Welcome to East Sheen!
The first recorded use of the name Sheen was in the year 950 in the form sceon, meaning shed, or shelter. But people have been living in the area long before that: flint axes and a pottery bowl dating back to more than 3500 years BC were found near the Ship Inn on the riverbank.
In the 13th century Richmond used to be called Sheen or Shene, and East Sheen – originally, East of Sheen – simply designated the area east of Richmond. Then Henry VII built Richmond Palace and the town took its name, leaving East Sheen on its own. East Sheen is a part of Mortlake district and its borders are notoriously difficult to define.
East Sheen has for many centuries been a leafy, sparsely populated, wealthy village of country mansions and green fields. The arrival of the railway in 1846 brought change: larger houses were built on the open fields for middle-class commuters and cottages for working-class families. The village rapidly grew going from a population of 6000 around 1900 to over 23000 a hundred years later.
Sheen has several parks and open spaces including its share of Richmond Park, accessed via Sheen Gate; Palewell Common, which has a playground, playing fields, tennis courts and a pitch and putt course; and East Sheen Common which is owned by the National Trust and leads into Bog Gate, another gate of Richmond Park.
Its long high street, Upper Richmond Road, connects Richmond to Putney and has goods stores, convenience services, offices, restaurants, cafés, pubs and suburban supermarkets and is also the economic hub for Mortlake. Central to this street is The Triangle, or Milestone Green, a traffic island with a war memorial and an old milestone dating from 1751, marking the ten-mile distance to Cornhill in the City of London.
The Triangle, Sheen Lane, East Sheen, Surrey by James Isaiah Lewis (1861–1934)