Battersea Park: Battersea Fields
Before Battersea Park was laid out in the mid-19th century, this area was known as Battersea Fields — low-lying land used for market gardening and for growing medicinal herbs, often called “simples.” It was a working landscape on the edge of the city, shaped by farming, drainage and informal paths long before it became a public park.
In 1726, the name Battersea appears unexpectedly in court testimony connected to the raid on Mother Clap’s Molly House, one of the best-documented queer meeting places of early modern London. During the trials, a witness described a sexual encounter using comparative language, stating that one man’s body showed signs of treatment: “yours has been Battersea’d.”
The phrase is a rare and striking example of place-based sexual slang entering the historical record — preserved only because it was spoken in court rather than written deliberately for posterity. It suggests that Battersea was already associated, in popular understanding, with bodily treatment and medical remedies.
The precise meaning of “Battersea’d” is not fully agreed, but historians generally interpret it as referring to venereal disease, its treatment, or sexual risk more broadly, drawing on the area’s reputation for medicinal cultivation. Its appearance in legal testimony shows how Battersea had already entered the coded language of sex, medicine and policing in the early 18th century.
This brief and oblique reference is currently the earliest known documentary evidence of queer history connected to the area, rooting Battersea’s LGBTQ+ story in the landscape long before the park, the railway or the modern borough existed.
