 July 1944, a V1 flying bomb came down close to 45 Motspur Park; seven houses were razed and no deaths reported.

A small retail dairy/farm store selling milk, butter and eggs at first occupied the private tuition centre's unit.

The parade once had three butchers, an RACS Co-op grocery store, a shoe repair shop, and a Coombes bakers .

The playing fields located within the Motspur Park area are: The University of London Athletics ground was laid out in 1931, the University having spent £18,000 in 1926 to acquire what was then unspoilt countryside and almost as much again on levelling and drainage works to help establish Motspur Park as a top-class facility.

As an athletics track it served for scenes in films The Games (1970), Chariots of Fire (1981) and The Four Minute Mile (1988) (TV).

The BBC moved from its original home at Savoy Hill off the Strand to purpose-built premises at Broadcasting House in Langham Place in 1932.

He did his initial training for this event in strict secrecy at the BBC sports ground in Motspur Park.

[21] In later days it occasionally featured in BBC comedy series such as Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974) and The Two Ronnies (1971-1987).

However, a series of planning disputes left it derelict for many years, until a devastating Clubhouse fire in July 2016.